by Danny Haiphong
Homelessness in Boston has increased 40% since 2007, spurring the city's political elite to a plan to “end homelessness in Boston by 2018.” But the city's plan never mentions poverty and unavailability of affordable housing as causes of homelessness. So how likely is it to “end” anything?
A Snapshot of Imperialism's Crime of Homelessness: Why Boston's Homeless Crisis Deepens Despite City Plan to End It
by Danny Haiphong
“...poverty is not mentioned a single time in the report...”
In late June of 2014, I wrote about the crime of homelessness that millions of people experience everyday in the US. In the article, I explain how the growing problem of homelessness is a direct result of the crisis of imperialism and the rule of the rich. The city of Boston is a picture perfect example of the assault on workers and poor people taking place across the US. And just like all US cities in this period, the primary victims of this assault are Black. In July, Boston's political class released a plan to "end" homelessness by the year of 2018. This plan, seen by liberals as an affirmation of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh's compassion for the homeless, is nothing but the same empty rhetoric that spews from the mouth of the local Democratic Party establishment.
One quick browse and it becomes crystal clear that the city's plan will do nothing to make a dent in the parasitic imperialist order that causes homelessness in the first place. The plan makes special emphasis that homeless veterans and "chronically" homeless individuals will get priority in whatever vague housing scheme the city implements. The term "chronically homelessness" has been a convenient addition to federal housing policy. It divides the homeless into two groups: those who have been homeless for at least a year or four times in the last five years and those who have not. Its very existence speaks to the persistent poverty experienced by workers in Boston. But poverty is not mentioned a single time in the report.
Furthermore, the plan's explanation as to why homelessness becomes "chronic" in the first place rests on the tired, neo-liberal dogma of mental illness, addiction, and intermittent unemployment. All of these explanations are convenient for Boston's capitalist class. Workers and oppressed people without a stable residence are described as physically or mentally impaired and thus are not employable or "ready for housing." Such a narrative fits right into the neo-liberal model that posits individual reform as the solution to ending structural problems such as homelessness. This allows the corporate ruling class to carry on their system of exploitation safely in the shadows.
There is no shadow of a doubt, however, that Boston is a banker’s city. This year's annual census on homelessness is living proof. The annual homeless census found that in 2015, family homelessness increased by twenty five percent. Youth homelessness is up thirty five percent, and the number of single adults in emergency shelter increased by eleven percent despite the report's conclusion that the total number of single adults experiencing homelessness decreased by nine percent. The contradiction in the report is a product of how the census is conducted. Cuts in services, such as mental health residential programs and inpatient addiction centers, have given census counters less beds to count and thus the appearance of less homeless to document.
“...Boston began as a colonial a hub of the slave trade...”
Don't expect Mayor Walsh to explain the real reason why Boston is one of the primary contributors to the state's forty percent increase in homelessness since 2007. This would require the Boston Mayor to betray the corporate ruling class he protects and substantively address why Black wealth in Boston hovers around zero. He would also have to explain how Boston became the third most expensive city to live in and the third most unequal big city in the US. The economic and racial backdrop to Boston's homelessness crisis is the driving force of US urban policy and has been since the empire's inception. However, in this period in particular, the corporate ruling class is on an all out offensive to maintain profitability and hegemony. It should not surprise anyone that Marty Walsh and the state apparatus responsible for creating the so-called "plan" to end chronic homelessness wouldn't dare utter such a structural critique of homelessness. That would threaten his administration’s paymasters on State Street/Wall Street.
Boston is a local example of the privatization, austerity, and racist surveillance and repression employed by the US ruling class to stabilize capitalist economic crisis in its urban centers. In reality, these are only options available to the parasitic ruling class. Boston's horrific conditions for the vast majority of its residents are a testament to the monopolized and outstretched stage of the system's development. The exploitation of workers and nations has grown to historic levels precisely because the cost of maintaining the imperialist system of exploitation is at an all time high. This contradiction, if left up to the capitalist class, will continue to impose more suffering upon oppressed people unabated.
Boston began as a colonial a hub of the slave trade of Africans and has since taken the mantel as a haven for homelessness in the 21st century. As WRAP observes in its 2010 report, homelessness is really caused by “...the de-funding of federal affordable housing programs, coupled with the loss of public housing units as well as private-sector affordable housing." The report also cites how these developments occurred alongside outsourcing, globalization, and deindustrialization to produce a large homeless population not seen before 1983. Boston possesses all of the aforementioned characteristics. The city's high cost of living created by the rule of bankers and the shortage of public housing, which amounts to wait lists of up to a decade, must be placed within the larger context of the ruling class's desperate attempt to keep imperialism a profitable venture.
Unlike Detroit, where the banking class virtually owns the city outright, Boston's version of corporate rule is slightly more subtle. It's reflected in Boston's continued efforts to win a bid for the 2024 Olympic games despite the publicly leaked revelation that Boston taxpayers are going to fit most of the bill. The Mayor's insistence on allowing the multinational corporation Veolia to bust the Boston School bus Drivers union local 8751 and his repression of the Black Lives Matter movement shows just where the city establishment comes from. Boston is a protectorate of the capitalist class and the racist police state. The new city plan to end "chronic homelessness" is yet another political move on the part of the Democratic Party to retain its progressive image and imperialistic structure at the local level. A real end to homelessness will take a movement capable of ending imperialism, for good.
Danny Haiphong is an organizer for Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST) in Boston. He is also a regular contributor to Black Agenda Report. Danny can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com and FIST can be reached at bostonfist@gmail.com
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