Freedom From...Fair Housing Edition

M THE OC

M CO T.

HOUSING INEQUALITY

EM OV EN M

FREEDOM FROM...

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 03

05

07

AMERICA’S HOUSING ATROCITY

NAMING THE ENEMY

DEATH BY POLICY

09

11

12

WHAT MUST BE DONE

PICK YOUR SIDE

FREEDOM IS CONDITIONAL

13

15

19

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS

PRISON POLICY INITIATIVE

WITHOUT A HOME, NOTHING ELSE IS POSSIBLE

02

America’s Housing Atrocity: 16 Million Empty Homes,

1.5 Million Unhoused — A Declaration of War

“You can’t reform a system built on our destruction.

You can only dismantle it.” / THE MOCKINGBIRD MOVEMENT

THIS IS NOT A CRISIS — THIS IS A

poor to discipline and control

CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

them. It is the logical endpoint of capitalism — a system that views

We are living in an era of

housing not as a human right, but

engineered scarcity. In the richest

as a commodity to be hoarded.

country on Earth — where corporations sit atop mountains

THE LIE OF SCARCITY — THERE IS

of wealth and the luxury real

NO HOUSING CRISIS, ONLY

estate market continues to boom

HOUSING THEFT

— 1.5 million people remain without shelter, forced to sleep in

The narrative we are fed is that

cars, under bridges, and in

there “just isn’t enough housing.”

encampments policed like open-

That the crisis is caused by

air prisons. Meanwhile, over 16

“overregulation,” “poor zoning,”

million homes — enough to house

or “not enough construction.”

every unhoused person ten times

These talking points are not only

over — sit empty. Not because

false — they are deliberate

they’re uninhabitable. Not

propaganda. They distract from

because they’re condemned. But

the core truth: America has an

because they are held hostage as

abundance of housing, but it’s

speculative assets, financial

been stolen.

products, or tools of gentrification.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 16 million homes in

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This is not accidental. This is not

the United States are currently

negligence. This is class warfare,

vacant. Of these, more than 11

carefully calculated and

million are habitable year-round.

mercilessly executed by landlords,

Some are held by absentee

banks, developers, and the state.

landlords and flippers waiting for

Homelessness is not a social ill to

prices to rise. Others are part of

be treated with charity and half-

failed luxury developments built

hearted reforms. It is a violent act,

not to house people, but to store

a weapon wielded against the

wealth for the global elite. Airbnb

alone has removed over 500,000 homes from long-term markets across major U.S. cities, hollowing out neighborhoods in the name of profit.

So why is the public being told we need to “build more”? Because new housing — especially “luxury housing” — is more profitable for developers. Because construction contracts enrich politicians and private contractors. And because blaming “the market” or “the government” obscures the true villains: the capitalist class, who profit off every eviction, every foreclosure, and every body that dies without a roof.

HOUSING AS A TOOL OF CONTROL — THE WAR AGAINST THE POOR IS BUILT INTO THE FOUNDATIONS Housing in America has always been political. It has always been racialized. It has always been weaponized.

From redlining in the 1930s to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, housing policy has been used to segregate, discipline, and displace. Black families were denied mortgages for decades through racist lending practices, while white suburban sprawl was subsidized by the federal government. Public housing was intentionally defunded and stigmatized, not because it failed, but because it worked — it housed the poor without enriching landlords.

As neoliberalism took hold in the 1980s, the government began to dismantle public housing under programs like HOPE VI. Entire communities were demolished and replaced with “mixedincome” developments — a coded phrase meaning displacement of the poor in favor of gentrifiers. Housing was handed over to the private sector. Homelessness, which had previously existed in small numbers, skyrocketed into a permanent class.

Today, the criminalization of homelessness is the norm. Cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York spend millions of dollars each year not to house people, but to surveil them, evict them from encampments, and harass them into oblivion. This isn’t “misguided policy.” It is a system designed to disappear the undesirable — to force the poor into jails, shelters, or graves.

Anywhere but the public eye.

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NAMING THE ENEMY: WHO PROFITS FROM OUR SUFFERING?

