A CRITICISM OF THE NDP’S ‘HOMES YOU CAN AFFORD’ POLICY

Ontario is in a dark place. The province has had to endure the Covid-19 pandemic under the premiership of Doug Ford of the Progressive Conservative Party, a faux-populist whose 2018 election campaign was a reactionary movement based on hate and the promise of one dollar beer. He became a darling for those in the working class looking for an excuse to delve into white nationalism and those in the middle class that fancy themselves blue collar despite having none of the trappings, all while being funded by billionaires in return for favours once he reached office. He traded on the ill reputation of his late brother, former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who made international news for being a drug addled, racist embarrassment before unfortunately being afflicted with aggressive cancer and passing. Doug’s pledge was to lower taxes for the middle- and upper-class while cancelling a planned increase to the minimum wage, a classic right-wing play to the fiscally concerned whose idea of progress is a tightening of the noose. It should be no surprise then how Ford has used the power of his position in the service of ultra-wealthy developers.

It is unquestionable that housing has become an insurmountable challenge for many in modern Ontario. Due to manipulation of the market by the same developers that backed Ford, often from out of the country so they aren’t forced to pay taxes in Ontario, rental rates went up by some 37% in the past 20 years, out pacing the average wage increase by 17% and creating an unstable way of life for millions of working class people. Part of that manipulation was the lie put forth by Ford that the Conservatives were managing developments in the province at all when instead they were putting in programs with built-in loopholes to allow the maximum bang for the developer’s buck. This was driven by the incredibly capitalist trend of turning living spaces into short-term rentals, leaving some 5% of homes in Toronto, or 55,000 units, totally empty save for the occasional vacationer willing to pay a premium. Keep in mind Toronto’s 6,000 shelter beds are full every night and unhoused are turned away, left to sleep in doorways or in encampments in city parks which are then swept away by law enforcement. A few working class entrepreneurs have attempted to build and distribute individual shelters to help the unhoused survive the snowy winter only to be shut down by the city of Toronto for not having the correct zoning, the State operating as intended on all fronts.

The progressive left counter to this loss of basic standards of living is the New Democratic Party’s most recent housing policy, the Homes You Can Afford plan. They begin with a statement that I am in full agreement with; “We believe housing is a human right.” It is incredible that something this basic needs to be stated but it does. I would expand that statement further, as ‘housing’ in this sense does not mean the right to pay exorbitant rent or to be evicted without real cause, it means purely the living space with which a person has access to. Implicit but not stated is the right to be afforded that space regardless of the person’s circumstances, financial or otherwise. If it is not, then it is not truly a socialist-informed platform and as the NDP consider themselves to be social democrats we allow them the benefit of the doubt in this instance. With that in mind, I believe the right of housing can be amended to be the right to a living space without reserve and it is from here that I will approach this topic.

The plan itself, while expansive and containing some much needed legislation to help working class, at-risk, and unhoused people, is largely based around fixing already existing policies put in place by the Liberals and Conservatives so that they work as they were supposedly intended, possibly with slightly more favorable margins. It also offers rent subsidies to working class families, a lifejacket of hope so that they can stay afloat a little longer in a system rigged against them. The plan involves instituting or choosing to enforce laws that limit the reach of out of control and criminal developers but not bar them from Ontario entirely despite admitting in the plan itself that these developers are responsible for the housing shortage in the first place and will continue to leverage the market in that manner. The NDP’s avoidance of this is found in their plan to reward ethical developers, which stands with their plan to reward unicorns for sneezing diamonds in its gross assumptions of reality. The cries for more low-income housing, while well-intentioned, ignore that such housing only serves to reinforce the status of those who reside there without offering a way out of the poverty cycle. Co-op housing, oddly presented as a new fad in housing rather than a historically tested means of determining fair rent, is only addressed in as much as the NDP would ‘allow it to thrive’ with $10 million in seed money, the party divesting itself then from the success or failure of such a program despite its clear relevance to our modern housing problems. And throughout the plan, the mandate to build, build, build remains.

