by David Zlutnick, of the Friendly Fire Collective
Precarity?
Precariedad, précarité, or precarietà. Take your pick. Those foreign words all translate roughly to “precarity,” something many of us are undoubtedly familiar with even if we’re unfamiliar with the word itself. All describe the current state of much of the work available to us in the US and Western Europe as our economies have transitioned from being based on industry to the service sector.
This shift has left us with a further erosion of stability in our lives as jobs are no longer for life, but for years or even months. Jobs more often than not offer either no or extremely minimal benefits in the realm of healthcare or retirement. Jobs commonly carry the possibility of being laid off, of being fired, or having hours cut on a whim. And no mass organized labor movement is capable of (or at times willing to) defend what little workers who are forced into these new jobs have, or is capable of fighting for further gains in the service sector for these workers. As a result, keeping ourselves-and for many our families as well-housed, fed, and healthy is a responsibility accomplished on a month-to-month basis.
Outside of concrete financial terms (i.e.- job security, rent payments, etc.) this also has a significant effect on our psychological state as well as our general health. Where is the next rent payment going to come from? How am I going to pay my doctor’s bill? How will I be able to retire if I have to live off of Social Security? All these questions are not solely about material matters, but incorporate health and peace of mind as well. The constant demand to make sure your basic needs are provided for, to make sure you have a place to live, enough food on the table, you and your family are healthy, all of this puts extreme stress on the mind and can give rise to psychological issues from increased hostility and aggression to severe depression.1 A negative impact on physical health2 is also increased as the prolonged effects of the stress affiliated with a precarious living situation can weaken the immune system, strain the heart, damage memory cells in the brain, lead to weight-gain, and can increase the risks of cancer.3 Precarity is literally making us sick.
What’s Making Life Precarious?
As was stated before, there has been a marked shift from an industrial economy to a so-called “postindustrial economy”-or better termed a “service economy”-based primarily on unstable work. These new jobs in the service industry are largely without the protections previously afforded to manufacturing jobs that were the symbol of the strong Fordist-industrial economy (fought for tooth-and-nail by the labor movement) and are largely a result of what has come to be known as Globalization, Neoliberalism, Free Market Economics, etc., etc. As “free trade” has become the one and only remedy offered by the world’s economic powers and free trade agreements are signed increasingly often, the trend has been a general export of manufacturing jobs abroad (primarily well-paying, benefit-laced union jobs). In the US these jobs were first trucked across the border into the maquiladoras (or tariff-free factories, read: “sweatshops”) of Mexico following the implementation of NAFTA4 in 1994, then eventually shipped overseas after transnational corporations saw even cheaper and further unregulated labor in other countries, especially in the poorer regions of Southeast Asia or Central and South America.
What effect does free trade have in real terms for workers in the US? Well, the loss of over 3.5 million manufacturing jobs between 1994 and 2007 that has mostly been attributed to NAFTA is pretty real. The empty factories and decomposing cities of the Rust Belt are also pretty real. And so what are all those former factory workers doing now? It should be noted that from 1993 until the beginning of this century there was an increase in the employment rate in the US of almost 15 million jobs, but less than half a million of those were manufacturing jobs.5 So where did all those manufacturing jobs go, and where are all these new jobs coming from? The answer lies in the precarious industries: primarily the service sector as well as low-level office jobs.
The deindustrialization of the US and the massive export of jobs and factories has been going on now for quite some time and really started in the 80s under Reagan, of course speeding up significantly with the rise in free trade agreements since the early 90s. Here it has been a fairly gradual process, but in the other richest countries of the world it’s been a little different.
Europe on the Edge
The term “precarity” has mostly come from a European context-specifically Western European-suggesting a state of instability and lack of financial security for the individual. The term has taken on a widespread usage throughout the European continent in reference to the huge rise of unstable and temporary jobs in its current postindustrial state, much like has been happening in the US. However, the economic situation in Western Europe is of course very different than that here and therefore the perspective from which precarity has been generated is also different and worth further examination.6
The concept of precarity in the European context is an interesting phenomenon. What across the Atlantic is commonly referred to as the “precaritization” of the economy could probably more appropriately be called the Americanization of the economy as the European trend is really following the precedent set by the US. With the proliferation of neoliberal economic policies across the globe in the past two decades, European governments-backed by enormous flows of corporate capital-have speedily “modernized” their economies in favor of privatization, foreign investment, reduced exports and increased imports, and all the cuts in social spending that typically accompany the former.
