Fran Quigley directs the Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University McKinney School of Law.
When housing is a profit-making venture rather than a human right, we’re perpetually stuck in an evictions crisis. Right now, that crisis is particularly dire. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The Supreme Court has chosen to side with landlords over the millions of renters on the edge of eviction. The tidal wave of pain that will soon descend on the nation is hard to comprehend.
Even before the pandemic, America was in the midst of a massive housing crisis. Now, it’s far worse. Our housing agenda has to include investing in public housing, universal rent control, just-cause eviction, and a broad push to decommodify housing.
A flood of evictions is about to slam the United States. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The federal government can stave off the crisis and fix the underlying injustices causing it. Here’s how.
The United States is deeply hostile to renters, especially in states like Indiana that are staring down an enormous flood of evictions. We need action immediately to avoid a humanitarian disaster of millions being kicked out of their homes this summer.
In the wealthiest country in the world, there’s no reason anyone should be poor. Period.
Rev. Angela Cowser, a cofounder of the Institute for Christian Socialism, argues that a society rooted in the dictates of the Gospel would look radically different from the one we have now. There is a name for what that change should look like: socialism.
We don’t have to leave ourselves at the mercy of the most profitable sector on Earth to get the drugs we need. We must nationalize the pharmaceutical industry and turn the medicines millions rely on into public goods.