Decommodify housing.

Just because we’re all affected by the pandemic doesn’t mean that we’ve all been affected equally. Women accounted for all 140,000 jobs cut last December. Black and Latina women in particular lost jobs, since employment for white women actually rose that month (CNN). The data is clear: Black and Latina women were the worst-impacted by layoffs, white men the least (Bloomberg).

Happy Thursday and welcome back! Although the economy is improving as more people become vaccinated, more than 8 million American households are still behind on their rent (NPR). Housing is a human right, but access isn't distributed evenly. Today, Andrew outlines more about the housing crisis and efforts to keep people housed.

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Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Learn about racism in housing and how housing impacts the racial wealth gap.
Follow and support your local tenants union or community land trust.
Read about how tenant organizing is keeping renters in their homes.
Look into a community effort that stopped the eviction of a Black and indigenous family in Portland, OR.
Those fortunate enough to own property can donate it to a local land trust to ensure it remains affordable housing in perpetuity.

GET EDUCATED

By Andrew Lee (he/him)

This inequality comes as the COVID recession takes a serious toll on renters and homeowners alike. In January, almost one in five tenants was behind on rent, with an average outstanding debt of $5,600 (CNBC). In 2020, 2 million households fell at least three months behind on their mortgage payments (Consumer Finance Protection Bureau). The nation’s renters are estimated to owe some $5 billion more than all the rental assistance in the American Rescue Plan and December stimulus combined (CNN).

This is important because housing inequality has long been a key way that American racial inequality reproduces itself. Before the 1968 Housing Rights Act, some white neighborhoods used racial covenants to legally exclude tenants or homeowners of color (Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project). The historic refusal of banks to extend credit to “redlined” minority neighborhoods is estimated to have cost Black families $212,000 in wealth (CBS).

These inequalities aren’t a thing of the past. The average white family in America has ten times the wealth of the average Black family. It’s a gap that’s larger today than it was at the beginning of the twentieth century (Brookings). The single largest contributing factor to household wealth? The value of housing (US Census).

Even before COVID, Black homeownership was declining in cities across the country (Urban Institute) and predominantly Black, brown, and immigrant communities were being gentrified out of competitive housing markets (Teen Vogue). Now, these communities with less wealth and housing equity face higher risks from recession lay-offs. As current eviction moratoriums expire, the expected wave of foreclosures and evictions could exacerbate existing racial and gender inequalities to a catastrophic degree.

There’s a chicken-and-the-egg problem here: if all housing is sold or rented to the higher buyer, those with less wealth could always have their home taken away. At the same time, this housing insecurity itself inhibits the creation of familial wealth, since homeownership (or housing stability) is one of the biggest ways families build wealth for the future.

Fortunately, community organizations across the country are working out a solution: decommodifying housing. To stop thinking of housing as a commodity means to stop thinking of houses or apartments primarily as things to be bought and sold and instead as, above all, homes.

One way to ensure homes are used for housing people ahead of generating profit is by supporting tenants unions. Renters facing unjust evictions or unacceptable living conditions can band together to push landlords to do the right thing. When disrepair at the Villas del Paseo apartment complex in Houston led to black mold, cockroaches, and weeks without running water, tenants organized and withheld rent payments to force their property management company to fix the problems (Texas Observer). Organizing collectively builds the power of those most likely to be exploited by landlords: low-income people of color (Tenants Together).

Another approach is decommodifying housing is by removing the land for housing from the private market altogether through community land trusts, or CLTs. Community land trusts are nonprofits that collectively own the land underneath residents’ homes. These residents can buy, sell, and build equity in their properties, but the CLT retains the title to the land (Center for Community Land Trust Innovation).

Because the land underneath dwellings remains in the land trust even as buildings are bought or sold, housing prices are insulated from real estate speculation, even in expensive housing markets. And all of the residents who live on CLT land are represented in the nonprofit’s board of directors, ensuring the land is stewarded democratically. In this way, CLTs ensure that community-controlled affordable housing can remain affordable in perpetuity (Oakland Community Land Trust).

Community land trusts now exist across the country (Schumacher Center). But they were first started in Georgia by members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committees to ensure Black tenant farmers wouldn’t be displaced from their land for participation in the civil rights movement (NPR). This history should remind us of the deep connection between racial and housing justice movements, a connection necessitated by long-standing racial inequities in access to secure housing.

As COVID has deepened many of these same inequalities, it’s time to take action to decommodify housing.

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Nicole Cardoza 9/28/20 Nicole Cardoza 9/28/20

Fight racial tax inequity.

Happy Monday! The NYTimes released Trump's taxes and I'm sure we'll be hearing a LOT about it this week. As you follow the news (or tune it out, your choice) consider how racism and racial bias have helped to craft a tax system that enables some people to struggle with tax debt and others to avoid paying taxes at all.

And hello new faces! Here's quick links to learn more about the ARD, read the archives, follow us on Instagram, and switch from daily to a weekly digest 👋🏾

Thank you for all your support! If you enjoy this newsletter, consider giving one-time on our website, PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza), or subscribe for $5/mo on our Patreon.

– Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Explore how racial disparities affect the income tax system in this interactive Form 1040, via the Tax Policy Center.
Review the tax policies of both Presidential candidates
Consider: How has generational wealth impacted your life today? What experiences would change based on your family's generational wealth?

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Yesterday the New York Times released President Trump’s tax information. The comprehensive report leads with news that Trump paid $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017 (NYTimes). In a press conference response, Trump called these allegations a lie and that the “IRS does not treat me well” (NYTimes). But when we zoom out at the history of federal taxes in the U.S., I think it’s more accurate to say that “the IRS does not treat” marginalized communities well, not billionaires. And part of this is because of the racism embedded in our tax code.

Let’s start with our federal tax. Generally speaking, it reduces racial disparities by taxing the wealthy more than the poor and investing tax revenue into programs that support lower-income communities. But the apportionment of these taxes is rooted in slavery. Back then, to determine the number of seats per state in the House of Representatives, the Framers recommended apportioning them based on population size. This put the North and the South in conflict because population sizes varied greatly in each area. Many citizens were living in the North – consisting of urban areas with a high density of people. In contrast, the South had fewer free people spread across high-acreage farms.

However, the South had significantly more enslaved people in the North, and they considered them “valuable property” that could be leveraged for more representation. So, the South fought that free and enslaved people should count towards population size. The North fought to make representation dependent on the size of a state’s free population. Ultimately, the Framers agreed to the “three-fifths compromise,” the abhorrent decision that representation in Congress was based on a state’s free population plus three-fifths of its enslaved population (Britannica).

But this meant that taxes would be applied the same way. So the Apportionment Clause, written by delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, emphasized that “representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States” (The Conversation). This meant that even though Southerners may have more people counting towards their representation, their taxes wouldn’t scale significantly because of it. That was a real fear of many people during the time; about 40% of the population were enslaved people (Forbes).

The decision to use apportioned tax regulations to protect Southern states from higher taxes has prevented more progressive tax reform. This same argument has been used to block a federal tax proposal on the wealthy in 1894 and, over 100 years later, question the legitimacy of wealth taxes proposed by candidates in this election (NPR). Some argue that because this apportionment no longer applies, taxes should be redefined to address the wealth gap (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).

It also enabled significant wealth creation for Southerners that enslaved people. It allowed them to benefit from the labor of enslaved people with marginal tax implications. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman argue that this mentality is a driving force of the anti-taxation sentiment present in today’s society, particularly against the wealth (Forbes).

Not only does our current tax code inadequately address the wealth gap, it also doesn’t reflect the systemic racism and discrimination that exacerbates it. Our federal tax liability is influenced by things like our income, savings, and what we spend on a mortgage or education. But the opportunities to spend and earn in these aspects of society aren’t equal. People of color have historically been paid less, are less likely to have savings, often declined from mortgage opportunities, and less likely to be accepted into college – among other things (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities). Our work income is also taxed more highly than our income from wealth, but people of color have been systemically disadvantaged in building wealth throughout their lifetimes.

State taxes aren’t much better. In fact, the report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argues that they increase income inequality. States make most of their money through regressive taxes: taxes that have an increased burden on lower-income communities. These taxes include sales taxes, property taxes, and excise taxes. It doesn’t matter if you make $10,000 or $10million a year, you’ll pay the same amount of taxes*. But its impact is more considerable on those that have less to spend. (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).

*There’s research that shows that people of color, particularly Black people, often pay more in property tax than their neighbors due to the systemic racism in real estate. But that’s for another newsletter.

Lower-income people are more likely to be audited too. It’s easier than going after wealthy business owners and corporations with confusing (and often evasive) revenue streams and assets (Popular Science). And funding cuts at the IRS have encouraged auditors to choose cases that require less bandwidth. Ironically, these wealthy constituents – who are overwhelmingly white – are the most likely to have unpaid taxes (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).

To offset this lack of bandwidth, the IRS started a program to outsource tax collection to private firms. These private companies are empowered to act under the IRS to recoup lost revenue from tax payments and get to keep a percentage of what’s earned for themselves. And most of the taxpayers targeted are low-income. A report from the Taxpayer Advocate, an independent organization within the IRS that represents taxpayers, found that 33% of funds collected by private firms in 2017 came from Americans facing “economic hardship” (Washington Post). The IRS has programs designed to protect low-income earners from getting overwhelmed with tax debt, but private companies are financially incentivized to get any dollar they can. And private debt collection has a long history of racial discrimination (ACLU).

But the most shocking part of all this (to me, at least) is that the IRS doesn’t even collect racial data. So although we can infer how the tax codes affect communities of color, there is no hard data, and tax law decisions may not consider these disparities (Popular Science). It might be for the best; you could argue that more discriminatory practices could be applied because of this added information. But on the other hand, it would illuminate more spaces where we can create a more inclusive economic structure that supports us all. Even if the data isn’t captured, it’s clear that racism and racial bias has shaped the tax code we see today.