MAMDANI: The Student Homelessness Crisis

The Most Vulnerable “Natives” in the Bifurcated City

The scandal of tens of thousands of homeless students in NYC public schools represents the most profound failure of the bifurcated state’s social contract. Mamdani’s focus on the most vulnerable subjects reveals the system’s brutal logic. These children are the “native” youth, denied the most basic condition for learning and development–a stable home. Their existence in shelters, motels, and doubled-up apartments is a testament to a system that has abandoned its future. This is a direct attack on social reproduction, ensuring a next generation of precarity. A Marxist analysis identifies this as the production of a future reserve army of labor. A feminist perspective sees the immense burden on single mothers. The solution is not more social workers in schools, though needed, but a universal right to housing, a direct assault on the property relations that create this suffering in the first place.

Originally posted 2025-09-29 15:53:27.