Housing for People not for Profit

When a group of us started the Co-operative natural food store in a Never to be Named Coastal Town in 1976, our motto was "Food for People, not for Profit." That is still the motto, these 35 years later.

A Workers' collective runs the store, with minor adjustments over the years to allow for some division of labor, in ordering food, accounting, overseeing work done, and so forth.  But the basic premise holds true.

A small enterprise admittedly, but one whose principles can apply to other social movements.  We all need to eat.  Why should some get rich off the needs of otherwise?  There is a large movement in this country for Single Payer Health care.  Or what many are calling Medicare for all. The premise is simple, pool our resources, get rid of the middleman in the form of profit-happy insurance companies, and provide decent affordable health care for all.

Another basic need is for shelter. While there are non-profit housing groups, land trusts, co-housing ventures and the like, the profit motive is still big in the housing market, and it still drives housing speculation, while driving honest hard working people out into the street, because they can't afford their mortgage payments to the rapacious banks who suckered them into buying a home on nothing down and a big balloon payment in the not so distant future.

Why should banks, speculators, and developers profit on the need for shelter?  why not take the profit motive out of home sales.  More co-housing, land and housing trusts, sweat equity and local governmental regulation of the construction industry is a good start.

A fair wage for builders, architects, planners and others necessary to see that houses are built well to serve the needs of the people.

All the people. 

We will never have a truly equitable society so long as the few control the land and the land prices, so long as banks can bundle mortgages and land speculators can turn a profit from overbuilding in sensitive areas, because to build just what's needed would not be profitable.

Just today in the Marin IJ, a poor beleaguered developer is crying foul because the Planning Commission has rejected his bid to build 12 luxury homes in a area zoned for 5.  He'll probably get 7 or 8 because otherwise would be to deny him profitable use of his land.

He would cry foul and sue the County.  That's what they do. 

And yet, no one wants to touch this sacred cow of property rights.  Even so called liberals draw the line at anything that might impinge on their ability to turn a profit on land sales.  Yes, many of us have the equity in our home as our only asset.  Selling the family manse to take care of needs later in life like medical bills, colelge tuition and a well deserved retirement is a time honored tradition.

But what if medical needs were taken care of, tuition was free and decent wages were guaranteed for all?  What if there were more cooperative or collectively run businesses, so that over priced everything was no longer the norm?

Then maybe overpriced mortgages would go the way of child labor and sweat shops (oh, yeah, we still have those too). 

What if shared resources were the norm, not an aberration indulged in by Utopian fantasists and old hippies?

Ask yourself the question, what has trickle down capitalism done for me lately?    

Keep capitalism, but make it trickle up; let the many, the 99% decide who runs the banks, (or the credit unions), the businesses and the housing market.
Homes for People, not for Profit.  Think about it.  Good issue for Occupy?