Housing for profit can never meet workers' needs

INGLEWOOD, CA—Seventy people rallied in support of tenants fighting back against racist gentrification and landlord abuse. Tenants from the Inglewood Gardens (IG) apartments have been subjected to inhumane conditions for months. These conditions are the result of a racist system of private rental property that puts landlord profits way above the needs of tenants for safe, decent housing. Capitalism is a system that allows profiteering bankers and landlords to make enormous profits off the backs of working class people by treating shelter, a human need, as a commodity. When that system is overthrown and replaced by communism, housing will be distributed according to need; there will be no money.
The rally, called by the Lennox-Inglewood Tenants’ Union (LITU), was a major success. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have been active in the union. Despite the pandemic and threats and harassment from the landlord, five tenants joined the rally. There was overwhelming support from passing drivers, who honked loudly.  The rally ended with a well-received march around the neighborhood. The marchers chanted, “When Inglewood tenants are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back” among other chants. The rally also inspired almost 20 new people to attend the next online LITU general meeting, after which eight workers joined the tenant union.
Fight racist gentrification and landlord profiteering
LITU has been organizing at IG for close to a year. IG is directly  across the street from SoFi Stadium, the new home of the Los Angeles Rams and the LA Chargers football teams, and was scheduled to open this summer. The LA Clippers basketball team is building another stadium within two miles of SoFi. It is scheduled to open in 2024. Los Angeles is also hosting the 2028 Olympic Games, and will undoubtedly use these two stadiums.
Inglewood is a predominantly working class, Black and Latin city southwest of Los Angeles. Partly because of mass pressure from Inglewood’s workers, the Inglewood City Council was recently forced to institute rent control, limiting increases to three  percent per year or the cost of living, whichever is greater. However, the ordinance still allows unlimited rent increases once a unit is vacated.
Not long after the beginning of construction of SoFi in late 2016, property values soared and the former IG owner jacked up rents 40 percent and more. Some tenants moved out then. In September 2019, Alfa Investments LLC, bought the building, planning even more increases.
Alfa’s strategy is typical of real estate capitalists everywhere. They refused to repair apartments with nasty, extensive mold.  They overlooked roaches and other insect infestations. Sinks were left totally inoperable or allowed to leak. Meanwhile, Alfa performed noisy repair work on weekends and into the early evenings, focusing exclusively on the vacant apartments. Cosmetic changes on the outside of the building and in the building courtyard masked the true conditions of the remaining tenants’ apartments. More tenants moved out, thereby removing those apartments from rent control.
Alfa’s racist neglect of the Black and Latin IG tenant population knows no bounds. They ripped out tenant mailboxes without any notice.  New mailboxes were put in months ago, but tenants still have no keys. The letter carrier continues to deliver mail into open tenant mail slots in a room that is open 24 hours a day. Alfa lies, blaming everything on a post office “backlog” in approving the new boxes. A postal service supervisor has said there is no backlog.
This was all done under the “watchful” eye of the city government. Politicians lie about supporting workers, but really they all serve the capitalists. Their job is to fool workers with their lies.
Because word of the rally and march spread widely on social media, the Mayor of Inglewood, who claims to have workers’ best interests at heart, vowed to have Inglewood Code Enforcement visit the IG apartments. So the landlord was forced to meet with the tenant leader, two LITU members and a City code inspector. But the inspector clearly sided with the landlord who refused LITU’s demand to move the remaining tenants into the newly renovated apartments, or to make anything other than superficial repairs to the tenants’ apartments. A capitalist is only willing to do for the working class as much as he feels forced to!  But we fight on. LITU and the tenants, and members of PLP are planning further actions, including exposing the Mayor, City agencies, and the entire, racist, capitalist system.
As PLP members within LITU, we will continue to point out the treadmill nature of reform and the need to overthrow this entire, rancid system. The lessons from this struggle are clear.  As long as capitalism is allowed to exist, members of the working class will be forced into constant struggles for their very lives.  Only a communist revolution, led by the PLP, can eliminate this scourge from the face of the earth.