Sol Auerbach (James S. Allen), who wrote extensively on the condition of Black renters in New York City, presents the Party’s housing program for the 1929 New York municipal elections.

‘Communist Housing Program for Working-class Tenants’ by Sol Auerbach from the Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 53. May 9, 1929.

No Segregation; State Houses for Workers; Low Rents; No Evictions; Good Houses

THE municipal election in New York City is approaching. Housing, the most intimate phase of the workers’ lives, will be used by the capitalist parties and the reformist socialist party for their own purposes in the election campaign.

As in the past, the three parties of and for the capitalist system, will approach the workers for votes either on what they pretend they have done to relieve the housing situation or with promises of what they will do when they get into office.

Prepare Fake Screen.

The Tammany speakers will point to the Multiple Dwellings Bill, passed by the New York State legislature and signed by Governor Roosevelt with almost the unanimous support of the realtors and land sharks, as a “progressive” step in “restrictive” housing legislation. When they speak of the good done for the tenants, whatever they say will be a lie, for there has never been a more brazen housing fake law put across than this one.

Mayor Walker is now busy constructing a mask of housing fakes which will be worn by the landlords and their soap-boxers during the campaign. He is now preparing what he calls a model housing scheme for Forsythe and Chrystie Streets in the lower East Side. He has also favored the Allen Street scheme for widening and the construction of “model apartments.” Both these schemes are fakes, which even if put into effect, would be done so for the benefit of the members of the East Side Chamber of Commerce. But, just as during the last municipal election, he will continue talking these schemes until after the elections, and then if elected either forget all about them or actually build model tenements for the well-to-do.

Their Bluffing Ability.

To realize the bluffing ability of these grafters, we need only recall the fact, that since 1835 the Tammany machine in New York City has been talking housing relief and to this very day, in 1929, has done nothing to relieve the housing situation, but has allowed it to go from bad to worse.

Of course, the Tammany speakers will say nothing of the Emergency Rent Laws, which, inadequate as they are, will be totally repealed on May 31, on the recommendation of a committee appointed by the former democratic Governor Smith.

Park Avenue Parties.

The republican party bluffers will go on the street with promised reforms in housing. Just imagine what the republican party, the party of big business and the landlords, will do for working class tenants! The republicans have shown with undoubted ability how well they can govern for the interests of the exploiters, in city, state and national governments.

These parties are to be fought with all the might and main of the working class, for they represent the tenants of lower Park Avenue, the avenue of 2,000 millionaires.

Socialist for Constitution.

The socialist party, the party of “struggling” corporation lawyers, collared and de-collared clergymen and reformist strikebreakers, has already told us what it will do on housing during the election campaign. Mr. William Karlin, the lawyer and ex-honorable, will call the “politicians by their numbers, the only thing that the socialist party can do during such a campaign.” Mr. William Feigenbaum, also ex-honorable, will attack the Soviet Union because it allows “all the houses to go to pieces.” Norman Thomas, “the old man who has retained the touch of youth,” the kindly pulpiteer teacher of the S.P., will allow no illusions to remain in the minds of the workers. He will tell them, as he has been telling them for some time, that the socialist party will not be able to alter the constitution if its candidates are elected (“an emergency in itself,” says Mr. Waldman, the corporation lawyer, following in the footsteps of Morris Hillquit). And without altering the constitution nothing much can be done for the workers in the tenements, continues the old young man. The socialist party, of course, would not think of altering the constitution.

Kind Tammany.

But one thing they will do, say the spokesmen of the socialist party. They will tell the workers in the tenements that all they will have to do is ask the kind tiger Tammany and its rider Walker to make the tenements a little better to live in and, presto, the tenements will be better to live in.

That is the program of the socialist party on housing.

Workers Have a Party.

The tenants that live in the old, tumble-down, disease-breeding tenements of the segregated working class districts of Harlem, the East Side, the West Side, Brooklyn; in the barbed-wire fenced areas of upper and lower Harlem; in the worst slums in the world; in the gas-fumed houses along the waterfront; under the roar of the I.R.T. trains; in the wooden fire-cages in Queens; in “Hell’s Kitchen”; in alleys and courts; under the lash of the whip of rent-raisers and evictions–these workers have a Party of their own.

That Party is the Communist Party of the United States of America.

Class Struggle Platform.

The New York District of our Party will enter the municipal election campaign with the platform of the class struggle.

The platform of the class struggle knows no sweet words for exploiters or any of their apologists. It is a platform of struggle against the exploiters and their system; it declares war upon the capitalists, their government, their politicians, police, courts, their exploiters abroad, their war preparations, labor bureaucrats, reformers and socialists.

Against Landlordism.

It is the platform of the working class, a working class which includes every proletarian, white, Negro, American, Polish, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Latin American, Antillia every nationality and race in the world. For us the only line is the class line, the line that separates the mass of workers from the clique of exploiters.

Ore of the planks of the platform for the class struggle is the plank swung at the landlords and the system of landlordism, an integral part of the system of capitalism.

The platform of the Communist Party takes up the fight of the workers in the tenements as a part of the fight of the working class against the capitalists in every field of exploitation.

House Committees.

To fight effectively, organization is necessary. Only the pressure of the masses, organized into effective units, can wring housing relief from the landlords and their legislature. Only the reactionary power of the masses can force sanitary conditions in the tenements, do away with rent robbery and break down the racial and national barriers put up by the exploiters.

The immediate organization steps that the Communist Party urges upon the workers in the tenements is the organization of mass tenant leagues, based upon the organization of house committees in the tenements. The house committees, acting like shop committees in the factories, are to represent the tenants in dealing with the landlords, declare rent strikes against rent-raisers and evictions when necessary and act unitedly with the house committees organized throughout the city.

Our Housing Program.

The Communist Party comes be- fore the workers of New York City with the following program on housing for the municipal elections:

1. No segregation in housing; the abolition of the race barriers artificially erected and kept by the landlords in Harlem and other sections of the city where Negro workers are forced to live.

2. The construction of dwellings by city and state, rented without profit.

3. The municipal fixing of low rents for workers, not to exceed 10 per cent of their wages.

4. Adequate housing of unemployed workers and their families by the municipality without charge.

5. Down with fake housing legislation, such as the Multiple Dwellings Bill, and the passage of laws which will force the landlords to maintain the houses in sanitary condition, provide adequate heating, ventilation and light, laws which are to be enforced.

6. Municipal aid for workers building their own co-operative apartment houses.

7. The construction of playgrounds and the maintenance of nurseries in the working class districts by the municipal government.

By Force of Masses.

Only the pressure of the working masses can wring these concessions from the exploiters, only mass pressure can maintain the concessions we win.

Until the time when the force of the masses overthrows the system of exploitation and creates a workers’ and farmers’ government, the masses must force the exploiters to grant concessions, in housing as well as in wages, shorter hours and better conditions.

The Communist Party is the only Party that can lead the workers effectively in such a struggle. Help build it. Join it now. Win new adherents for it. Vote Communist in the municipal elections.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n053-NY-may-09-1929-DW-LOC.pdf