I’ve been reading a lot about the housing crisis in China. (also here and here, and a billion other places).

And since I majored in Russian, I have vivid memories from my Soviet history courses of memoirs and other primary sources that described the acute housing crisis that plagued the Soviet government for pretty much the entirety of its existence (not that the preceding or following system did a much better job of it). Collective flats, with five families to an apartment, seemed to be the best they could do - and it wasn’t very much fun for anyone, and it still required a massive and agonizing government bureaucracy to keep people in place.

So I’m wondering: does anyone know of any examples of a socialist system that was able to deal with this problem?

I’m not saying this to be critical of communist or socialist economic systems. I ask this as someone who feels strongly that alternatives to and/or radical restructuring of capitalism is necessary. I just find it interesting that this fundamental problem that most radicals in the West (including myself) attribute to the free market, did not go away in the absence of the free market.

And while I know the principles are similar, I am NOT talking about land reform. I know there’s lots of examples of a socialist government taking land away from rich/foreign/noble landlords and redistributing it to the agrarian working class. That seems to work out a lot better.

I’m talking about housing in an urban setting. The same thing we talk about here in New York when we talk about homelessness and the high cost of housing and the staggering, bewildering, depressing power of the real estate lobby in controlling the political process.  The same thing we think would be fine, just as soon as we can take it out of the clutches of the free market…

And for my Marxist/economics friends out there, are there any great analyses of WHY some of the most iconic socialist governments failed to tackle this fundamental indicator of inequality and injustice?

Interactive mapping is about more than just fun and games and Grindr-style hookups and helping me find the best subway line to take to get to a morning meeting on time.

Crowd-sourced mapping has the potential to impact people’s lives in truly transformative ways. Ushahidi was developed as a way to help people document and keep themselves safe from ethnic violence in Kenya, in the wake of a disputed election. In the Bay Area, when a police officer was convicted of manslaughter even though he shot and killed an unarmed, handcuffed Black man named Oscar Grant who was lying on the ground on his stomach, and the police prepared a riot squad response in anticipation of an uprising, protesters developed an open map at OscarGrantProtests.com, so that peaceful demonstrators could avoid the violence of overzealous cops.

Picture the Homeless is betting that the power of crowd-sourced mapping can go deeper than that. We think it can get progressive legislation passed, and forever change New York City housing policy. We recently deployed an Ushahidi-based open map called VACANT NYC that will help us get an accurate count of vacant property citywide.

For years, homeless people have been demanding action from city government around the massive numbers of vacant buildings and lots in New York City. While the city spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on providing shelter to the homeless, perfectly good property languishes in the hands of private landlords and city agencies. That’s why homeless folks drafted Intro 48, a city council bill that would empower the city to conduct an annual count of vacant buildings and lots.

But government officials say vacant property is not a problem… and even if it was, there’s no money to count these properties. To prove that vacant property is still a huge problem in this city, and that a census of these buildings and lots can be accomplished without breaking the bank, we’re turning this project over to the public. VACANT NYC lets New Yorkers send a text message or an email or fill out an online form, every time they see a vacant building or lot anywhere in the five boroughs.

Our little map is already getting big buzz. It was featured prominently in a recent article documenting the fight for Intro 48. This was subsequently picked-up as a featured story in the Housing and Land Use News Digest of NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

Other allies in the housing struggle have covered the map, including the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights: http://restorehousingrights.org/?p=1093

If VACANT NYC can prove that this is still a major problem, and that an accurate census of under-utilized property can be cost-effectively accomplished through participatory mapping, it’ll be a major revolution in the way that open-source technology impacts public policy.

So please - help us out! If you see something, say something. Tell us about vacant property in New York City. Publicize VACANT NYC on your own blog/website/Facebook/Twitter/Whatever. We are re-making the world as we map it; let’s make sure we map the kind of world we want to live in.

Come sleep with me.

31st Street and Eighth Avenue, southwest corner. I’ll be out here all night - Tuesday, August 24th, 2010.

It’s a slumber party protest! Visit picturethehomeless.org for the grisly details. The why and the how.

Never stops, rarely slows. Never lets you feel like you know all of what’s going on. Is she? Isn’t she? Double-cross? Triple? Weird but good.

Has anyone else noticed the complete and utter ridiculousness of the ad campaign for “Eat Pray Love”?

Basically, it’s just Julia Roberts, sitting on a bench, eating some ice cream. With a look on her face that could mean anything from “I am on a magical life-altering soul-searching journey of transformative redemption” to “I farted” (see below for the pic).

I’m not sure what movie this ad is selling. What kind of film will it put into people’s heads, when they see it? A movie about the simple pleasures of ice cream? A movie about being a grown woman unashamed of enjoying something normally associated with childhood? A movie with Julia Roberts, and therefore there’s no need to convey any additional information?

I have no doubt that it works, in that cynical advertising kind of way where even the dumbest concepts get into people’s brains and replicate and then before you know it people are plopping down money. It’s just baffling to me. And that’s why I’m not making any money.

There’s a brilliant article in Bitch Magazine about the book, situating it within the bigger context of “books, blogs, and articles saturated with fantastical wellness schemes for women,” the credit for much of which gets laid at Oprah’s feet. The article coins the term “priv-lit,” which I love, and am gonna start using obsessively, because it so perfectly describes the glut of books that “could easily have been called Wealthy, Whiny, White.”

To whit: “Eat, Pray, Love is not the first book of its kind, but it is a perfect example of the genre of priv-lit: literature or media whose expressed goal is one of spiritual, existential, or philosophical enlightenment contingent upon women’s hard work, commitment, and patience, but whose actual barriers to entry are primarily financial. Should its consumers fail, the genre holds them accountable for not being ready to get serious, not “wanting it” enough, or not putting themselves first, while offering no real solutions for the astronomically high tariffs—both financial and social—that exclude all but the most fortunate among us from participating.”

I find this sh*t infuriating. But it’s where the money is. Tell people it’s easy to have a perfect life, all their dreams can come true, God loves you, your inner goodness will be rewarded. People want to hear that. Most of all, they want to hear that the system is set up for them to succeed.  That we don’t live in a world that’s actively f*cking them over. That the oppression they face (because they’re female, or of color, or queer, or differently abled, or poor) is somehow INTERNAL TO THEM, because if it’s INTERNAL TO THEM it means all they need to do is change themselves… (which Oprah and her ilk say is so easy… just buy yourself something nice once in a while)…

When in fact what needs to change is the patriarchal and poverty-based underpinnings of our society. That’s the real source of our oppression. And all the ice cream in the world won’t make it go away.