I saw a young man today at Whole Foods wearing a T-shirt that said “LEGALIZE HOUSING.” I debated whether or not to approach him and ask what his shirt meant. I decided not to; I don’t want to be “that old guy” who picks quarrels with twenty-somethings. In a way I wish I had asked him, because it would have been interesting to hear what he had to say. I’m open to criticism for remaining silent; nobody can be tougher on me than I am on myself.
I would have asked him if he thought “housing” was really “illegal.” Obviously, it is not. I should think he knew that the statement itself was false. What I think he meant was that housing ought not to be so expensive as to exclude people, possibly himself, from having it. This is a common feeling in Oakland. The belief that “Housing is a human right” is proclaimed on lampposts throughout the city. Carroll Fife acted on this belief when she took over that house with her Moms 4 Housing group.
How do you define “human right”? Who gets to define it? There’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution about housing. There are United Nations declarations about housing being a “right,” but these are ideals, and anyway, America is not governed by the U.N. So what does it mean to say that “housing is a human right”?
I suspect that nothing I could have said to the young man would have changed his belief, so maybe it’s best that I remained silent. Nonetheless, in this matter of housing, as in so many other matters, we’re dealing with people who have not really thought through their positions. They come up with idealistic notions that are completely unachievable and intellectually indefensible, and when we point this out, they accuse us of being the problem. That’s just a crown of thorns we have to wear.
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Meanwhile, of course Mayor London breed opposes a $50 million request to create an Office of Reparations in San Francisco, a proposal from some members of the Board of Supervisors. Breed has the responsibility of leadership. Unlike the braying Supervisors, who are infamous for coming up with ideas that sound like they were cooked up over a hookah, Breed actually has to govern. And she knows that a lot of the reparations conversation is baloney.
So, too, I believe, does Gov. Newsom. Soon, he’ll have to weigh in on the findings of California’s own Reparations Task Force, which seems almost certain to recommend impossible (and possibly illegal) payments to Black Californians. Again, like Breed, Newsom actually has to govern. And I’m hopeful that he’ll stand firm against cash payments.
It’s not politically correct to say so, but I’m against cash payments for reparations. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, California was never a slave state. No living person in California ever owned slaves, or ever was a slave. This current mania for reparations is simply an emotional response to the times, and we all know that emotional responses are not a good way to make decisions. The weltanschauung of the times constantly changes, as it should; this romantic notion of reparations will pass. Some sort of symbolic form of reparations will probably have to be crafted, but it cannot cost the State of California, or our cities and counties, vast amounts of money which they do not have. Gov. Newsom, if he has national ambitions (and I suspect he does) is going to have to be very careful. Numerous polls in recent years show that a great majority of Americans oppose cash reparations. I can think of no greater way to stoke resentment, especially toward the Democratic Party, than to award Black people huge amounts of money in order to compensate for something that happened centuries ago. Gov. Newsom’s name will personally be associated with any reparations that the State of California approves. If he wants to kill his political career, approving cash reparations will be a good way to do it.
Steve Heimoff