America's homeless: A capitalist legacy

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•as many as 350,000 people are homeless on SOCIALIST ACTION « NOVEMBER 1986 3 You see them everywhere. Walk around any big U.S. city and you can see them in soup-kitchen lines, sleeping in parks, cars, doorways, and movie houses. They are one of capitalism's fastest growing populations: homeless Americans.

Contrary to the official line that the U.S. economy is going through a "recovery," millions of Americans are experiencing the horror of being deprived of the most elementary human right—the right to shelter.

In 1984, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimated that as many as 350,000 people are homeless on any given night. The National Coalition for the Homeless, however, accuses HUD of underestimating the numbers, indicating that close to 3 million people will experience some form of homelessness during the year.

Not since the Great Depression of the 1930s have there been so many homeless Americans on the street.

In the last analysis, these legions of homeless people are the legacy of plant closures, unemployment, cuts in social services, and the lack of available low-cost housing.

Who are the homeless?

In a report titled "The Rise of the New Urban Homeless," published in the October-December issue of Public Affairs Report, Professor Richard H. Ropers presents a study that is a scathing indictment of the ravages of capitalism in America today.

Today's "new urban homeless," Ropers states, have a far different composition than the homeless of 20 years ago, who represented a much smaller portion of the population. He continues:

"As a group the new homeless are younger than previous 'skid row' homeless populations that were dominated by individuals in their fifties and sixties. The current average age of the homeless population is between 36 and 38 years...

"Women are still a minority among the homeless, representing 20 percent of that population, although in the past they may have constituted only about 5 percent of the homeless."

Ropers points out that Blacks, His -panics, and Native Americans are "overrepresented" among the homeless—a major change from the past.

"Twenty years ago," Ropers states, "at least 90 percent of the skid-row homeless population were white." But today, "in New York City 86 percent of the shelter population are non-white, in Los Angeles they are 51 percent of the homeless, and in Dallas 47 percent. Homeless Blacks constitute the largest and most overrepresented minority group."

Unlike the popular stereotype of the homeless as "bums" or "hobos," many of today's homeless are unemployed workers who are actively looking for work. Some of them, in fact, are employed full-time or part-time, but their wages are too low to pay the exorbitant rents that prevail in all large cities.

"Such working homeless," Ropers continues, "constitute 20 percent of the homeless in Los Angeles, and 29 percent in Chicago. In New York City, 44 percent of the homeless males are looking for work, and in Los Angeles 50 percent are looking for work."

Today's homeless include whole families, with single female-led households pre -dominating. A survey conducted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 1985 found that 28 percent of the homeless are families with children. Half of homeless males are veterans; one-third of them Vietnam vets.

Capitalism can't solve crisis The inability of capitalism to deal with this social blight is also well documented by Professor Ropers. Only 111,000 beds in emergency shelters are available for the government-estimated 350,000 homeless. "Twenty thousand of these beds," Ropers says, "are held for certain populations: 12,000 for runaway youth, and 8000 for battered women."

The U.S. Conference of Mayors survey, which was conducted among 25 major cities, indicated that in most urban centers the demand for emergency shelter increased by 25 percent in 1985!

Furthermore, the survey revealed that most of the cities expected increases in shelter demand in 1986. Most ominous for the future, the conference survey concluded: "In none of the cities...has the economic recovery lessened the problems of homelessness."

The responsibility and blame for this social cataclysm rests squarely with the capitalist class. The corporations and their political representatives—the Democratic and Republican parties—have been on a merciless campaign to increase the rate of private profit by increasing the rate of misery for American workers.

In this context, the pauperization of so many millions of workers and oppressed people is a conscious bipartisan policy. That is why the U.S. Conference of Mayors could do no more than sound the alarm about the scale of homelessness—but could offer no solutions.

Declining living standards

Since the end of the post-World War II economic boom in the 1960s, the standard of living of American working people has been declining. In the 1970s alone nearly 38 million industrial jobs were permanently lost due to "restructuring.

Plant closures, mergers, buy-outs, and any given night."

mass lay-offs have set the stage for the big increases in unemployment, poverty, and homelessness.

Cutbacks in government financed social service programs were the coup de grace for many people-especially the elderly and single-parent households. Subsisting on fixed incomes, these people were already on the brink of permanent hunger and homelessness.

For instance, in the Social Security Disability Insurance program alone, the tightening of eligibility criteria led to the exclusion of 150,000 to 200,000 former recipients between March 1981 and April 1984. Of the estimated 8,134,000 unemployed in 1985, only one in three received unemployment benefits.

Over 35 million Americans now live below the official poverty line. Combined with this is the fact that virtually no federally financed low-cost housing has been built since 1960, and rents increased 101 percent between 1970 and 1979.

Capitalism's march for profits Because of competition, overproduction, and shrinking world markets, the capitalists have no choice but to increase their profits at the expense of working people and the oppressed. This means that although the workers produce the whole pie, the meager slice that they receive in terms of wages, benefits, and social programs will continue to grow smaller.

The social cost is readily apparent on every big-city street: an ever-growing caste of pariahs who have no place to call hon It can be stated with certainty that "the ne urban homeless" are going to be permanent feature of contemporary life in capitalist America.

Homeless begin to organize The vast majority of America's homeless population did not voluntarily put them -selves on the street. In many cities the homeless and poor are fighting back by organizing to press their own demands. Coalitions—like the Philadelphia/Delaware County Union of the Homeless-have been formed to organize around demands for housing, jobs, medical care, and social services.