Blackstone Group Blackstone is one of the largest corporate landlords on the planet. After the 2008 housing crash, the company bought up tens of thousands of foreclosed homes and turned them into highrent, poorly maintained rental properties for working-class families. In 2023 alone, Blackstone made over $2 billion in profit from residential rental income — much of it extracted from communities still reeling from the financial crisis they helped fuel.

Airbnb What started as a platform for spare rooms has become a major driver of housing insecurity. In cities like New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Miami, Airbnb has devoured long-term rental markets, pushing up rents, displacing tenants, and transforming once-affordable neighborhoods into temporary hotels for tourists. This practice has hollowed out communities and made it even harder for working families to find stable, affordable housing.

RealPage RealPage is a software company that developed a rent-setting algorithm allowing landlords to collectively raise rents while avoiding open collusion. By sharing pricing data and strategically setting rates, they’ve created what amounts to a legal rent-fixing cartel. The result?

Skyrocketing rents in cities across the country, with little accountability and no meaningful government intervention.

Zillow, Redfin, and other tech platforms Online real estate platforms like Zillow and Redfin have done more than make house hunting easier — they’ve turned homes into speculative assets. By buying, flipping, and manipulating property listings, these companies facilitate speculative price increases that leave working-class families priced out of neighborhoods they’ve lived in for generations.

Police Departments Police don’t just respond to evictions — they lead them. Across U.S. cities, departments carry out encampment sweeps, destroy personal belongings, and assault unhoused people under the guise of “public safety.” Their role in this crisis isn’t about maintaining order. It’s about protecting property interests, clearing valuable

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land for developers, and making poverty less visible to the privileged.

This is not a system gone wrong.

This is a well-oiled machine of extraction & extermination, and every death on the street is a line on someone’s balance sheet.

DEATH BY POLICY — HOMELESSNESS AS A MECHANISM OF SOCIAL CONTROL To be homeless in America is to be treated as subhuman. You are stripped of your dignity, your privacy, your safety, and your identity. The state does not merely fail to protect you — it actively seeks to erase you.

The life expectancy of an unhoused person in America is 30 years shorter than the national average. You are more likely to be: Arrested for minor infractions like “camping” or “loitering” Beaten or killed by police Denied access to hospitals or mental health care Robbed or sexually assaulted Die from exposure, disease, overdose, or suicide This isn’t just collateral damage — it’s the point. A visible, brutalized homeless population is a warning to the rest of the working class: this is what happens when you fall out of line. Homelessness creates fear. It drives people into exploitative jobs. It softens resistance. It is a form of economic terrorism, and the state is the chief architect.

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@the.mockingbird.movement

WHAT MUST BE DONE REVOLUTIONARY SOLUTIONS FOR A SYSTEM BEYOND REPAIR We cannot reform this. You cannot tweak a machine built for profit and expect it to deliver justice. It’s time to stop asking for crumbs and start taking the damn bakery.

Expropriate Vacant Housing Not tomorrow. Not after some “study.” Now. Millions of homes are sitting empty while people die. Those homes belong to the people. Seize them. Occupy them. Turn them into radical housing collectives.

Abolish Corporate and Excessive MultiProperty Ownership No one should be allowed to hoard dozens, hundreds, or thousands of properties while others freeze outside. Ban corporate, hedge fund, and predatory landlord empires. Transition housing into cooperative, non-profit, or communal models.

Legalize and Normalize Squatting If the state won’t provide housing and the system keeps homes empty, then occupying them is not a crime — it’s a moral imperative.

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Defund the Police, Fund Housing Every dollar that goes to riot gear, assault rifles, and sweeps is stolen from our collective survival.

Reinvest that money into radical, tenant-led housing solutions.

Ban Corporate Housing Ownership Make it illegal for corporations, hedge funds, or foreign investors to own residential properties.

Housing is not a bank vault — it’s a human necessity.

Build Dual Power We must stop relying on the state. Form tenant unions. Mutual aid collectives. Community land trusts. Create housing governance rooted in solidarity, not speculation. Direct action is housing policy.

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THIS IS WAR PICK YOUR SIDE

Let’s be absolutely clear: the system has already declared war on us. On the poor, the working class, the unhoused, the mentally ill, the drug users, the immigrants, the disabled, and the survivors.

