NEW YORK CITY, February 12— Capitalism makes sure that exploitation and profiteering are ever present even as homelessness becomes just another business.
“Man, I feel like there’s some exploitation going on here. I feel it!”
That is what one of the more than 250 homeless men, almost all Black, told a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrade last July, after New York City (NYC) officials  moved them into the Lucerne Hotel for emergency lodging during the Covid-19 pandemic (see CHALLENGE, 12/4/2020 and 10/22/2020).
New York City spends in excess of $2 billion yearly to shelter providers to serve the more than 80,000 homeless New Yorkers. Much of this money is doled out to so-called nonprofits, no matter which political party is in power. While there are at least 20,000 homeless children and 97 percent of those in shelters are Black and Latin, the “do-gooder” leaders of many of these “nonprofits” make salaries of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The murderous inequality on every level, alongside the wealth of Wall St. and Billionaire’s Row, enforced by racist police terror, cries out for an end to the profit system with communist revolution. Communism would eliminate all homelessness immediately.
Gov’t enables nonprofit corruption
Recent events have shed some light on NYC’s $2 billion “homeless industry,” where business is booming! The Doe Fund is a nonprofit that works with formerly incarcerated and homeless people. While providing shelter, it also supplies local business improvement districts (BIDs) with an army of minimum-wage sanitation workers that sweep the streets, clean the parks and deliver meals to hotels during the pandemic. This work used to be done by City workers with union contracts. The BIDs pay $12/hr., less than the $15 minimum wage. They would have to pay over three times as much for private sanitation. The Doe Fund makes up the $3/hr. difference in workers’ checks but gets back twice as much by charging the workers $249/week to cover coronavirus expenses (PPE), food, clothing and vocational training.
“It’s feudalism, pure exploitation,” one DoE Fund worker in the program said. “They receive money from the city and private donors, and they take money from us. A thousand dollars a month. Where is it going?” (The Appeal, 7/29/20)
Let’s take a look where it goes. The “non-profit” Doe Fund took in $54 million more in revenue than it spent in 2019. Founders George McDonald (who died on January 26) and his wife (Harriet-Karr McDonald) collect salaries of $400,000 each. His son draws $308,000 and his stepdaughter more than $100,000 (Dana Rubinstein, Politico, 11/7/19).  McDonald is also the Doe Fund’s landlord, collecting $17,000/month in office rent (Politico). The Doe Fund owns a number of apartment buildings across the City, but they are not available to the workers in the program.
Another profiteering, corrupt “nonprofit” is the Bronx Parent Housing Network (BPHN). On February 7, Victor Rivera, its CEO was fired and is now facing a criminal investigation after The New York Times reported that 10 women, both staff and women living in the shelter system, accused him of sexual assault. One woman had formally filed a complaint with the City, only to have it referred back to the BPHN, who dismissed it. Rivera is also accused of nepotism (unlike McDonald), directing contracts to friends and mixing his non-profit with his for-profit businesses (NYT, 2/7/21).  The complaints of sexual assault by 10 women and financial corruption did not stop NYC officials  from paying him about $275 million since 2017.
The working class needs communism
NYC is a showcase for a capitalist system that doesn’t work and needs to be replaced. Thousands of available hotels and office buildings remain empty, yet the number of homeless is rising along with tens of thousands of workers trying to survive the pandemic on poverty wages. Not so ironically, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio wanted to send the homeless workers in the Lucerne Hotel to a homeless shelter in the Wall St. area, the home of the bankers and businessmen who have gotten richer during the pandemic while increasing poverty. Now Citibank billionaire Ray McGuire is running for Mayor to try to save NYC for the rich. We need communist revolution to take back the whole world for the working class.
The real-estate developers and the financiers that invest in luxury housing, the bankers and their politicians; it’s this capitalist class who are responsible for homelessness and mass incarceration.We can end homelessness as soon as we overthrow capitalism. Communist revolution will mean a society run by and for the working class.