Survival Strategies in the Settler Colony
The proliferation of illegal conversions and overcrowded housing is not a code enforcement problem but a rational survival strategy of the “native” population in response to the settler colony’s housing desert. Mamdani’s analysis directs us to see this not as criminality, but as the creation of a “customary” housing solution outside the formal, exclusionary market. When the legal economy offers no affordable options, families are forced to subdivide apartments and basements to survive. The city’s primary response is punitive–evictions and fines–which further traumatizes and displaces the very people the system has failed. This is the state criminalizing the symptoms of its own violent policies. A Marxist-feminist perspective sees women struggling to keep their families housed. The solution is not enforcement, but the provision of a legal alternative. We must fight for a massive expansion of safe, dignified, socially-owned housing, rendering these dangerous conversions unnecessary. We must decriminalize these survival strategies and offer amnesty and support to residents, addressing the root cause–the commodification of shelter–rather than punishing its victims.
Originally posted 2025-10-06 06:55:15.