Every eviction, every bulldozed tent, every stolen shelter bed, it’s all part of an economic war machine. So we don’t fight this with policy briefs. We fight this like what it is — an occupation. We fight with blockades, occupations, rent strikes, and property takeovers. We refuse to be invisible. We refuse to be disposable.

This is the generation that ends homelessness by ending the system that created it. We will not be polite. We will not wait. We will not negotiate with landlords who think homes are assets and cops who think poverty is a crime.

THE HOMES ARE OURS We are done pleading for our humanity. We are done watching our people die while condos sit dark. We are done with the lie of “affordable housing” while the rich vacuum up everything we build.

There are more homes than unhoused people.

So there is no housing crisis — only housing theft.

Let the landlords tremble. Let the bureaucrats panic.

Because we are coming for what is ours.

And we’re not leaving.

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“Prison is a plantation. Parole is sharecropping. Either way, the master keeps the keys.”

— Anonymous, formerly incarcerated abolitionist

FREEDOM IS CONDITIONAL — AND THEY CONTROL THE CONDITIONS In the U.S. prison-industrial complex, incarceration doesn’t end with a prison sentence. It continues under new names — parole, probation, reentry, supervised release — all systems designed to keep formerly incarcerated people under state surveillance and control long after they’ve “paid their debt.”

This isn’t a mistake. It’s a deliberate function of a carceral system built to keep poor people, especially Black and Brown poor people, in a perpetual state of captivity. The state knows exactly what it’s doing: using housing insecurity as a justification to extend sentences indefinitely.

Nowhere is this clearer than in how housing is used as a weapon. Tens of thousands of people across the country are denied parole — not for breaking laws, not for posing a threat, not for any act of harm — but because they lack a “verifiable” home address. They’re eligible for release. They’ve served their time. But because they are poor, houseless, or rejected by landlords, they’re forced to remain caged.

PAROLE ISN’T A PATH TO FREEDOM — IT’S A CONTINUATION OF INCARCERATION

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Most people believe parole is a humane alternative to incarceration — a “second chance” for people who’ve shown remorse and served their time. But in reality, parole is a surveillance trap designed to set people up to fail.

© 2020 Sally Deng for Human Rights Watch

Parole is not freedom — it’s conditional release.

The state retains control over your movement, employment, medical care, sobriety,

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS

relationships, and curfew.

You must meet with a parole officer regularly and obey arbitrary rules — like maintaining fulltime employment, abstaining from alcohol, and honoring curfews.

Any violation — even being five minutes late, missing a call, or losing your job — can send you right back to prison.

And most importantly: to even qualify for parole, you must have an “approved residence.”

Incarcerated people are routinely denied parole for having no permanent address, even if they’ve secured beds in shelters or transitional programs. This isn’t a minor issue — it’s one of the most common reasons for parole denial

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nationwide.

The numbers say it all: • In California, a 2020 report found 20% of all parole denials were due to lack of housing.

• In New York, over 2,000 people were held past their release date solely because of housing issues.

• In Texas, parole-eligible people wait months or years for halfway house openings even after being granted parole.

This is poverty criminalized. It’s the carceral state saying: “We won’t let you go unless you can buy your way out.”

HOUSING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST PAROLEES IS SYSTEMIC AND LETHAL Even when someone is released, the odds are stacked against them. Most landlords won’t rent to people with felony records. Many cities have “crime-free housing” ordinances that ban landlords from renting to parolees — especially if their convictions involve drugs, violence, or sex offenses. Even public housing authorities, funded by taxpayer dollars, routinely deny housing to the formerly incarcerated.

Barriers include: • Felony background checks • Mandatory address verification • “One strike” eviction policies in public housing • Registry requirements that force sex offenders into homelessness • Blacklists maintained by landlords and property managers In many states, parole officers refuse to approve transitional housing that accepts drug users, mental health patients, or LGBTQ+ individuals. As a result, even when housing exists, it’s often deemed “noncompliant.”

All this in a country with over 16 million vacant homes and more than 600,000 people released from prisons each year.

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According to the Prison Policy Initiative: People on parole are 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public.