Since the early-90s following the break-up of the Soviet Union, the previous Eastern-bloc countries were left without financial backing from their previous “Communist” benefactor and were suddenly thrust into the global capitalist economy. The result was a massive force of cheap labor, idle and ripe for industrial exploitation.
While the Eastern European states were going through their “democratization,” Western European governments were negotiating an economic trade pact. In 1994 the agreement was signed between members of the European Free Trade Association, the European Union (EU), and the European Community resulting in the European Economic Area (EEA), a free trade zone to facilitate the unregulated flow of goods and capital across borders. This agreement now applies to all states in the EU, including those who have joined since-primarily the former Soviet-satellites of Eastern Europe.
As was previously mentioned, these newest members of the EU had little to offer to the international economic community in way of capital and so moved to market two things they could sell: a cheap labor force and the notion of a country with low labor standards, low environmental regulations, and little to no taxes and tariffs on products thanks to the terms of the EEA. It wasn’t long before Western European corporations-with encouragement from their government backers-jumped on the opportunity of an inexpensive workforce in such close proximity to its primary market7 (as opposed to the sweatshops of China or Southeast Asia). Plus, they would be free from worrying about those pesky unions-so deeply rooted in domestic economic policy and still possessing enormous strength, at least relative to the US-maintaining a living wage and social benefits, or demanding increased compensation or worker protections.
With the possibilities of inexpensive production and the easy transnational flow of capital adding to the bosses’ advantage, European workers received a hard blow. In the East workers received many new manufacturing jobs but without the long fought for and hard-won wages, benefits, and labor rights afforded to their Western counterparts. And simultaneously a disappearance began-and all growth ceased-of the well-paying and socially secure industrial jobs that had sustained the Western European middle-class since World War II.
In the late-90s a critical analysis of neoliberalism began to form on a broad base in Europe as the true effects of free trade began to show. Many young Europeans in the Western nations began to realize that the jobs that had afforded their parents a relatively privileged and economically stable life were rapidly being exported. A lucky few of course would be able to gain access to those “good” jobs that remained, but the majority would clearly be forced into the growing service economy. While much of the anti-globalization movement focused on the suffering being caused by free trade policies in the Global South,8 because of this aforementioned trend many Europeans instead looked at how they were directly affected.
During the development of this outlook a new word began to be thrown around to label the state in which many of Western Europe’s newest workers found themselves: with low wages, temporary work, shifting schedules, and without a contract, job protections, or union representation. These new workers were living in precarity.
Precarity in the US
The deindustrialization in the United States has produced many of the same consequences. In Michael Moore’s film Roger and Me9-his take on the massive closures of auto factories in his hometown of Flint, Michigan-there is a brief segment on a local Taco Bell that was absorbing many of the laid-off auto workers whose jobs were shipped overseas in search of cheaper labor. This is one of those lasting images that best characterizes the shift in my mind. As the overall economy was going through a “transition” from an industrial to a postindustrial society, these workers were going through a “transition” of their own: from fairly well-paying jobs providing healthcare, retirement benefits, vacation time, and union representation under contract to working for minimum wage with no benefits and zero job security.
Precarity often takes the form mentioned above, although not always in such an obvious light as a fast-food giant. From working in restaurants to selling clothing, from cleaning office buildings to working in a movie theater, that’s all service work and none of it is very highly appreciated in material terms. These are jobs where workers are more often than not only paid minimum wage (not a living wage) or only slightly above, offered no health coverage, have varying schedules week to week, are offered no sick- or vacation-time, can be disposed of at any point without compensation, and are generally non-union.
For many of you reading this, these conditions might sound familiar. That’s probably because according to the International Monetary Fund, the US is the largest producer of “services” in the world, which in 2007 accounted for 78.5% of the US economy as compared to only 20% in 1947.10 And that number is only growing. Of course not all of these service jobs are poorly paid. The “service sector” is broadly defined and also includes lawyers and real estate agents. But we can’t all be lawyers and real estate agents.
