The president’s $2 trillion infrastructure package is a solid start to reversing the impacts of Reaganomics
He may have been president in the 1980s, but Ronald Reagan’s legacy has stuck with us going on four decades. It was during his administration that the nation adopted the policies of stripped-down government services and unfettered capitalism that we’re still paying for today.
Turns out, the private markets weren’t the panacea they made themselves out to be — not for providing adequate affordable housing, not for keeping our power supply healthy and safe, not for gainfully employing the employable and not for providing health care for all. And they certainly weren’t a checked and balanced steward for our environment or a responsible sponsor to help wean our addiction to fossil fuels.
Private interests — profit motives tipped us off long ago — were designed to exploit, and while the working class grows more vulnerable with every economic upheaval, no hard time seems to harm the biggest players.
According to an analysis of data compiled by Forbes Magazine, America’s 664 billionaires collectively added more than
$1 trillion to their wealth since the pandemic began.
As small businesses suffer massively during this time, the biggest businesses are doing fine, passing their financial success on to shareholders while laying off workers.
After 40 years of repurposing the hubris of Reaganomics, could the Biden-Harris administration, with its new $2 trillion stimulus and tax plan, signal a new era? An era that restores the government’s role in infrastructure and service as defined by the social safety net, gainful employment for all, health and safety, and a sustainable future that’s not dependent on carbon-based fuels?
Could we see a future where the government doesn’t gaslight the masses into believing that profit motive equals philanthropy, or that a rising tide for 664 billionaires raises all ships?
The time is ripe for transformation, and the president’s plan promises a lot. In addition to rebuilding and modernizing our nation’s transportation infrastructure, the plan proposes:
• To make infrastructure improvements that not only improve public transit but address racial inequities created and exploited by decades of racist development policies.
• To create prevailing-wage jobs, supported by a greater investment in American-made products and a focus on populations that have been excluded from higher-wage opportunities.
• To reconnect communities divided by racially motivated development, and “ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.”
Stable, secure and affordable housing is also a matter of infrastructure — one requiring bold action, not token increments. We’ve had a year of grand emergency events followed by grand emergency responses, but infrastructure is still compromised by decades of disinvestment in affordable and public lower-income housing stock.
There are people who are barely hanging on to their tenancy today, and who will undoubtedly suffer more tomorrow, even as the pandemic itself begins to wane. They are the infrastructure that needs investment.
Entrenched in our housing policies — public and private — are positions that have brought us to today’s crisis. Our public housing funding increasingly prioritized the motives of private developers and investors, not society’s needs or the common good. Our private housing incentive programs selectively benefited white middle- and upper-income families, at the expense of generations of people of color.
We wasted decades embracing narratives that denigrated people who fall through the cracks — cracks of our own design and making. We fight to preserve tax deductions for people who buy a second home, even as we watch others suffer the rain and winter in tents for lack of proper shelter.
The housing fragility of American renters was well known prior to the pandemic, and yet today their situation is even worse as evictions, arrears and unemployment still threaten to destabilize families and households despite emergency efforts. Across the country, Black and Hispanic households continue to face more housing hardships than white households.
People are losing their housing now, despite eviction moratoriums and other incremental efforts to kick the disaster down the road. There are people who are barely hanging on to their tenancy today, and who will undoubtedly suffer more tomorrow, even as the pandemic itself begins to wane. They are the infrastructure that needs investment.
We know what happens when we leave the ruins to profiteers: Wall Street today is our nation’s largest landlord, having scooped up thousands of homes left abandoned or foreclosed upon after the 2008 crash. The private equity firm Invitation Homes is the largest single landlord in the nation. It made its business off of the financial collapse and saw its profits rise 30% during the pandemic.
Altogether, President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act promises to invest $213 billion to “produce, preserve, and retrofit more than 2 million affordable and sustainable places to live.” It calls for building 500,000 homes for low- and middle-income homebuyers and eliminating state and local exclusionary zoning laws that it says drives up the cost of construction.
Oregon is poised to receive a reported $4 billion, which like the CARES Act and FEMA assistance will help as an emergency response to help create spaces for people to live. That is absolutely essential, of course. But we also require creative initiatives at the local level to turn that money into long-term investments and policy upgrades in our social infrastructure.
Biden’s plan also calls out years of disinvestment in public housing and wants Congress to invest $40 billion to address the backlog of repairs in the public housing system in America. It can’t happen too soon.
Nationally and locally we must restore investments in social programs for housing, health services and family welfare. A strong safety net and service network can be as much an engine for transformation as investments in private industry.
There’s so much to undo. But from this social wreckage can be built a more just society and new opportunities for human investments.
Street Roots editorials represent the opinion of the Street Roots organization and editorial board.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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