Black formerly incarcerated people face the highest rates of housing discrimination.

LGBTQ+ parolees, especially trans women of color, are often barred from both men’s and women’s shelters.

This isn’t accidental. It’s a civil death sentence for people already targeted by the state.

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PAROLE KEEPS PRISONS FULL — THAT’S THE POINT Let’s be clear: parole is not a compassionate system. It’s a control mechanism built to serve the prison economy — a system worth over $80 billion a year.

The longer someone stays under supervision, the more they can be: • Fined • Arrested • Drug tested • Monitored • Reincarcerated Every interaction is a revenue stream.

Every ankle monitor is a contract. Every halfway house bed is a profit center.

Every “technical violation” is a reason to drag someone back inside.

While the average parole term is 19 months, people can spend years cycling between prison and release because they cannot meet impossible conditions — with housing at the top of that list.

Many states operate under zero-tolerance rules. If someone becomes unhoused, even temporarily, they’re labeled as “absconding,” triggering a warrant, arrest, and return to prison.

This isn’t incidental — it’s the business model. It creates a class of people who are: • Legally free, but materially enslaved • Hyper-policed, but under-resourced • Blamed for failures engineered by the system itself This is how mass incarceration survives long after people walk out of the gates.

THIS IS RACIAL, ECONOMIC, AND SOCIAL WARFARE Parole and housing discrimination don’t affect everyone equally. This violence is deeply racialized, class-stratified, and gendered.

• Black people are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white people.

• Latinx people are overrepresented in parole systems in every major state.

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• Indigenous people experience the highest rates of homelessness and criminalization in many rural areas.

• Women of color, especially mothers, are often denied parole if they can’t “prove” a stable family environment.

• Trans and queer people, especially trans women, are denied access to gender-aligned housing — inside and outside of prison.

The parole system reinforces every layer of oppression — race, gender, poverty, disability, and sexuality. It doesn’t rehabilitate people. It punishes survival.

Parole doesn’t “give second chances.” It protects property. It upholds white supremacy. It perpetuates economic apartheid. It criminalizes poverty and profits from punishment.

REVOLUTIONARY DEMANDS — BUILD POWER, NOT PROGRAMS We don’t need more reentry programs that treat survival like charity. We need a militant housing justice movement that connects housing to abolition.

Our demands: 1. Abolish housing as a condition for parole. No one should be imprisoned for lacking an address.

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2. Guaranteed housing upon release.

If the state can fund prisons, it can fund housing.

3. Ban criminal background checks for housing. Felonies must not be used as an excuse to deny shelter.

4. End registry-based exile.

Dismantle the sex offender registry system that forces thousands into permanent homelessness.

5. End parole, probation, and carceral surveillance. These aren’t alternatives to incarceration. They’re its extension.

6. Build abolitionist housing networks. Tenant unions, housing takeovers, mutual aid collectives — these are how we build safety when the state won’t.

, S S E L E M O H G IN E B R O F S IF THEY CAGE U — R E T L E H S N W O R U O D IL WE WILL BU ALLS W IR E H T N W O D R A E T D N A The state says: “We’ll free you — if you have a home.”

But it’s the same system that evicted you, denied you, and criminalized you in the first place.

We’re done playing that game. We’re done begging for parole, for housing, for mercy. Our people remain locked up because of poverty, because of capitalism, because of a system that punishes survival itself.

Let’s be ungovernable in the face of that machine.

Let’s build shelter for one another where the state refuses.

Let’s liberate housing from landlords.

Let’s break open every cage.

Because no one is free while anyone is caged.

Because no one is free while freedom is conditional.

Because housing is a human right — and freedom is non-negotiable.

Burn the parole system.

House the people.

Liberate us all.

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“You cannot heal if you’re still being hunted. You can’t grow if you Are never safe. You cannot be free without a place to rest.”

— Mockingbird Movement Manifesto

WITHOUT A HOME, NOTHING ELSE IS POSSIBLE They want you to believe that housing is a privilege. That it must be earned. That it’s a reward for hard work, discipline, and good behavior. But that’s a lie.

Housing is not a luxury. It’s a biological, psychological, and existential necessity.