This hasn’t affected big business of course. Quite the opposite, it’s been a tremendous boost. Manufactured goods are now almost universally produced overseas with the inexpensive labor of the Global South at little cost to the company, then shipped back to the consuming nations to be sold in their vast markets of chain stores and specialty boutiques to the workers who staff them. Speaking back in 1997, then-Federal Reserve Board Chair Alan Greenspan expressed his pleasure over what he saw as “sustainable economic expansion,”11 largely due to “atypical restraint on compensation increases [appearing] to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity.”12
Although many of the same issues are at play in Western Europe, the circumstances here in the US are a bit different. In many ways the situation faced by American workers struggling in the service-based economy is far more precarious than that of the Western European worker. Here the so-called “safety net” that exists in the ill-termed “Welfare States” of Europe is tattered and worn thin-if it exists at all.
As a result the new American working-class is left dangerously exposed. As opposed to European countries-and the rest of the “wealthy, industrialized nations” for that matter-full-coverage healthcare is a dream for most Americans. Around 35% of the population in 2003 had either no insurance, sporadic coverage, or insurance coverage that exposed them to high costs.13 The looming threat of inevitable health costs makes life precarious for all Americans, and the ability to pay for insurance or maintain a job where it is provided is key to survival.
Other social service apparatuses in the US are also either nonexistent or ineffective. Unemployment benefits, for example, are extremely minimal and short-lived, facilitating the slide into poverty. Already hardly enough to sustain oneself under current costs of living, existing social security subsidies are constantly threatened, most notably as of late with a complete overhaul through privatization.
In terms of shelter, the exceedingly limited public housing in this country is nominal and faces increasing attack. Between 1993 and 2003, for example, over 55,000 public housing units were demolished nationwide with up to 25,000 more in the process. Meanwhile, rent subsidies such as Section 8 are a joke as the government has increasingly whittled away the program since the mid-80s.14 And what limited protections are in place for those tenants outside of the subsidized housing sphere, such as marginal caps on rent increases, are constantly under bombardment by landlord associations and real estate groups in an effort to suck every dollar out of their precious investments (also known as families’ homes).15
In addition to the attack on social service safety nets in the US we can add the general attack on the labor movement as an enhancer of precarity. Companies were fierce in the 1980s in breaking strikes and hiring strikebreakers, emboldened by Reagan’s decision to fire “illegally” striking air traffic controllers in 1981. But much of the blame lies with the unions themselves, with their leadership often corrupt and in the hands of the bosses, receiving big salaries while their rank-and-file were being laid off, and stuck in bureaucracy and unwilling to push the envelope when the time was needed to challenge the emerging neoliberal economic doctrine.
The result of the attacks and inaction was devastating to organized labor. Back in 1945 one third of the US labor force was unionized, shrinking to less than a quarter by 1979, and down to only 12.1% in 2007. Unions haven’t recovered and have been left in an even weaker position without the mass base they need, putting what power they have in the form of campaign contributions to lesser-of-two-evil-politicians espousing more free market answers.
One last point worth mentioning that is enhancing the precarity of workers in this country in comparison to that of Western Europe is the incredible rise in prison labor. Noam Chomsky offers Boeing, “which monopolizes US civilian aircraft production,” as a good example in his critique of prison labor. This company “not only transfers production facilities to China, but also to prisons a few miles from its Seattle offices…” As flexible a labor force as it is, the new working-class can’t compete against the over 2,000,000 potential workers currently in American prisons who are “disciplined, publicly subsidized, deprived of benefits-available when needed, left to government support when not.”16
Precarity or Capitalism?
One primary critique of the concept of “precarity” that I would put forward-or echo I should say, as I am not the first to articulate it-is that the state of precarity that many American and Western European workers now find themselves in is not new. Unstable employment, little or no health coverage, high costs of living, rent increases and eviction-these are all problems that have plagued workers throughout the history of the capitalist economy.
Precarity has historically characterized the lives of most workers, and most consistently the more targeted or vulnerable among them such as immigrants, people of color, women, and the poorest of the poor, or often those fitting into all of these categories.
Immigrant workers, for example, have long lived a precarious existence in the United States. From European immigrants who found themselves working in the wage slavery of late-19th and early-20th century American industry to the Latino and Filipino farm workers in the fields of California in the 60s and 70s, immigrant labor has continuously been exploited. Immigrant workers have historically been subject to extremely low wages (often below legal minimums), dangerous working conditions, lack of access to health care, terrible and often hazardous living conditions, and frequently have little recourse to hold employers accountable due to immigration status. This holds true today as much as it did a century ago.
