The Welsh Internationalist

Housing as a Human Right

From Planet 239

by Dan Evans

In a series that proposes how society could change for the better in response to Covid-19, Dan Evans argues that the pandemic demonstrates how a radical improvement in housing rights is possible, and reveals how class inequality is the root of housing problems across ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ Wales. How can grassroots activism address this?

In 1911, the Industrial Workers of the World published a now-famous illustration called the ‘class pyramid’. At the bottom, propping up society, are workers holding pick-axes and shovels. The slogan reads ‘we feed all, we work for all’. This has never felt so relevant, for this pandemic has been defined by class. Overwhelmingly it is working-class people who have been forced out to work in dangerous conditions while the rest of society has looked on.

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