If “activists” want to help the homeless, they can start by questioning the role of property. Two hundred years ago, there wasn’t any “real” property. Workers belonged to ‘manors’ or other post-feudal systems, enjoying just enough agency to make homes for themselves, to shelter in place, and to learn a trade. Goods were shared between workers largely based on need and interpersonal social status. Fiat currency is an historically new method for maintaining class division, but is based on an increased intensity of the monopoly on violence enjoyed by lords. As long as an absent lord may dictate rights to access real property, the working class is powerless. Workers must advocate for an end to absentee ownership and for an end to fees for primary residence. No one, worker and lord alike, should be coerced to give up all their resources in exchange for rights to their home. There can be no ecological progress or protection unless the land belongs to those who steward it.
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