All in all, the Homes You Can Afford plan offers the working class help but not change. It is a noble papering of the cracks, an appeal to the capitalist market to come to its senses and begin to act in ways that are antithetical to its purpose. Since capitalism is reliant on exploitation to succeed, it does not take human rights into its calculations and any attempt to correct the housing market without massively altering it is a tacit doubling-down on these base tenets of private ownership. New Democrats say they are for working people yet this plan is typical to the socialist bourgeois who seek a return to norms without the necessary upheaval needed to really help people. The argument for gradual socialist progress has been undone by the Ford government’s naked dedication to greed, any small steps forward that can be achieved through electoral politics can be swept aside in an instant four years later should the following election swing the other way. How then can we be assured of a lasting future when the contradictions of the market inherently forbid it?

Which is not to say that we should not support the plan. Quite the opposite, in the time available before the next election it is the responsibility of every working class person in the province to support the NDP in its efforts as it is the most effective way to help the most people in the short-term. My intention is only to point out how far the party would have to go to fully resolve the housing issues in Ontario and that gradual steps like the Homes You Can Afford plan should not be misconstrued as final solutions but the very first stride on the way to true change. They are called ‘systemic’ problems for a reason.

As of this writing, Ontario’s next provincial election is scheduled for June of 2022, although it could be called at Doug Ford’s whim due to his majority hold. It will be a tough election. It is already evident that Ford and the Progressive Conservatives are committed to further debasing Ontario’s people and environment in the name of profits and they will throw everything at dividing the left so as to conquer it. Although forced to denounce the Proud Boys, Ford is still affiliated with numerous hate groups which he could galvanize. The Liberals, themselves beholden to various business relationships, have been quiet lately and no doubt are waiting to see where the other parties land in terms of policy before venturing in to serve as a middle ground. For its part, the Green Party wants to capitalize on environmental pressures to pass some otherwise reactionary policies but has only ever found very limited, local success and will solely serve to further destabilize the left. It is a pivotal turning point in Ontario’s history, we stand at the edge of an abyss deciding whether to jump in or back off to ride the ledge a little longer.

Although it may not fully matter who wins the next election in Ontario as the ultimate result will be an adherence to the capitalist modus operandi in an industry that needs everything but. What would an alternative look like? I am not an economist, although we can allow ourselves one flight of fancy. The average salary for people in Toronto is approximately $65,000 per year, that seems high to me but let us use the numbers provided by the city itself. In the case of co-op housing where monthly rent is capped at a maximum of 20% of the renter’s income, that would mean that the highest monthly rent for the person with that salary would be $1,083.33 per month. Not a mean nor an average but the absolute most one would ever pay for that household. That’s $700 less than the average one-bedroom apartment in Toronto at the time of writing. $700 more dollars a month with which you could improve your life, the lives of your loved ones, and the community. And that would not just be for one month or one year but for every year from now on. Since that is the maximum cap of that rent, it could be even less depending on where and how that person chooses to live, and naturally that rent will change depending on income. Whether that person would invest that extra capital into their neighborhood or into buying expensive collectibles for their own amusement is unknown, of course, as the unconscious desire for the immediate comfort of material goods has overtaken our better nature. This too is a symptom of the capitalist fever dream, and it is the role of the socialist to set an example in these cases and to demonstrate the methodology in question. Now allow yourself to imagine an entire apartment building of tenants with extra capital to invest in their surroundings. No matter the initial condition of that building, within a year it would be vastly improved as those living on the premises are more fit to guide the fate of that building than any landlord or foreign holding company. A short-sighted view of economics? Perhaps, as said I am not an economist, merely a working class person who knows what a difference a program like that would make.

With an alternative discussed, we turn to how best to achieve it and as always the answer is to ORGANIZE. Socialism is the society of the communal, we must deepen our bonds in the community to ensure the State has fewer and fewer levers with which to exert power. Know your grocer, know your plumber, know your neighborhood mechanic. Apartment buildings house a myriad of potentially skilled people, all contained within an existing community already, as disconnected as it may seem at the moment. So many have become so isolated that the concept of work to aid their fellow humans has become a foreign concept and this is the greatest barrier to modern socialism, we can solve that by strengthening our communities and demonstrating the worth of such labour. In some places, it is already happening and we only have to harness it. If housing is a human right and it is not a human right to profit off another human’s exploitation, as intrinsic as that is for capitalism to thrive, then let us stand by that rate of 20% of income provided in co-op housing, with the assurance that the rate can lower depending on required expenses. As communities we can make those demands, as individuals we cannot. That is a socialist housing plan, for these times at least.