Without stable shelter, human beings break down — physically, emotionally, spiritually. A home isn’t just four walls. It’s the foundation of every single part of our health, safety, and identity.

And yet, in the wealthiest country on Earth, we treat housing like a prize. We auction it, flip it, rent it, hoard it. We force people to

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choose between shelter and food. Between rent and survival. We call the unhoused “lazy,” “dangerous,” “crazy” — but never ask what decades of being denied safety does to the human mind.

This essay is a declaration: housing is a core psychological requirement, as essential as water, sleep, and air. And any system that withholds it — any politician, landlord, or policy that justifies its scarcity — is committing psychological warfare.

MASLOW’S PYRAMID IS A SCHEME UNDER CAPITALISM

PYRAMID

You’ve probably heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — a classic psychological theory outlining human requirements for survival and growth. It’s usually shown as a pyramid with five layers:

1. Physiological Needs — food, water, warmth, shelter 2. Safety — personal security, stability 3. Love and Belonging — relationships, connection 4. Esteem — respect, dignity, self-worth 5. Self-Actualization — achieving one’s potential But here’s what they don’t say in psychology textbooks: capitalism denies the bottom layers of this pyramid to billions of people, then blames them for never reaching the top.

Without housing, you cannot access: • Regular meals (no fridge, no stove) • Sleep (constant police and environmental threats) • Safety (exposure to assault, weather, and illness) • Relationships (homelessness is isolating and dehumanizing) • Employment (no address, no showers, no rest) • Healthcare (mental and physical) • Any sense of identity or future Every unmet need compounds the next. And while psychologists talk about self-actualization, millions are still trying not to freeze to death.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL INSECURITY

IMPACT

OF

HOUSING

Let’s talk about what the lack of housing actually does to the mind and body. This isn’t theory — this is documented in decades of psychological, medical, and neuroscientific research.

Cognitive Collapse • Studies show that chronic homelessness causes memory loss, difficulty concentrating, and executive dysfunction — the brain’s ability to plan, make decisions, or manage impulses.

• Unhoused individuals show higher cortisol levels, which damage the hippocampus (the brain’s memory center).

• Lack of sleep, constant stress, and trauma disrupt neural development and literally shrink parts of the brain.

www.reallygreatsite.com

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Psychological Trauma • Homelessness is classified by many psychologists as a form of complex trauma — meaning it is ongoing, unavoidable, and relationally damaging.

• Exposure to violence, sexual assault, and repeated loss while unhoused causes PTSD, panic disorders, and dissociation.

• Many unhoused individuals develop depression and suicidal ideation — not because they are “mentally ill,” but because their environment is unlivable.

Internalized Dehumanization • The constant message from society is: You are disposable. You are dangerous. You don’t belong.

• Without an address, people are denied voting rights, healthcare, employment, and even the ability to have a bank account or ID. • This exclusion from society causes shame, numbness, rage, and learned helplessness — conditions created not by the individual, but by the violence of abandonment.

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THE STATE USES HOUSING TO CONTROL THE MIND We’re not just denied housing — we’re denied the mental security that comes with it. And that’s not random. It’s strategic.

Housing provides mental anchoring. It’s a base to return to, a space to decompress, a setting to form identity. Without it, the mind is in constant fight-or-flight. And that’s by design.

Just like food deserts are used to starve communities into submission, housing deserts are used to: • Keep the poor in survival mode • Force people into compliance through desperation • Punish political dissent (activists and parolees are often evicted) • Maintain class divisions by keeping the working class unstable Every tent sweep is a mental health attack.

Every eviction is emotional terrorism. Every empty home that’s padlocked while someone sleeps outside is a weapon of social control.

HOME IS HEALING — THE PROOF IS UNDENIABLE When people are given permanent housing, their psychological and physical health improves dramatically — even without treatment.

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Evidence-Based Reality • The “Housing First” model, used in cities like Salt Lake City and Helsinki, has shown up to 85% retention rates among chronically homeless individuals.

• Housing First participants had: • Decreased hospital visits • Reduced psychiatric admissions • Lower incarceration rates • Higher employment rates • Studies from the National Alliance to End Homelessness show housing reduces substance use and improves mental clarity far more effectively than treatment without housing.