Looking back to the foundation of the labor movement it was exactly these elements of precarity that were being addressed, primarily by those throngs of immigrant workers who had been crammed into American industrial centers. These workers were afforded no rights or protections, worked under terrible and often deadly conditions 12-14 hours per day, up to seven days per week and for extremely minimal compensation. This was because the bosses knew they had the upper hand, threatening to fire and replace anyone who complained or could not keep up. It wasn’t until a massive labor movement was formed and over a period of 80 years-from the foundation of the Knights of Labor in 1869 to the post-war industry of the 1950s sealed by the merger of the AFL and the CIO17-forced the bosses to make radical concessions like ending child labor, establishing a minimum wage, an eight-hour day, weekends, protections from indiscriminate firings, health benefits, etc., that the issue of precarity for industrial laborers began to settle and the relative security of manufacturing jobs was created.
As evidenced by the brief historical lesson above, precarity is not new. Its development in Europe can be perceived as a little troubling for this reason as many did not pick up on this concept until it began to shake the middle classes of the privileged nations. Much of the precarity movement has, as a result of its primary origins in the disenchanted youth of the middle-class, focused primarily on restoring itself to this advantaged position by demanding the luxuries of stability and social security that were once afforded to a much wider segment of society.
Now that’s not entirely fair, as many of the organizational methods of resistance that developed to counter precarity, such as the EuroMayDay network,18 did combine the issues of precarity and the targeting of immigrants-undocumented immigrants in particular-in their analyses and actions. But framing the issues surrounding precarity solely in terms of the destruction of the middle-class as opposed to an attack on all workers, particularly the most vulnerable among them, would be a mistake (albeit one probably made most notably by the media, which tends to frame the debate19). It is the precedent of losing this stability that will only make it harder for the majority to rise out of continuous impoverishment, while simultaneously toppling many from their secure status into the unsteady work of the service economy, thus widening the gap between classes. In the analysis it is important to view the goal of organizing against precarity not as being to “save” the middle-class, but to expand it, and bring that security to all members of our society.
Yet precarity as an analysis is worth preserving as it is extremely timely with this specific type of labor we are now seeing. This service work-in offices, in restaurants, in clothing stores, etc.-is new and has not been seen historically. It is important to resist this consumer economy insofar as we must be able to be sustained within it.
Organizing Against Precarity: Toward “Revolutionary Stability”
The goal that we should hope to accomplish through our organizing in battling precarity is what I’ll term “revolutionary stability,” a rather odd combination of words but one I think fits. To repeat what I stated in the last section, the goal should not be stopping the slide into precarity, thereby continuing the existence of a poor working class at the expense of a comfortable middle-class. On the contrary, our goal should be to abolish precarity and build stable, socially secure communities that incorporate all members and provide them all with their necessities: shelter, food, healthcare, and the like. This all-encompassing stability is something that cannot easily be attained. But to steal a quote from the French uprising of 1968: “Be realistic-demand the impossible.”
In the past there have been attempts to organize against the ill-effects of the capitalist economy that I feel we can learn from today and have particular relevance in terms of precarity. There are three primary methods of organization that I feel are most apt for this particular time, as they have been at previous junctures as well: workplace organizing, housing organizing, and generally building infrastructure to serve our communities.
To start with infrastructure, community organizing is key to battling precarity in our lives. I start with this because without community interaction the other two-workplace and housing organizing-are unlikely to be successful. Building infrastructure in our neighborhoods and cities serves two purposes in this respect: it provides services and it allows for community interaction on the social and political levels.
A good example of this sort of work looking at the past would be the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for Children Program, starting out of a church in Oakland in the 60s. This was one of many of the Panther’s “Survival Programs” which were meant to sustain low-income African-American communities until a more egalitarian social system could be implemented where these basic needs such as a children’s breakfast could be provided. The program was so successful it spread rapidly to other cities where Panthers were feeding up to 10,000 kids per day at its height. It also helped enable the Black Panthers to take deep roots in their communities and let their organizational model flourish.
An incredible example of this type of infrastructure building currently in progress would be the New Orleans chapter of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence’s efforts in founding the New Orleans Women’s Health and Justice Initiative. The initiative has established the Women’s Health Clinic and began a sexual health literacy and reproductive justice project and a gender-based violence prevention program, all through the use of “grassroots organizing, advocacy, and multimedia strategies, and community-based participatory action research.” This project is an excellent example of a community organizing to meet its needs by providing low-income and uninsured women access to quality healthcare while simultaneously involving them in this process and thereby encouraging further participation from the grassroots.
