The UCLA Institute on Inequality and Democracy panel discussion of Futures of Social Housing is kicking off now. Follow along as I live tweet.

Ananya Roy starting us off by acknowledging the housing crisis and centering housing justice.

"Housing twitter is not housing justice twitter."

"The making of housing justice requires abolitionist geographies."

"We believe the University has a role to play in housing justice, but only" if we explicitly remake the university.

Roy calls for cops off campus.

Roy discussing the covid crisis as the latest impetus for "housing grabs" by private actors, calls for public purchase of distressed housing to take them off the speculative market.

"Insurgent movements are insisting on the public stake in property."

Roy discussing the "cancel rent" movement as a frontal assault on rentier capitalism.

"The homes guarantee demands a reparative framework for housing." Roy brings up the link between drug war law enforcement and public housing.

"The antonym of racial banishment is not inclusion, or even placement, it is liberation."

Hannah Appel introducing our panel:

NYU researchers who wrote a paper calling for a social housing development authority.

Oakland city council member and founder of moms 4 housing.

Melissa Garcia Lamarca, Barcelona "activist researcher" who writes on housing insurgency.

Tara Raghuveer, KC Tenants and Homes Guarantee

Ojan Mobedshahi & Annie McShiras, East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative

Robert C. Hockett, Cornell Law School

Maurice BP-Weeks, Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE)

Gianpaolo Baiocchi from NYU and Jacob Carlson from Brown are up first to talk about their Social Housing Development Authority proposal.

They start by talking about 2008 foreclosures, evictions, and conversions of homes into rental properties owned by private equity companies.

Covid is recreating the same dynamics. Private Equity is ready to invest in "distressed assets." How do we stop this?

"We are calling for what we call a social housing development authority." A new federal entity to buy out distressed housing to by purchasing it, rehabbing it, and taking it off the private market.

The idea is to buy or eminent domain distressed housing.

Once the SHDA would rehab these properties and do environmental retrofitting.

Next, the authority would try to transfer these properties to local entities, nonprofits, housing authorities, etc.

Taking housing out of the speculative market and putting it in the hands of the community to preserve affordability.

The plan is to provide low-cost financing to these nonprofits.

Now pivoting to commercial space, emphasizing the possibility of purchasing distressed commercial space and converting it to housing.

Two policy requirements: repeal of the Faircloth amendment, nationwide Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Authority.

How do we make sure this works?

It would have to be run by a board with designated set-asides for low income people, tenant organizers, etc to prevent capture by real estate interests.

The institution would need an explicitly racially redistributive mission.

Important that it have its own pool of resources and not be dependent on congressional funding.

Had to step away for a moment. Came back to Carroll Fife describing the "earth-moving direct action" by Moms 4 Housing.

Fife notes that Oakland is the home of the Black Panther Party, whose 10 point plan included a demand for decent housing, and is talking about how "we need to uproot our current systems and put something else in their place."

Discussing housing as a human right, calls for groundswell of activism to demand housing as a human right. Notes the need for campaign finance reform to diminish influence of wealth.

"Housing is becoming unattainable for people with six figure salaries. You can imagine what working class people, disabled people, students, seniors are facing."

Describes Black women as "canaries in the mine," encourages us to "listen to their song."

"If we had social housing, the struggle to find affordable housing wouldn't be such a fight."

"We need the political will... I am confident we will win."

"We cannot afford to leave people's lives in the balance while speculators lay in wait to buy up all the housing stock. We are going to fight...

I'm talking to organizers all over the country who are willing to put their bodies on the line. It's inspiring. We are creating a new tomorrow."

"Everything is connected to housing. Everything. When we get that right, we can get everything else right."

Next up: Melissa Garcia Lamarca

She starts by talking about housing activism in spain, where foreclosure doesn't wipe away mortgage debt.

After 2008, Spanish financial entities were bailed out with public money.

What happened to the properties owned by bailed-out financial institutions? They were transferred to an asset management company or sold to private equity.

