The Indentured Tenant
A Story of Rent and Extortion
The mythos of capitalism in America is constructed on the basis of “economic freedom”. One is free to own property; one is free to open a business; one is free to buy luxuries. These freedoms seem reasonable and desirable — principles upon which to build a “free” society. However, if we were to say that one is free to work for a wage, one is free to pay rent, and one is free to be in debt, suddenly the principle of “economic freedom” seems less desirable. The champions of capitalism are quick to retort that freedom is a “double-edged sword”, but this cliché is nothing more than a ruse. “Freedom”, in our society, is a privilege dependent upon class.
The ability to open businesses, own land, and buy luxuries is only awarded to the owning class. This class makes up a very small percentage of people, but the difference is even more stark in our urban centers. The upward mobility promised by the American Dream is a lie at best, and a sick joke at worst. Far from being the smiling benefactors of capitalist growth, the urban proletarians are not only wage slaves, as countless leftist texts will point out, but they are also necessarily compulsory debtors, perpetually extorted by private entities.
In the neighborhood of Bushwick, in the borough of Brooklyn, the median income is approximately $35,000/yr. Now compare this to the typical property values of between $500,000 and $2,000,000. To even comfortably afford the cheapest property in Bushwick, one would have to be making more than triple the median income. Obviously, this is a ridiculous request, and no amount of tugging on bootstraps will triple the salaries of hundreds of thousands of people, despite the relentless assurance to the contrary from the devout apostles of the “free market”.
The plight of the lower strata of the urban proletariat is no secret, and none of this should be of any surprise. However, the plot thickens when one looks at what types of properties are available. For the most part, the only properties available in Brooklyn are apartment buildings or empty lots of land. Homes built for the purpose of living within them are the minority, and fading. This means that even if there were a resident of Brooklyn making that $150,000/yr salary to buy themselves a mortgage, they’d be hard pressed to find a home at all. The real estate of Brooklyn is set up to be a wealth extraction machine via rent. In other words, we’re all extorted by landowners for the right to live in our neighborhoods.
If that weren’t reason enough to be angry, if we then look at the minuscule “middle class” of Brooklyn, we see that their two and three fold increased salaries are not enough to free them from compulsory debt. Should the middle class home-owner-hopeful find an affordable home, the average mortgage would run them between $3,500 — $4,500/mo. Considering that the generally accepted wisdom is to apply about a third of your income to housing (a luxury that most Brooklynites are ill-compensated to afford), that would mean a salary of $126,000/yr after taxes at minimum. But then the conditions of said mortgage arrangement would take them out from under the boot of the landlord only to place them snuggly under the boot of the banker. Given the volatility of the economy — specifically the housing market — it is a risky bet that the mortgage will ever actually be paid. Any hindrance to their flow of income could result in a default. Thus, even making a “middle class” salary still makes you a victim of a Brooklyn not built to house a community, but to ruthlessly extract wealth from its working population.
What this means is there literally is no choice but to pay rent in some form, i.e. you are either extorted by the landlord, or indebted to the banker. For all but the upper strata of the Brooklyn proletariat, there is literally no option for housing that isn’t rent, and for the tiny middle class, it just means you’re paying rent to the bank instead, with no guarantee you’ll actually pay the mortgage off or that you’re “growing your wealth” (as is generally the justification for paying ludicrous rates on a mortgage).
For the most part, the only way to be free from rent in Brooklyn is to own an apartment building. That is, you must own wealth extracting property in addition to a personal home. Of course, “wealth extracting” means that you are extorting your fellow Brooklynites for their meager paychecks, but that is an ethical issue beyond the practical one at hand. Given the prices for these types of properties (in the millions of dollars and growing rapidly), this is an unrealistic prospect to the Brooklyn proletariat. With this set of arrangements our “economic freedom” boils down to the freedom to be extorted by housing debt, or the freedom to be homeless. When the veil of the American Dream is lifted from the capitalist machine, it becomes obvious that “freedom” for the American proletariat means freedom to obey, or freedom to die.