Examining the possibilities of housing organizing is a suggestion a bit more concrete. Just about the top priority of everyone is keeping a roof over their heads, a necessity that is becoming harder and harder as rents continue to rise and small home ownership suffered its biggest ever drop following the foreclosure crisis.20 This area of organizing is key to a revolutionary stability. Organizing needs to be done within cities to form neighborhood councils, to address issues of unjust rents, to make sure everyone is provided with shelter, to challenge development that does not have the community’s interest at heart.
This type of organizing has been done in the past through public pressures to assert government control over rent increases, to establish just cause eviction protections, and to introduce vacancy control.21 There have even been many instances of successful community action, where tenants have collectively refused to pay rent or exerted physical pressure in order to meet demands.
During the Great Depression evictions were rampant. In the early-1930s the Communist Party began to organize councils of the unemployed that in turn began to demand eviction moratoriums. Rent strikes were fairly common, where highly organized councils would issue demands and form committees to negotiate with landlords. Eviction resistance began as well, where often an evicted tenant’s belongings would be physically moved back inside of the building and crowds organized by the councils would hold off the police trying to enforce the eviction.
After years of campaigns waged against the exploitative housing costs during a nationwide economic depression, Congress felt the heat and passed legislation in 1937 creating the first public housing. This was followed a few years later by Roosevelt’s Emergency Price Control Act putting restrictions on prices for certain goods, including how much landlords could charge for rent.
With the current foreclosure crisis activists in Boston have used direct action to attempt to stop evictions, too. This past January, a tenant facing eviction after she was defrauded through a high-interest mortgage loan was saved last-minute when the real estate company backed down due to dozens of protesters who gathered outside the house. At the time this was the second successful eviction prevention organized by City Life/Vida Urbana, a Boston community and tenant advocacy group who had pledged to defend 75 other foreclosed residents.22
I wrote earlier about organizing against precarious work through the unionization of the labor force. Compensation, benefits, and rights were all fought for and many were won over decades of bitter battles between workers and their employers. But the role of workers in this new economy has changed and the new working-class is largely left to start over and begin making similar demands to those of their counterparts a century previous-stable employment, fair compensation, job protections, and healthcare, among others.
There are some innovative approaches being taken that should be examined-in further detail than the brief summaries I will give here-and hopefully expanded upon. In 2003, for instance, members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) began the South Street Workers Union in Philadelphia. South Street is the city’s largest shopping and restaurant district and hub of precarious work. The union has organized numerous shops and restaurants and has been able to win workers their unpaid wages, defend workers threatened with firings and even deportation, generally improved working conditions and even organized a campaign for cheap public transportation. In addition clinics have been created to support the union’s workers, including health and workers’ rights clinics.
The IWW has also had success organizing the Starbucks Workers’ Union. The coffee superchain is a precarity poster-child-paying its workers minimum wage, keeping them at part-time thereby enabling the company to assign them flexible hours, and has a worse healthcare policy than Wal-Mart, which is known for its poor benefits. Starting in New York City the union was able to first gain the ear of employers after organizing in 2004. Since then the New York branch has been able to secure substantial wage increases, partially stabilize shift scheduling, and reduce safety concerns. After spreading to Chicago the union was able to win similar gains.
This type of workplace organizing is essential. This directly challenges the conditions we face in on a daily basis that make many of our lives unstable and unhealthy. This work mixed with housing organizing, constructing community organizations and infrastructure, all builds on the capability to create this revolutionary stability and step toward the new and better world we hope to create. This organizing allows us to retake control over our lives and decide how our communities are managed-through our collective voice, through horizontal power.
The issue of precarity is definitely not new, but the context in which it has come about is worth examining to better understand it and better resist it. If there is any cure for the latest symptom of capitalism, and any hope for curing the disease, it’s going to be through collective organization. And it needs to happen sooner rather than later.
David Zlutnick lives in San Francisco where he currently works for the San Francisco Tenants Union and the Eviction Defense Collaborative. He has been involved in social justice organizing focusing primarily on labor, war opposition, and independent media and is also a member of the Friendly Fire Collective (www.friendlyfirecollective.info).
