Prison the New Public Housing

by Leigh Graham · 2009-08-10 12:00:00 UTC
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Affordable housing advocates, esp. pro-public housing folks like myself, spend a lot of time comparing the various subsidized housing options out there: public housing, Section 8 vouchers for renting in the private market, tax-credit funded housing built by non-profit developers.  Turns out, we've been miscalculating by half the 4-6M or so units these different options provide, because we've been leaving out a major new source of publicly subsidized housing for the poor: Prison!

Yep, according to Ehrenreich's latest missive in the NYT (see our previous coverage of her series here and here), "the same number of Americans — 2.3 million — reside in prison as in public housing."

Ehrenreich wonders if the collision of rising extreme poverty and excess criminalization and incarceration policies will lead us to descalate both - resorting instead to humane treatment of the poor and a move away from criminalizing low-income people as, she fears, disgustedly, a revenue source in this extreme recession.  I'd add the masses find it morally uplifting to torment the poor during tough economic times, as it reassures us with a strong "us" vs. "them" dichotomy and gives us a sense of control of the more chaotic zones of life, given we can't seem to stop the corporate pillaging going on above us.

I too wonder if sheer economic necessity will work in our favor differently, by leading to de-crowding of prisons and cessation of expensive housing demolition and development programs.  Of course, our desire to clamp down on "concentrated poverty" and its alleged ills bodes differently for prisons versus public housing.  Dispersal strategies suddenly seem a lot more worrisome when we're casting offenders into the winds.

Most importantly, reversing these punitive, cruel, expensive cycles really requires to see the poor as human beings like us, our brethren, locked in a similar struggle for economic stability and justice.  It requires a framework that focuses less on poverty alleviation and more on poverty eradication.  It requires a common framework that embraces all of us.  Gee, I wonder what that could be...

(Photo of Fremantle Prison, a decommissioned prison in Australia, by amandabhslater)

Leigh Graham
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