It is with this grim realization that I denounce attempts at rent stabilization or rent reform as impotent at best, and masochistic at worst. Making a case for the impotence of rent stabilization should be no more difficult than looking out your window. Rent stabilization has been in place for decades, and yet rents continue to sky rocket, and masses of people are still displaced. Anyone that lives in a rent stabilized apartment knows they are on borrowed time. Greedy landowners use an assortment of nefarious techniques to force tenants out of their rent stabilized apartments.
One particularly egregious and widely publicized example occurred in the summer of 2013 at 98 Linden Street in Brooklyn. The landlord, Joel Israel, promised the tenants, who had lived at that location for 23 years, that he would put in brand new floors in the kitchen of the rent stabilized apartment. Instead, he had his goons smash up the kitchen and bathroom, making the apartment unlivable. This act of sabotage was not only to force the tenants out, but also to take advantage of weak city policies to destabilize the apartment, allowing the landlord to make a massive profit by bringing in wealthy new tenants into the gentrifying neighborhood. The tenants were without a kitchen and bathroom for 10 months, during which time they were forced to rely on the generosity of a neighbor for those facilities. In addition, the landlord paid a tenant to play loud music, accompanied by a mean dog. Unfortunately, these practices are not uncommon in gentrifying neighborhoods.
One could make an argument that this abhorrent behavior is despite the system, and if the law were applied effectively, it wouldn’t be a problem. The error in this line of thinking is that laws are only as effective as those willing to enforce them. Furthermore, most landlords can afford a lawyers, whereas most tenants cannot However, if we removed this rent relationship all together, we could avoid the need for rent stabilization and the despicable efforts at destabilizing.
So-called “affordable housing” is usually a ploy to use city subsidies to flip a dilapidated property into a massive financial profit for developers. The city will award a decades long lease to a developer on the stipulation that they dedicate some portion to “affordable housing”. However, those stipulations expire long before the lease does. This allows a developer to gentrify an area while satisfying political “advocates” of the low income residents. Not only is affordable housing a lie, but it’s a tool used by developers to offset the risk of breaking ground in a poor neighborhood.
Regarding masochism: The fight for cheaper rent, rent stabilization, and affordable housing is a fight with a core erroneous assumption. That assumption is that it is fair that we be forced to pay rent at all. I’ve already laid out that under our current system there is actually no freedom in the matter; we are compulsorily indebted, extorted. And so, even in our most passionate fights against rising rents, we are accepting our caste as the perpetually extorted. Activists will boisterously toss around figures about income inequality, and the shortage of housing, but always champion a solution that doesn’t change our relationship to housing or to rent. It’s akin to a prison riot in which the sole demand is a better lunch menu.
I think the reason for this is two-fold. 1) It’s more than possible that most people just haven’t thought about rent in this way before. That’s not terribly surprising given the way the mainstream media deals with economics. 2) I think people are afraid. It’s this that interests me most. Brooklynites are more than happy to complain about how high their rent is, and how terrible their landlord is, but when the question of the justness of the rent-relationship comes up, we often shirk back into quiet obedience. We’ve been trained to accept our place in society, to not rustle any feathers. We’re told that if we don’t like our landlords we’re free to move out. But we’re not free to no longer have a landlord. That option is not available to us. We’re told the housing courts are available to us, along with an abundance of eager housing lawyers. There’s 311, and there’s hpd. But again, look out your window and see how effective these institutions are. These are the dead ends where we deposit the very last of our active rage before relenting in exhaustion and defeat.
What we’re left with is to accept our fate in this relationship with our heads down and our wallets open, signing away our dignity and right to self-determination with each new lease. That is our only option if we do not wish to address the systemic question of rent. Brooklyn residents can no longer afford to rely on the empty promises of wealthy developers, two-faced politicians, and misguided ngo’s. Our future depends not on rent stabilization, but in rent abolition, the utter refusal to be extorted.
