Robert Kiyosaki, the (in)famous author of Rich Dad Poor Dad has recently warned that America has slums. I simply want to respond to him with dripping sarcasm, “No shit, Sherlock!” Maybe it’s because in America we blame and punish the poor. In America, poverty is ironically very expensive. The poor pay more for basic goods and services than the wealthy. There’s little left over for comfortable, vibrant housing. In fact, there’s little leftover for anything.
If America prioritized helping the poor and the working class, we could have an end to the slum conditions plaguing many large cities. Instead, twats like Gavin Newsom want to simply bulldoze the problem away with political word salad and do nothing. Yes, many parts of America resemble (or are exactly) slum conditions. One need not travel very far or look very hard to see this. Perhaps we should be improving neighborhoods by making the billionaire class pay for it all. But no, we still look to trickle down economics for improvement. You and I know that is nothing more than a Reagan fallacy.
Just recently the neoliberal mayor of Philadelphia, Cherelle Parker, did an anti-homeless sweep of the Kensington section of North Philadelphia. Now, instead of the homeless camped out on Kensington Ave, they’re camped out and hidden in the alleys just off of the main thoroughfare because there aren’t enough services available to fix the problem.
We solve the housing problem by ending the voucher system and repealing the Faircloth Amendment which basically outlaws the construction of new federal public housing. Privatization of housing through the housing voucher system has been an epic fail. It’s time to construct beautiful, vibrant public housing. We can even involve the potential residents and put them to work building these communities that are not projects and will never be treated as projects. They’re not projects, they’re not experiments. This is peoples’ lives we are talking about.
Well, I am on a roll here. I’ll quit while I am not ahead.