What we can learn from the DogSpots that are appearing in this and that part of our city, which is in the middle of a huge housing crisis, is exactly what markets can and cannot do. The market can provide consumers with air conditioned, auto-sanitized, cam-fitted, rental houses. And it would not be a surprise if such an investment even turned a profit. All of that is perfectly fine. This is the kind of thing that markets are good at doing, manufacturing luxuries. But when it comes to providing cheap and functional housing for the poor, forget it. What the history of market economics has shown us is that there are only two ways to house the poor. One is by public investment, and the other is by the poor doing it themselves.
An example of the latter, the poor housing themselves, is the cabin that a man, Chris Erickson, made in Dr. Jose Rizal Park. The cost of construction? “Three dollars of nails,” a rusty hammer, a broken saw, and the effort put forth to find and assemble the wood. Erickson has lived in this cabin for two years. And it looks stable and safe enough. But the mayor who plans to demolish the cabin in the near future also happens to be the mayor, Durkan, who supports, with religious intensity, a market that can only build air conditioned dog houses or luxury apartments. This is Seattle today.
Chris Erickson started off with a rock and a stick. “The only thing I’ve bought are three dollars of nails,” he said.
His cabin, built three years ago in the heart of a homeless camp, will be torn down Tuesday. (Reporting by @evergreenstone)https://t.co/ECEy4dfqGV pic.twitter.com/6qMIPIwuny
— Jeff Albertson (@Jeff_Albertson) September 30, 2019
DogSpot, the maker of shared dog houses that you can rent by the minute, is launching in Seattle as part of a national expansion. The startup has partnered with grocery chain QFC for an initial roll-out of eight houses that are set to launch by early June.
Just how fancy are the houses? They come with air conditioning and ultraviolet lights to disinfect the interior between uses. Pet parents can even check in on their pups during their stay through a “puppy cam” on the DogSpot app.
For years, the market urbanists told us that rents would eventually fall when supply overwhelm demand. But this was nothing but a dream within a dream. Scan the entire history of capitalism and what you will see, again and again, is that the moment when the values of property began to tank, a crash is in the offing. Scan the history of capitalism a second time and you will find that crashes never end with poor and working class people entering resplendently cheap homes and condos but, instead, with working and middle-class people being thrown out of them.
An economic crash has never made life better for the poor. But an economic boom can make life easier for dogs waiting for their masters.
