Rent is a Workers’ Issue
The world’s eyes are fixed on New York State. More than 15,000 people have died in our state from coronavirus, and the numbers are still going up. Even that staggeringly tragic number is an undercount, as many died before coronavirus tests were available or died at home without a doctor’s care, or died in state prison where the statistics are unreliable. It’s important that we recognize that while coronavirus affects us all, its most deadly costs are disproportionately visited upon those who were already struggling. All across the country, poor people, people of color, the incarcerated, and people experiencing homelessness have borne the brunt of this crisis. How can you shelter in place when you have no place to go? How can you socially distance when you have to take a crowded subway train to your minimum wage grocery store job? How can you try to stay healthy when you can’t afford medical care? This crisis has exposed the massive cracks in the foundation of our society, both here in New York and nationally.
Today is May 1st. For millions of New Yorkers, that means its rent day. Almost half of tenants in New York State are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. It’s not just a city issue. Places like Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany all have significant populations of people experiencing homelessness in the shelter system and outside of it. More than 80,000 New Yorkers have no home to call their own and therefore no safe place to shelter from the virus. This state of affairs was already a humanitarian crisis requiring immediate action. However, with COVID-19 raging through our communities, allowing our neighbors to remain homeless (and risking tens of thousands more being evicted) is telling them that their lives and the lives of their families are expendable.
May 1st is also International Workers Day, which celebrates the struggles and sacrifices of workers who stood up for their rights through the ages. On May 1st, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States (in an action organized in Chicago, Illinois) walked off the job in solidarity with their fellow working people. The first May Day ended in tragedy as an unknown assailant threw a bomb into the crowd in Chicago. The judicial and police establishment quickly cracked down on the radicals who agitated workers to fight for their rights. Eight men were convicted by a jury with close ties to big business without evidence linking them to the bombing and were henceforth known as the “Haymarket Martyrs”. This set off a wave of political repression in the United States and an enduring international workers holiday- May Day- in which leftist workers and their supporters celebrate the history of struggle that has brought the labor rights we now take for granted.
Rent in New York is overwhelmingly a workers issue. More than 65% of New York City residents and 45% of New York State residents rent their homes. For many, rent is the biggest payment they will make each month, the payment that keeps them up at night, the payment that leads to scrimping and saving on food or clothing or Christmas presents for their kids. Right now, we have an eviction moratorium in New York State, but renters are still expected to pay once that moratorium is lifted. If we don’t immediately act to relieve rents, tens of thousands of renters will be out on the street once the moratorium expires and they have to pay several months rent at once. One and a half million people have filed for unemployment and millions more have lost income as a result of this crisis. Millions of people will simply be unable to pay and will be left to fend for themselves on the street in the midst of a pandemic. This is why State Senator Julia Salazar wrote S8190, the Emergency Coronavirus Affordable Housing Act of 2020, which is a comprehensive and closed-loop commonsense rent relief bill for residential and small commercial tenants, small homeowners, not-for-profit affordable housing providers, and residential housing cooperatives. We should not only compensate tenants, but also small homeowners and affordable housing providers for the losses they have incurred from this crisis.
This May Day, thousands of tenants around New York State and the world are conducting a rent strike ( because most of them cannot pay anyway). With this bill, we will not only be able to compensate hard-hit tenants, but also small businesses and small landlords who are also struggling. We have already forgiven mortgages for 90 days and the federal relief programs have disproportionately benefited big business and the corporate elite. We cannot have another recovery that leaves working people behind, and I urge everyone to fight to make sure that this does not happen.
