No Money for Public Housing

• Author: Jeffrey Simmons
• Posted: 2024-02-03

It is a very weird thing to try to keep up with politics in America these days. Trusting what you're told by corporate media outlets has become more unreliable than ever, and believing what comes out of the mouths of politicians is the quickest way ever to lose your trust and faith in all of humanity. Yet, as of 2022 in America, the federal government of the United States is the largest it has ever been, and is the largest government in the history of planet Earth. The federal government has printed tens of thousands of regulations that take the power out of the hands of the people and make the people dependent on the government. And what do the people get out of this? Mostly they are ignored, as multiple studies illustrate that the government works for corporations and does not even listen to the people. This is especially obvious when you look at the state of public housing today, Or, the absence of it, would be a much better way to phrase that.

In a country where the government has decided that you must seek their permission to build a home, and you must rely on them for housing, they sure haven't done much in the past few years to increase public housing, or housing assistance, for the tens of millions of Americans teetering on the edge of homelessness. This process of ignoring America's housing market goes back multiple administrations, perhaps to the Clinton administration. Even after the housing crisis caused a worldwide recession in late 2008, America's government still has done nothing to improve the housing market. They accept donations from multi-national, billion-dollar corporations like Blackrock and Vanguard, and they allow these corporations to buy all the houses available. They allow the Chinese government to come in and buy houses, and land that would otherwise be zoned for housing. But when it comes to doing anything for Americans who need affordable housing, the page is empty.

Story after story has been breaking over the past year, all saying pretty much the same thing: There is no money allocated toward public housing. Kent County wants to build public housing, but has no funds. Detroit wants to revitalize its housing, but has no funds. Pennsylvania wants to do something about its housing crisis, but has no funds. Though, if you flip that coin to its other side, you find that the government has plenty of funds to hand over to Ukraine, or to Israel, or to Somalia. Billions upon billions of dollars given in foreign aid every year, and nothing given to states and counties to help the housing crisis.

Another Bill, Another Missed Opportunity

When people are protesting in the streets and even the corporate media can no longer hide the frustrations of Americans, the federal government swings into action, signs some trillion-dollar bills, and throws a few pennies at the people in order to keep them quiet. Where was the public housing money in the CARES Act? where was it in the two subsequent virus bills passed? Was there any money allocated for housing in the $2-plus trillion infrastructure bill? of course not; and no one even knows where that money went, and no one is asking because everyone's forgotten about that huge pile of money spent, since there have been multiple piles subsequently. How about the Inflation Reduction Act? One might think that helping people afford to live is a great way to reduce suffering and maybe even to get inflation under control. Though no one can find that a single penny was allocated to building housing with all those trillions of dollars.

The government, meanwhile, has housing. To the very last politician, every single member of America's federal government has a secure, luxurious roof over their heads, and some of them even have rent-controlled plans in DC, NYC, etc, where they barely have to pay rent. Not to even mention the steep pay increases that the government votes on every single year now. Since the Coronavirus started, the average American is worth about 60% less than they were in 2019. The average federal politician is making 50% more.

There are dozens of states out there dealing with increased homelessness and a lot of Americans about to lose their home. They want to build more affordable housing, but the federal government seems to have different plans on where taxpayers' money should go. And this does not seem to be changing any time soon.