Because when people are housed • They can sleep.

• They can recover.

• They can build relationships.

• They can think about the future.

• They can heal.

And the state knows this. But instead of implementing it nationwide, they sabotage, defund, and discredit these programs — because a healed population isn’t desperate. And desperation is profitable.

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Freedom From...

RADICAL SOLUTIONS — HOUSING AS A TOOL FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL LIBERATION We don’t want more studies. We don’t need more panels. We already know what works.

What we need is power, resources, and the political will to liberate housing from capitalism.

Militant Demands for Mental Liberation 1. Declare housing a human right, not a commodity.

Enshrine housing as a guaranteed right in law and practice. It should be free and permanent, not conditional.

2. Abolish landlords and housing profiteers.

They do not “provide shelter.” They exploit human needs for cash. Return homes to the people who live in them.

3. Fund Housing First, not cops and cages.

End all funding for anti-homeless enforcement. Divert those funds into permanent supportive housing and mental health centers run by the community.

4. Build radical housing co-ops and land trusts.

Take land and buildings off the market and into collective ownership. These aren’t “alternatives” — they’re survival infrastructures.

5. Treat housing as mental health care.

Replace involuntary hospitalization with voluntary, safe housing. Give people space to heal on their own terms.

themockingbirdmovement.com

WE CANNOT BE FREE UNTIL WE ARE SHELTERED Housing is not just protection from the rain. It is the psychological base of human life. To be housed is to be seen. To be housed is to belong. To be housed is to believe you deserve to live.

And when they deny us housing, they’re not just denying us space — they’re denying us humanity.

But we don’t have to wait for permission.

We don’t have to ask for scraps.

We can build housing the state refuses to.

We can occupy what’s vacant.

We can heal each other.

We can house each other.

We can be dangerous, brilliant, and whole.

Because housing is not a reward.

It is not a luxury.

It is a right, a necessity, and a weapon in the fight for liberation.

And we intend to use it.

A HOME IS MORE THAN A ROOF — IT’S A REVOLUTIONARY FOUNDATION They reduce it to square footage. To rent, credit, and eligibility.

But we know better. A home isn’t just where we live — it’s where we come alive. Where we remember who we are.

Where we heal. Where the soul returns to the body.

To be housed is to be shielded from violence and nourished into vision. To believe in the future again. This isn’t a request.

It’s a reclamation: housing is transformational, revolutionary, holy — and in this cruel world, our most radical demand.

A HOME IS SHELTER — AND THE ABSENCE OF FEAR It shields us from cold and rain, yes — but more importantly, from the terror of not knowing where you’ll sleep. Inside a home, your shoulders drop. Your breath deepens. You are not prey tonight.

A HOME IS MEDICINE Without shelter, rest is broken by sirens, insects, and danger.

Inside, your body repairs. Your brain detoxes from cortisol. You wake without fear — and that alone adds years to your life.

Housing is public health. It’s a vaccine.

A HOME IS A FUTURE DELIVERY SYSTEM You can’t plan from a park bench. Jobs, school, care for your kids — none of it happens when tomorrow’s shelter is uncertain. A home makes hope possible.

A HOME IS WHERE PEOPLE GATHER Privacy, community, resistance, grief, and joy. Kitchens become classrooms. Living rooms become liberation spaces. Without shelter, connection is criminalized. Inside, it becomes strategy.

A HOME IS WHERE STORIES LIVE Walls soak up memory. Rooms bear witness. Without it, you vanish around every corner. With it, you become the author of your own history.

A HOME IS A CANVAS Paint your walls. Blast your music. Cover the place in protest stickers and poetry. Expression requires space — a place where you don’t need permission to exist.

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A HOME IS WHERE GENERATIONS HEAL Trauma is inherited, but healing needs routine. Stable shelter means bedtime stories, safety nets, and children who dream bigger. When we house someone, we transform a lineage.

A HOME IS A SITE OF RESISTANCE Landlords, governments, developers don’t want you to stay, gather, build. Because homes aren’t just shelter — they’re strongholds. They are how movements survive winter.

