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Supply Chain Risk

The Revival of the National Union of the Homeless

Early last week, Americans woke to news of the largest one day oil price drop in history. Since then, stocks on Wall Street have continued to plummet and the Fed has materialized, overnight, $1.5 trillion for investors. For over a year, economists have predicted the probability of an impending recession, and those fears have only multiplied since the coronavirus has unsettled markets around the world. As the Trump Administration struggles to articulate even a short-term strategy to mitigate this public health emergency, we must consider what a deeper economic collapse will mean for the nation, and the 140 million poor and low-income people who already live their own public health crisis and recession every day.

During the Great Depression, one of the most visible and alarming signs of a society in crisis was the explosion of homelessness across the country. In response, the newly homeless built shantytowns and encampments in and around major cities, known as “Hoovervilles”, after President Herbert Hoover. The self-organization and survival strategies of close to 2 million homeless people is not often remembered in the retelling of history, but they prefigured many of the major policy developments of the New Deal period, including housing reform.

During this unfolding health and economic crisis, it is not difficult to imagine that we could soon see the emergence of “Trumpvilles” all across the country. Although some local and state governments have taken measures to head off the immediate growth of homelessness, like moratoriums on evictions, it is clear that that the nation is not prepared for the level of precarity that millions will be thrown into, only compounding the deep poverty and instability that existed before the coronavirus pandemic hit the US.

In New York City, the government waited at least an extra week to close schools because over one hundred thousand students are homeless and rely on school services for regular meals and shelter. What will happen to these children and the millions more whose families are one paycheck or healthcare crisis away from poverty and homelessness? Meanwhile, while we wait for a federal government response that is commensurate with the problem, folks are beginning to take their own life-saving measures. In Los Angeles, homeless moms and their children have begun to move into abandoned homes to protect themselves and the larger public from further exposure.

In early February, at the same time that the US government was receiving intel on the inevitable growth of the coronavirus into a global pandemic, the Trump administration released its proposed budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Their reforms represent a sweeping policy of austerity that would cut low-income housing assistance programs by $4.2 billion, decrease public housing operating funds by 21%, and end all funding for public housing capital repairs. When the government continues to disinvest in critical programs and services, and appears wholly ill equipped for the social and economic challenges ahead, the experiences of the homeless and their efforts to organize for change has much to teach us about why and how poor and dispossessed people are beginning to take action together in this time.

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