Footnotes—————————————————-
1 Precarity can therefore be an explanation for the unbelievable spike in prescription drugs as well. Statistics in 2001 from the San Diego Union-Tribune showed that 46% of Americans took at least one prescription drug daily, a number that has probably increased since. The pharmaceutical industry’s sickening capitalization on weak mental terrain should be acknowledged but should not mask the fact that under the current economic and social conditions mental health is suffering. Pills, however, are obviously no substitute for necessary societal solutions.
2 This is besides the obvious possibility of a lack of access to healthcare for millions in this country, leading to the deaths of approximately 101,000 Americans every year according to an article published by Reuters (“France best, US worst in preventable death ranking,” by William Dunham. January 8, 2008.).
3 “The Heavy Cost of Chronic Stress,” by Erica Goode. Published by the New York Times, December 17, 2002.
4 The North American Free Trade Agreement is a trilateral trade bloc in North America created by the governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
5 US Bureau of Labor Statistics
6 My following observations on Europe in this section are from what I have been able to collect from my limited studies on this topic and my past conversations with Europeans-mostly activists-around this subject. It should be noted that I have limited knowledge in the analysis of “precarity” in the European context and for this reason I keep my thoughts on Europe short and sweet-and general-only for the purpose of some background.
7 The primary market being Western Europe. But free trade agreements also allowed the facility of engaging the new market of Eastern Europe itself.
8 And with good reason. It is very clear that those suffering the worst from neoliberal economic policies are those in the so-called “developing” countries, where often the effects aren’t simply a reduction in the standard of living but sometimes the ability to live itself.
9 Roger and Me was made in 1989, a further illustration that the free market policies of the US have been taking their toll for decades.
10 According to the CIA World Factbook’s “GDP-Composition by Sector.”
11 Although with the present recession, possibly not as stable as he originally thought. But corporate executives are still proving to do quite well no matter how much their employees suffer during the “hard times.” The average CEO’s salary as of January 2008 was $613,826 according to Salary.com.
12 “Class War in the USA.” Quoted from an editorial in the March 1997 issue of the Multinational Monitor.
13 “Insured But Not Protected: How Many Adults Are Underinsured?” by Cathy Schoen, M.S., Michelle M. Doty, Ph.D., and Sara R. Collins, Ph.D., and Alyssa L. Holmgren. Published by The Commonwealth Fund. June 13, 2005.
14 In 1999 Los Angeles County had over 153,000 households on their waiting list for Section 8 subsidies. “There’s No Place Like Home: How America’s Housing Crisis Threatens Our Children,” by Megan Sandel, Joshua Sharfstein, and Randy Shaw. Published by Housing America, March 1999.
15 As was evidenced by the recent outrageous attempt in June’s elections to outlaw rent control and just cause evictions in California through statewide Proposition 98.
16 From The Umbrella of US Power: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of US Policy. Published by Seven Stories Press, 2002.
17 The American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), long estranged, merged in 1955 creating the AFL-CIO and complete dominance over the American labor movement, at least until 2005 when several large unions split from the coalition, forming the rival Change to Win Federation.
18 EuroMayDay sought to resurrect the tradition of May Day, the international day of solidarity among workers, but with a focus on the new precarious labor force that had emerged in Europe. Celebrated on the First of May, huge demonstrations were held annually, the turnout growing from 50,000 its first year in 2001 to over 300,000 in 2006 spread throughout 20 EU cities as well as Tokyo.
19 Take for example the extremely reactionary line of Lou Dobbs, CNN pundit and author of War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back. While probably bringing more spotlight to the issue of neoliberalism and precarity-of course not using this language-than anyone else in the mainstream media, his answer has been to blame immigrants.
20 “Home Ownership in Record Plunge.” Published by CNN.com, January 29, 2008.
21 Vacancy control limits the landlord’s ability to increase rent when tenancy ends and the unit temporarily becomes vacant. Many cities with rent control, where landlords can only raise the rent a small fixed percentage per year, critically lack vacancy control, allowing landlords to jack up the rent to market value when a tenancy ends. Rents in San Francisco, for example, where there is no vacancy control, have shot up 14.4% in the past year despite its rent control policy.
22 “Dorchester Woman’s Eviction Postponed After Protest,” by Binyamin Appelbaum. Published by the Boston Globe, January 23, 2008.
