“They have a date next month for the movers to come and take us somewhere, but we don’t even know where that somewhere is,” I was on the phone with a disabled elder resident of 939 Eddy, one of 14 San Francisco buildings recently non-profitized ( aka Privatized) under the new HUD public housing dismantlement program called RAD (Rental Assistance Demonstration). RAD is the newest in a long line of multi-billion dollar poverty industry ponzee schemes aimed at gentrifying public housing and leaving the poorest of the poor with nowhere to live.
In San Francisco like almost every city in the US- the pyramid scheme of public to private housing which has been happening since the 1990's with (No) Hope VI and has culminated in the final solution of RAD, has been enabled by the perfect storm aka "excuse" of Public Housing Authority's intentional neglect causing broken elevators, bedbugs, broken toilets, doors, windows, hinges, no plumbing, electrical, etc, while at the same time, discovered by fellow poverty skolaz at Western Regional Advocacy Project, HUD and the endless stream of poor people bating poltricksters leeches and strips public housing budgets and section 8 programs by the millions every year.
Yet through-out the multiple hand-throwing up sessions by HUD and public Housing Authority departments across the nation, always resulting in statements like, "We have no money to make repairs" no-one ever questions the ways in which these “problems” are all exactly alike- how from city to city, from State to state the very low-income, no-income, poorest of the poor families, elders and youth whose families have lived in these buildings for generations, whose lives and bodies have been used, exploited and enslaved to build this stolen indigenous land I call amerikkklan, who have crossed false borders and endured US fueled wars across mama earth only to arrive here to work for the rich and wealthy and whose lives and struggles caused by the centuries of exploitation end up being used for grant applications and philathro-pimps to launch more jobs in the poverty industry, are the ones left to struggle with extremely dangerous habitability issues in buildings that were supposedly set up to safely house us.
“There is big money to be made off non-profit housing contracts, thats why the non-profits and the politicians came together to dream this RAD scheme up together in 2000,” An elder, disabled poverty skola at POOR Magazine who is living in poor people, non-profiteered housing said shaking his head, “Everyone gets paid and we poor folks get less housing or no housing at all,”
To unpack the pyramid scheme of this theft one only need to look at the billions being made by everyone .From the stock market traders who trade the mortgages for the public housing buildings on the stock exchange to the banksters who financed their contracts to the so-called non-profit housing developers who are getting million dollar contracts to repair and manage the units to non-profit advocates getting contracts to “protect us” from the non-profit housing developers malfesance and thousands of builders, contractors and social workers and poltricksters in the middle. Everyone is getting paid. Everyone, except us poor people. From Baltimore to LA literally thousands of people have faced evictions 500 evictions at a time hitting newly “managed” privatized, sold, pimped and played public housing buildings, or the more user-friendly , post- (No) Hope IV lie of “relocation with guaranteed right to returns, (Right?0 there are so many lies and so many peoples who will be permanently un-housed behind this scheme, i am literally terrified for all of us. .
So why aren’t the tenants, the residents, the poor peoples, the African peoples, Peoples of color ever offered these stolen millions to self-dermine our own lives?
“Oh they can’t manage their own property , they are too caught up in drugs, or family struggles,” said one non-profiteer “advocate” to me when i asked him why us poor residents weren’t offered the chance to the equity in these buildings or to manage our own buildings we have been living in for years? The paternalistic tone of oh the poor people can’t do for themselves is enough to make you wretch, or slap someone And the saddest part of all of this is so many of us poor people believe the lies they tell us about what we can’t do. We have heard these stories of our "ineptitude" for so many generations they start to sound like fact. and anyone who speaks of self-determination is considered a crazy radical, a nut, or an odd ball.
And no wonder the paternalistic- they can’t do for-self theme always comes into play, there is way too much money to be made by our scarcity model, white supremacist crafted “failures” - there is a multi-billion dollar hustle on our broken backs- from the poverty industry building jail-like shelters, to the non-profiteers making grants to “help” us, feed us, clothe us, the private and government Po’Lice harassing, arresting, incarcerating or killing us and Akkkademia funding endless research studies to “survey” us , study us and write about us without us. Its just an ongoing stream of money made on us never getting out from under their boot.
From New Orleans to New Hampshire we are losing our last acre and our one remaining mule..
So what will happen to us 1.2 million elders, youth and families across the nation living in soon to be privatized public housing buildings? There are really only two things that we can do. Firstly like our sisters and brothers sheroes from the Charlottesville, Virgina Public Housing Association of Residents who organized and literally all stood up to their local Housing Authority and said, No, just NO to the lie of RAD and remain un-RAD-IFIED to this day, we can organize here, but people have to be willing to stop being coaxed, paid off or scared into complacense. We Po' folks in resistance at POOR Magazine are willing to help, we created a 10 point plan for organizing your own buildings and will assist you in this as we have already been offerring since last year. Another option for public housing tenants, is what we have been demanding since 2013, give us back our equity, the equity being bought, sold, and traded on the open market which includes everyone but us, so we can practice our own self-determination. For us generationally stolen from poorest of the poor public housing tenants this is Reparations. Our time and lives and generations in these buildings is equity This is why its Never considered To enact this notion of equity justice we ask again, for a conscious, un-pimped, non- paternailstic law firm to please stand up and represent folks to get our rightful equity