Politicians now have a greater allegiance to wealth than democracy.

Fascism is not a coincidental occurrence during this housing crisis but a symptom of it. Western governments stopped improving, enhancing and in many cases providing beneficial social programs to mid and low income earners during the last decade. This happened because politicians have a greater allegiance to power and wealth than to democracy.

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It is not bad planning, natural disasters, the climate crisis, or Putin causing this struggle for people to pay their rent or keep up with their mortgages. It is outright greed from the 1% sanctioned by governments. If that is not corruption, on the scale of the mafia what the hell is it?

From this year to last, rents in England rose by 13%. The crushing cost of housing is one of the reasons why 9 million people in Britain require food banks to ensure they don't starve to death because either their income or benefits aren't enough to let them survive.

It’s 2024 and almost 10 million people in Britain rely upon charity to keep themselves fed. That is criminal. Politicians, Labour or Tory should be begging the public for forgiveness for turning the 21st century into a digital version of the Great Depression. But they won’t because they don’t care about your or me. The lives of others aren’t important unless they are from their own pampered class.

Rents are going up because investors are greedy and neoliberal society has made a virtue out of avarice.

Londoners pay an average of 40% of their income to keep a roof over their heads. A recent housing study in Canada showed minimum wage workers were at least five dollars an hour shy of income to afford rental prices in 2023 in all but 3 Canadian cities. In Germany, a land once known for rent controls, 1.6 million Germans pay over 50% of their income to housing.

Politicians have too much skin in the landlord game. Over 100 MPS at Westminster earn income from owning rental property. The House of Lords is packed with peers made rich from rent.

In Canada, 40% of its MPs own outright or have partnerships in rental properties. Local politics is no different because city mayors & council members are, in many cases, landlords. You can't expect a housing crisis to end if your politicians profit from the crisis or have friends and family profiting from our misery.

Neoliberalism dismantled the welfare state and replaced it with a scaffold of inequality where our democracy hangs like the corpse of a wrongfully convicted prisoner.

Unless citizens accept that the root cause of the cost of living crisis is the economic system of neoliberalism, the many will always struggle to keep a roof over their heads regardless of the political party elected to govern.

The only solution is unflinching resolve to break the system that keeps us in its harness.

Thanks for reading and supporting my Substack. Your support keeps me housed and also allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking.

The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to a cancer diagnosis in 2020 and then interstitial lung disease in 2023.

So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John