Tenants call out racist Cuomo’s housing crisis

NEW YORK CITY, June 15—In a march yesterday meant to disrupt Governor Cuomo’s “Master Builder” award ceremony, 1,000 working class-tenants and youth—Black, Latin, Asian and white—marched against high rents and homelessness.  They chanted, “What do we want? Housing! When do we want it? Now! If we don’t get it, shut it down” and “This is class war. Tax the rich and house the poor.”
As capitalism continues to decay, housing for the working class is getting more and more scarce.
Cuomo continues Moses’s racist legacy
As the marchers turned onto super exclusive Park Avenue in Manhattan, militant youth led us into the street. We took over the entire uptown side of the street, stopping traffic.
Finally we moved onto the sidewalk as the police threatened to arrest us using their high decibel system. We later again poured into the street as we reached our destination, a luxury building where Governor Andrew Cuomo was receiving the Building Trades Employers Association first ever Robert Moses Master Builder award. It may be fitting since both Moses, the shamelessly racist architect of NYC segregation, and Cuomo are displacing the Black, Latin, and Asian working class by the thousands. Because of Moses and the City politicians, more than 250,000 people were displaced in the construction of New York City’s highways in the 1930s and ’40s.
Under Cuomo, who is up for reelection this year, there has been a “36 percent increase in homelessness, up to nearly 90,000 people statewide since his Cuomo 2010 campaign” (Patch, 6/15). The housing court has churned out thousands of evictions. “About 232,000 cases were filed last year against tenants, roughly one for every 10 city rentals. Most tenants were accused of owing back rent. But in many cases, tenants were sued for rent they did not owe” (NYT, 5/20).
Cuomo was the target of the community groups who sponsored the event, saying it was “Cuomo’s housing crisis.” A member of Progressive Labor Party carried a sign that said, “It’s not just Cuomo, it’s capitalism.” Another comrade distributed 120 Challenge newspapers.
Of course, opportunists like actor-turned-politician Cynthia Nixon criticized Cuomo for taking sides of the real estate bosses. Nixon is a challenger of Cuomo for the Democratic nomination for governor. She said she was proud to stand “renters not developers, with people not with wealthy corporate donors” (Patch, 6/14). Workers know a politician “cannot keep profits out of politics” and in the event that Nixon does become governor, she too will be reigned in by the billionaires.  
Rent is killing us
Anger is growing as the housing crisis worsens in NYC (see page 8).
89,000 people are in shelters and thousands more live in the streets, including families with children.
100,000 rent stabilized apartments have been lost, especially as racist real estate developers and financiers rapidly gentrify neighborhoods.
As one tenant said, “The rents are killing us!”
Another said “The politicians? The landlords have bought them.”
Real estate developers move in like vampires and finance high-rent housing. Government officials claim the new housing is “affordable.” But this is based on NYC’s “median income,” approximately $55,000 a year for a family of four. In working-class neighborhoods where many tenants are Black, Latin, or seniors, it is common for almost half of the tenants to have incomes of about $28,000 a year.
Bushwick tenants fight racist displacement
In the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn (which is 65 percent Latin and 20 percent Black), tenants are fighting the Camber Property Group developers’ plans to build two nine-story buildings with 122 apartments. Only 27 would be “affordable,” for families whose income is at least $51,000 a year. This development would kick out existing tenants, a boxing club, a restaurant, a laundromat and a parking lot used by workers at a nearby hospital.
On June 11 several members of PLP participated with others at a local hearing for people regarding the development. The misleaders of Local 32 BJ, the largest union of property service workers, spoke in favor because the new owners had promised maintenance jobs for mere a 12 union members. Everyone was shocked that a union “ally” would support a project that would eliminate 50 jobs in the community.
PLP says that the working class must never allow ourselves to be divided and pitted against each other by capitalist opportunists and sellouts. We need to fight for more jobs for our class.
The fight goes on. PLP is gradually building in the community organizations we’re participating in. While the leadership of these groups calls for reforms, in lock step with the Democratic Party, PL’ers call for communist revolution as the way to free our class from the chains of capitalism.