the house next door
on the ground game strategy for the revolution
How can we help build the new world we want to see?
How can we not be stuck sitting, waiting for “the next election” for things to get better?
The house next door to me was just bought by a man who’s never set foot on the property.
He doesn’t even live in the state, and according to the leasing agent he’s not so rich, but to be rich enough to buy a house in a city you’ve never seen is certainly some level of rich to me and the majority of people in this land.
I understand the idea of investing in a house and then flipping it for renting- that is one clear way to get out of the rent cycle if you have the cash to make a large investment in the initial purchase. He is probably just looking to make more “passive income”, but that is still wealth in this economy. The barrier to entry to exit the rent cycle and become part of the property owning class is the upfront chunk of money that is involved in the initial purchasing of a home- the down payment itself is a major barrier to entry for people looking to exit the rent cycle. While so many americans don’t have enough savings to cover a $400 unexpected expense (thanks to our paycheck-to-paycheck capitalist system that keeps people trapped in the labor cycle on purpose), it is not shocking that many people in this country also are not able to get out of the ever-inflating rent cycle by making an initial purchase of a home. While maintenance comes up and unexpected things happen, a mortgage not only stays consistent over time, but it also doesn’t simply disappear- these monthly payments eventually add up to home ownership, and can even often be less expensive than a rent payment, depending on your area and the timing of purchase (our economy is built on sand and is therefore highly unpredictable, so I will avoid making sweeping claims here, but the general theory remains true.)
Who knows, maybe he is renting himself, in a bigger city than this where he can’t afford to buy a house of his own. But he can look online, use the Internet and see where the housing market is the cheapest. He can do this all digitally and virtually, without having to set foot on the property. He’s never seen the place himself, never walked through the rooms and dreamed of having family there, and will contract it out and never know if a contractor paints over a windowsill and makes it unopenable, won’t care to preserve the integrity of the home because he has never really seen it.
I’m not saying that he necessarily doesn’t care – maybe he’s a nice man who would give a shit if he knew, but as it stands, he is an invisible landlord that nobody knows. He is not a new neighbor. He is not a physical person in the community and yet somehow he now controls part of the space. Somehow he now rents out to people that physically live here while he lives far away.
I’m not saying this necessarily means that he is an evil man, but I am saying that the structure of our housing system and our general economy is inherently off. This house has been a family home for 40 years, most recently lived in by a woman named Arlene, who raised her family there and lived there until she moved into her retirement space after her husband died. Now it will become short-term rentals, college housing perhaps, if they have their way.
This is why we have to have community housing and we have to keep building our neighborhoods, instead of letting them slip away into the rental market. We must break the cycle of increasingly turning our neighborhoods into short term rentals.
Breaking the Rent Cycle
But instead, they are becoming more and more rentals, and the rental state means that the continuation of debt is the basis for economic structure debt based on property ownership which is made up and therefore the economy is operating completely on a bubble on false notions of what is actual value what is actual like labor? What is everything like? If you’re a landlord suddenly you have all this income. And the working class, the non-landing class does not have the opportunity to ever become part of that landing class because people are raising rent to unreasonable levels to unlivable levels to higher than mortgage levels to where if you’re rich enough to get out of the cycle you can actually keep saving money, but if you’re too poor to put a down payment on a home, you’re no longer able to break that cycle and then you were therefore stuck spending more money with more charity in your life. Every day costs more, every year is more expensive because you’re frequently moving and dealing with the costs (both literal and emotional).
There’s so many factors that add up to making it more stressful more frustrating to be renting when you could be paying the same amount or less and building wealth. It’s not just about how much money you paid each month but it’s also about the fact that what happens at the end of it. The rent cycle is just fueling the property ownership cycle so that the more people that have a little bit of money to buy property that are able to do that then can buy all these rentals and they make more money. Our current capitalist model is extremely based on manufactured debt from private property ownership, and the “growth” that capitalists so desire for their economies is currently largely based on the inflation of the cost of property rentals and the increasing debt cycle.
The people that are made to be poor continue to remain stuck because they’re not able to break out of the rent cycle, and therefore the cycle continues, houses continue to become dilapidated, neighborhoods and communities fall apart because long-term living spaces are not the same and therefore everybody’s moving all the time. When everybody is moving every year or two, people are less likely to meet and develop ongoing relationships with their neighbors as much as they once did and long-term community and actual strength in knowing your neighbors is not there. Local community building opportunities are taken away by the increasing shift to a rental-based housing market. This is why the down payment parties are so extremely important so that this could be done instead of by a man who nobody knows nobody sees, and will not be building developing and contributing to the community but instead these spaces these houses that are for sale these houses are turning over from long-term family homes need to become long-term family homes, or at least living spaces that people can work through.
In the tradition of rent parties and top surgery fundraising
In the tradition of rent parties, I am proposing a plan of throwing large scale down-payment parties to assist in gaining ground for the community and to help build long term neighborhoods and community wealth. A key principle and incredibly important factor in keeping community wealth in the hands of the community is having a neighborhood built out of homeowners instead of renters, as this begins to build generational and community wealth and stability, as people are paying mortgages to eventually own a house instead of staying infinitely trapped in the rent cycle and paying off mortgages for the landlord class.
These parties will look like community gatherings of all sorts, all with the intention and under the umbrella of “down payment parties,” a community mutual aid fundraising effort to help get first-time home buyers community-funded grants to get them out of the renting cycle and into homeownership, so that we may be able to build the new world we want to see in the midst of being trapped in our current economic and political system.
Taking Back Our Time
The most important targets for activists with time and energy in this current moment is to help get other people in their local communities out of toxic work and rent cycles so that others may also have their time and energy back to put towards the building of the new world. Labor and housing are the most important key issues in this ground game revolutionary strategy, and none of this is new information.
I do not believe in private property ownership as a concept, as I know this concept was made up by capitalists and supremacists who sought power over others, but I know it is not the truth of existence. However, I also do not believe that denying the current reality will help in overcoming it, nor do I believe that waiting until there is a “revolution” that has been “completed” to start building exactly the world we want to see. And this world involves everyone having safe, stable housing and access to all their basic needs, and one way to start putting this into action in our current economic system is to throw large-scale small-dollar fundraisers to allow community members to come together and support each other in building a neighborhood together.
These parties will be joyous, fun, celebratory! These gatherings will be places to meet people and to make happy memories within our community. Angela Davis emphasizes the importance of radical community organizing outside of what we consider to be typical “protests” or “organizing.” She says that it is a red flag if we are only seeing people at resistance actions, that this will lead to community burnout, and she is right. One of the strongest forms of community organizing and activation is to actually build tangible community that helps meet people’s basic needs, including the needs of companionship, dancing, and having fun.
The importance of it not just being a fundraiser, but it actually being a party that is fun, cannot be understated. This will not be simply a silent auction and a stuffy gala- we need our communities to come together and dance. Down payment dance parties will definitely be happening. Another pro to this strategy is that it also provides a reason to throw really fun parties!
Let’s do some quick figuring together.
If we can assume that we can find local community partners to help throw these events and either donate time and space towards the cause or at least partner with us for reasonable pricing options (as we want to make sure all of the community members contributing to this are also energetically compensated, whether through money or other means), we can assume that we can keep the budget relatively low for these events. We do not need fancy and expensive things to throw incredibly good parties- a party is about the people that are there, and we simply need to make sure the space is accessible for all before worrying about anything else.
This is a long term strategy, and there are many ways to make it happen. This could look like one big-name musician participating by either donating a show or donating proceeds from a portion of one arena show to cover an entire down payment. This could look like thirty small local parties that raise $1,500 each.