WTF is happening? Rentiers are using state power to collect rent.

Social movement response: direct occupation of empty bank-owned housing. 55 building-level occupations.

These insurgent practices challenge the social relations of rent.

The state can expropriate property to reorder the relations of rent, debt, and place.

Next up: Tara Raghuveer, tenant organizer in Kansas City.

"Real justice is predicated on unraveling racial capitalism. The homes guarantee is based on a simple premise: we live in the richest country in the world. Everyone deserves a home."

"The homes guarantee aims to transform housing from a commodity to a public good."

Introduction of displaced tenants.

"With every eviction we allow, we are saying landlord profits are more important than people's lives."

"This is not a time for incrementalism. We need social housing."

"There is no shortage of good ideas. We know what we need. We need to build the people power we need to get where we need to go."

KC tenants shut down eviction court seven (!) times.

"When I think of social housing, I think of the good times."

Next up: the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative folks.

Quick overview of the organization's structure.

Now we're talking about racialized displacement in Oakland, specifically in West Oakland.

New Affordable Housing is not affordable to Black households in Oakland.

Alternative vision for 7th street corridor: community control and community-led design.

Current plan to buy and adapt this jazz club for artist housing and performance.

Attempt to transform the real estate system requires transforming *finance.* Head to our website to invest with us!

Next up, Robert Hockett giving us some truly excellent Mick Jaggeresque quarantine hair.

He's focusing on higher-level ideological conversations.

Dude basically opens up by saying their adversaries (undefined) are confused and/or hypocrites.

Going way back to the establishment of the republic.

A republic is a method of publicly guaranteeing private flourishing.

Democracy presupposes thsi kind of arrangement.

We're deep in the weeds on early American political philosophy that I am not quite following.

Until the 1980s, small-r republicans understood that it took public action to protect private autonomy.

Now we're back in pre-American property law.

After a brief jaunt through the history of reconstruction and civil rights, Hockett is calling for the resurrection of the proverbial "40 acres and a mule" in a modern context.

Last speaker: Maurice BP-Weeks!

How might social housing transform the foundation of racial capitalism? Land itself is the source and the engine of racial capitalism's power.

American racial capitalism is rooted in slavery: people were enslaved to work the land. The land held value because of the labor of the enslaved people who worked it.

Fast forward to northern public housing projects.

It was a flawed program in concept, policy, location, and execution.

This happened alongside massive ownership subsidies for whites, who accrued wealth.

(Side note: the graphic design of these slides is fantastic)

Social housing flips this on its head. It adds another player to the arena with different goals.

Housing is a key player in the american police state. "Any housing policy MUST consider abolition of the police (and the police state)."

"People talk about a school to prison pipeline. What we really have is a poor housing to poor schools to prison to homelessness to prison pipeline."

"I'm really excited that this is not just a theoretical conversation."

Back to @ananyaUCLA for the Q&A.

"What does it mean to have the community control housing? How does this differ from the nonprofit industrial complex? What does the community control of land mean?"

Ojan: It's complicated and it looks different in every community. We're trying to figure it out.

Maurice: people on the ground need to figure it out, not capitalists.

Tara: we need to consider accountability structures.

Next question: let's talk about expropriation and eminent domain. How should we think about this?

Garcia Lamarca - it's creating lots of tension! Movements don't trust the city to act in the right way.

Hockett - the way to think about it is that eminent domain is a vestige of the tradition that views the polity as a whole as more important than any individual's property interest.

The problem is that in the past, this authority has always been used on behalf of rich, powerful people. We could use eminent domain for the public good!

We can use state power in service of justice. We have the legal tools.

Next question: what is the financing vision for a social housing development authority?

Carlson - current vision is to fund it through a line of credit at the treasury. It could also be infused with congressional funding, but the idea is to give it a stable set of resources.

Baiocchi - we have precedent in the department of education, others.

Appel closes us out. Crucial thanks to IT support staff, Justin and Pamela at UCLA, everyone else.

#UnequalCities @ChallengeIneq