A HOME IS A WOMB FOR POSSIBILITY With a home, you begin to want more: Joy, justice, revenge, beauty. And, you finally have the energy to chase it. This is why they deny us homes. Because they fear what housed, dreaming people will do.

HOUSING IS A RIGHT, A TOOL, A WEAPON, A MIRACLE. Not a polite ask, but the baseline for humanity. It’s the floor we rise from. It activates us.

WE WANT MORE THAN HOUSING. WE WANT POWER ROOTED IN PLACE. We aren’t just fighting for shelter — we’re fighting for what becomes possible because of it: Art. Memory. Safety. Laughter. Love.

We want to remake the world from the living room up.

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THE FORGOTTEN FRONT LINE: VETERAN HOMELESSNESS IS STATE VIOLENCE “You served your country. Now sleep under a bridge.”

— The American Promise, in practice

They wave flags. They sing anthems. They flood football fields with paratroopers and fireworks. And all the while, outside the stadium, a man in the same uniform sleeps in the dirt. This isn’t a failure. It’s policy. The U.S. government uses poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous people as cannon fodder for empire and then throws them away like broken equipment. Veterans are fed to war, then abandoned to the streets. It’s not a tragedy.

It’s not hypocrisy. It’s violence. And it’s deliberate.

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By the government’s own data, over 33,000 veterans are unhoused on any given night in America. Roughly one in ten homeless adults is a veteran. Veterans are twice as likely to experience longterm homelessness as non-veterans, with women veterans — especially survivors of military sexual trauma — making up the fastest-growing unhoused veteran population.

LGBTQ+ veterans are regularly excluded from services and shelters. They send you to war for oil and empire, then leave you to rot in a sleeping bag behind a grocery store.

The system loves to blame mental illness, painting this crisis as tragic but unavoidable. But the truth is simpler: PTSD doesn’t make you homeless — capitalism does. It’s the lack of access to housing, therapy, income, and care that forces veterans onto the street. Disability

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claims take months or years. Housing vouchers through HUD-VASH are underfunded and impossible to get. VA hospitals are overwhelmed, underresourced, and often hostile. Veterans with “bad paper” discharges — whether for drug use, trauma responses, or rebellion — are denied services entirely.

The same government that sent you to kill doesn’t care if you live.

Let’s stop pretending veterans “fall through the cracks.” The entire system is a crack. A crack that traps, swallows, and destroys by policy. These men and women are not lazy. They are not weak.

They are not broken. They were used.

They were broken by design. And then they were discarded. This is not about individual failure — it’s about structural betrayal.

After service, veterans are criminalized for trauma responses like addiction, violence, and survival crimes. They’re incarcerated instead of treated, discharged without care plans, paroled without housing, and locked in cages for longer because of poverty-related charges. A 2022 report found that one in three unhoused veterans has been incarcerated, often for trying to survive.

We send people to war, then punish them for the way they lived through it.

Don’t talk about “honoring veterans” if you let them die under overpasses, slash VA budgets, contract private developers to build “affordable” housing no one can afford, and let landlords refuse the vouchers meant for them. Don’t honor veterans with flags. Honor them with homes. Or better yet — stop creating veterans in the first place. This housing crisis is directly tied to endless wars, military recruitment in poor schools, and a system built on manufacturing conflict and profit.

The only thank you that matters is shelter. Permanent, safe, unconditional

29 | FREEDOM FROM...

housing — not contingent on sobriety, religion, employment, or paperwork. We demand universal veteran housing as a human right, immediate use of empty government buildings as shelter, fasttracked access to income, therapy, and services, and an end to the military-toprison pipeline. No more dischargebased denials of care. No more Housing First programs buried in red tape. And beyond that, end the wars. Stop creating the trauma. Dismantle the machine that chews people up and calls it patriotism.

This country built monuments to war but won’t build homes for the people who fought them. You want to thank veterans? House them. Feed them. Get them off the concrete. And never send another generation to die for profit.

Veterans aren’t heroes in need of handouts — they are evidence. Living indictments of an empire that eats its own. If you want to end veteran homelessness, abolish the conditions that create it. Start with housing. Then keep going.