The city administrators' humiliating treatment of workers in the homeless shelters includes forcing 500 families seeking refuge from domestic violence to reapply for a bed to sleep on every day.

The fact that homeless shelter occupancy is up 10 percent over last year in New York--and is at similar or higher rates in other U.S. cities--underlines the increasing difficulty of making ends meet for a growing number of working people who live in cities and towns where a modest one-bedroom apartment can cost $700, $1,000, or even more.

The fact that the number of eviction warrants issued grew by 8,000 to 122,000 in New York City last year is a graphic reminder of the constant insecurity many people live with each month as the deadline approaches to put the rent check in the mail. For the 400,000 families in the city that pay more than half their income for rent, the housing question is a constant nightmare. The New York statistics show that many "single households with minor children," most of them headed by women, paid 58 percent of their household income for rent in 1996--28 percent above what the city social engineers call "affordable."

On top of this, skyrocketing energy costs are forcing many workers and farmers to choose between staying warm and paying for other necessities of life. Workers in the coal-mining communities around Sandusky, Alabama, set an example recently by coming out in force to a meeting to protest the steep price hikes and shutoffs being carried out by the local gas company.

The union movement needs to address these problems through opposition to attacks on the social wage, a fight for a union-scale minimum wage, and for a shorter workweek with no cut in pay. Along with this goes the demand for nationalizing the energy companies to prevent price-gouging and shortages.

But the root problem that creates housing shortages, unaffordable rents, squalid housing run by price-gouging slumlords, and a growing number of homeless workers is the capitalist system itself. Rather than approaching housing as a right--that no family or person should ever have to wonder whether or not they will have an adequate roof over their head tomorrow--capitalism turns it into another way to appropriate the wealth created by working people for the tiny handful of multibillionaire ruling families. This happens regardless of the social cost or the lives and well-being of working people.

By taking the moral high ground in defense of workers who are feeling the brunt of the employers' offensive, the working class can advance the construction of a revolutionary proletarian movement that can put an end to the system run by billionaires who profit from the exploitation of the world's toilers.
 
 
Related article:
Homelessness on rise in New York City  
 
 
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