These organizations, which have received support from some trade unions, could eventually evolve into a massive unem -ployed movement. Building such a national network of the unemployed, poor, and homeless is a basic prerequisite for an organized and effective fightback.

But the key to reversing current trends is the role the trade unions will have to play in this fight for social justice. The poor and homeless will become powerful allies of the labor movement if they see the unions championing their demands for jobs and housing. An example was the labor upsurge of the 1930s where the strong bonds forged between the unemployed leagues and the CIO made it almost impossible to break strikes by hiring the unemployed to be scabs. » On the other hand, if the labor movement—which is currently dominated by a self-seeking and short-sighted bureaucracy-ignores the poor and homeless, then these declassed and desocialized people will become enemies of the trade unions.

The "reserve army" of unemployed, poor and homeless that capitalism consciously creates can, and will, be used to break strikes and lower wages. For that reason alone, the union movement must formulate a program for these victims if they are to turn them into labor's allies.

In addition, the vast majority of the poor and homeless come from the working class. Their desperate situation is the result of setbacks the union movement has suffered over the last 20 years. Therefore, it is in the interests of the union movement to not only address the problem of poverty and homelessness, but to take action to eradicate the cause of the problem, which is capitalism.

A program for the unions The trade unions, organized in their own political party, will be able to implement a social program that will give both political and social clout to the struggles of the homeless. Only through the political instrument of a Labor Party, based on the unions and open to all the oppressed, can working people pose solutions to the misery they see intensifying all around them.

Some of these solutions would include: A public works project for full employment; reduction of the work week ("30 hours' work for 40 hours' pay"); massive construction of high quality lowcost housing; rent not to exceed 10 percent of a person's income; and all wages at union scale—-with the money coming from the abolition of the war budget.

Until the U.S. labor movement begins to fight on these questions, on the shop floor, in the streets, and in the political arena, the situation will only get worse. That's the unavoidable logic of capitalism.

In the meantime, millions are becoming victims of a system that would rather fund "Star Wars" than meet pressing human needs.

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opportunity not just to get By J.D. CRAWFORD There are big events taking place in the railroad industry. From all indications, we could be headed for one of the largest labor confrontations of this century, possibly culminating in 1988 when key rail contracts come up again.

Management obviously sees a historic opportunity, not just to get some concessions, but to smash the rail unions and to pose the possibility of a fundamental change in the relationship of class forces in this country.

The ruling class is particularly interested in targeting the transportation industry. It is not coincidental that it destroyed PATCO, the air controllers' union, in one of its key moves.

This is a heavily unionized industry, the things the capitalists wanted was a stable transportation system, free of disruption either from competition or strikes. They were willing to trade a general rise in the standard of living of transportation workers for a period of labor peace so as to exploit their domination of world markets.

A structure already existed for this development through the Railway Labor Act of 1926, which was also extended to the airlines. The Railway Labor Act established a mediation board appointed by the president to affect a settlement of labor disputes. Strikes are prohibited during the mediation process.

A few largely sham strikes did take place on individual railroads. The companies unions... abandon or change their service.

The employers made an early test run of their new strategy when they broke the unions on the Florida East Coast (FEC). The railroad cut out all passenger service, reduced its workforce by some 70 percent, and obtained severe work-rule changes.

The union officialdom called the Florida East Coast defeat "an aberration." But the attitude of management was revealed by an article that appeared in the May 8, 1978, issue of Railway Age, a magazine for management.

"There is no reason why the industry could not do exactly what we've done," FEC President Winfred Thorton explained in Railway Age. He outlined a program for breaking the unions that is now being They don't even elect the general chairmen who do vote on the contract. And any general chairmen who did not vote or whose ballots arrived late were counted as having voted "yes."

On the second ballot, the top leadership was able to twist a few arms and obtain a narrow contract approval—thus avoiding a national rail strike.

While the second vote was taking place, a week before the results were known, the new edition of the UTU News, the newspaper of the United Transportation Union, came out. It did not have a word on the situation, not a word of advice on what to do if the contract was voted down, not a word on the possibility of a national rail Instead, almost the whole issue was devoted to an attack on the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) and the "Lake Erie Plan," which the BLE had put forward as a proposal after the first contract was voted down.

Although the Lake Erie plan was a very bad proposal, it was practically identical to the contract that the UTU had proposed. Both accepted a two-tier system, reduced crew sizes, and other disastrous work-rule changes.

There was only one real difference. The reduced crew size under the BLE plan would consist of an engineer and an assistant engineer. The reduced crew size under the UTU plan would consist of an engineer and a brakeman/conductor, who would be a member of the UTU.

The unions' raiding campaign The top union officials believe there is nothing they can do to prevent the railroads' demands for speedup and reduced wages. They accept as unavoidable that the number of rail workers in this country will be reduced to about 50 percent of the present work force.

But the officials realize that reduced memberships will increase the difficulties in maintaining the huge salaries of the union officialdom. Many top rail union officials receive $100,000-plus salaries. As a result, these top officials have begun a cannibalistic raiding campaign to obtain members from the other craft unions.

But their problems will not go away. The 1988 contract negotiations are going to be entirely different than in 1984. On the Burlington Northern, for instance, the head of labor relations says openly, "We' pulling out of national bargaining. All the major railroads are doing that. We're going to bargain railroad to railroad."

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