Vendor Writing: Affordable Housing: A Right, or a Necessity?

Affordable Housing: A Right, Or A Necessity?

BY LISA A., CONTRIBUTOR VENDOR

Affordable housing is now a commitment that is repairing decades of harm in Nashville.

Many of us might be skeptical of politicians in general, but we have to acknowledge that Mayor John Cooper is coming through with flying colors in the livable, affordable housing mandate he set in response to voter’s wishes. He is actually implementing the platform he ran on. Congratulations to Mayor Cooper for his acts of integrity.

To read more about his initiative and his partners, you can go to this link. https://www.nashville.gov/departments/mayor/housing/barnes-fund

I am curious to hear from our readers whether they think that people should earn their housing at whatever the market is demanding, or whether housing should be scaled to the actual pay scale in Nashville.

If you are on the right wing side of the spectrum, you might feel that people have to earn the right to housing. On the left side, you would say that everyone already deserves housing simply for existing.

But have we considered what gave birth to this debate in the first place?

We have placed arbitrary values on people based on what kind of income they are able to generate for our GOP. But there’s so many kinds of work that are unpaid or on acknowledged.

An act of kindness, child care, parenting, house work, general chores and repairs used to be counted as part of a valuable household “income“.

Since the advent of the industrial era, corporate bosses did not see fit to pay the wife at home or the caretaker at home who was doing all the work that their worker could not do. It would be fair to say that the United States went through a long period where no one was valued unless they could put money in the pockets of a corporation. And only for so long as they were able to do that.

In fact, we all have at least a vague idea of the hard fight to gain equitable wages in the first place. It took nearly 100 years.

Funny that, so did women getting the right to vote. And let’s not talk about the 500 years towards emancipation.

So my question is, if we can’t or won’t actually pay our “boots on the ground" people a living wage, then we must provide alternative housing, correct?