The Chimney Cove Village Travesty
On August 12th, the tenants of Chimney Cove Village, a working class multi-family housing development on Hilton Head Island, were informed by their landlord that they would soon have to vacate their residences- most of them within thirty days, a few of them by dates in October, November, and December. A follow up notice delivered on the 31st of the month, presumably subsequent to the complication or collapse of the sale agreement with a luxury condominium developer that had motivated the issuance of the notice of eviction, rescinded the notice of eviction and informed them that their previous lease agreements were once again in effect. Curiously, however, the owners of the property have responded to inquiry from news media outlets as to whether its residents might again face eviction in the near future only with assurance that an update on the situation will be released at some point.
The spectre of houselessness still looms over these tenants, largely families supported by non-native English speaker first generation immigrant parents (that is, refugees from the abject squalor driven by Western Capital’s reign of terror in Latin America- a reign of terror that has been buttressed by the threat posed by Uncle Sam’s forces under the leadership of, among others, the swathes of field-grade/senior officers, generals, and admirals who retire to and gentrify Beaufort County) working in the island’s hospitality industry or as domestic workers for its resident idle rich. They have been sent on time-consuming and anxiety-wracking searches for non-existent affordable housing- as anyone living the housing affordability crisis or familiar with the South Carolina real estate market would assume, very few properties available to low wage workers are nearby- and will in all likelihood be sent on them again in the coming months. As we can see once more, slumlords don’t at all mind subjecting human souls to tear-welling whiplash and limbo and should not be trusted to provide or service anything.
Religious congregations, community organizations, and the “philanthropic” (that is, reputation laundering) campaigns of short term rental companies promise that they will be able to at least temporarily secure housing for several people among the hundreds almost certainly soon to be displaced.
Several people. Hundreds of people. A vast, vast majority of the parents who, following displacement, will still wish to work on the island, will face lengthy (that is, forty minute to more than two hour long one-way) commutes from lower housing cost areas, provided they can even locate and rent housing in those areas. And needless to say, the education of the children of the breadwinners in question will be severely disrupted.
These efforts do not meaningfully ameliorate this crisis, just as similar efforts undertaken elsewhere do not meaningfully ameliorate the housing affordability crisis at large. These people are going to be set adrift into a storm. Same ritzy-smelling pluff mud, new day. It is a travesty.
Local and state government officials and controlled opposition NGO mouthpieces speak of limited scope “public-private partnership” workforce housing initiatives that will create fortunes for developer slumlords and lead to the construction of some housing for the island’s hospitality industry and domestic workers in the coming years. And the island’s Carpetbagger mayor has serenaded the sweet little money-mising hearts of his snobby Henry McSlavemaster “local flavor" comprador song and dance routine-loving NIMBY gentrifier carpetbagger support base by suggesting, in marvelously ineloquent prose, that the island offer more support to long-distance busing- that is, state-sanctioned economic apartheid- programs for this labor force.
But, of course, no actual solution to the problem that led to the Chimney Cove Village Travesty is being proposed by the local dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Peckerwood Bob who cooks at thegoodtimemargaritasgodblessparrisislandandmcasbeaufortspookyoathkeepeerskullsrockleegreenwoodisthenewwoodyguthriebluelivesmattermorethandotheirthuglivesspqrbabymolonlabetikishrimpshack and some of those damned immigrants who work at Sea Pines are going to have to get off of the island? Tough luck for them! The communities of the great-grandsons and great-granddaughters of the Port Royal Experiment have been and are being stolen? Pssssh! Who cares? In fact, it is all to be seen as “progress”! The gentrification, ethnic cleansing, and cultural genocide party must go on! The stinking plebs must be kept out of sight, unless they are on the clock! Get them out! They must not be allowed to spoil the beautiful mosaic of ritzy Garden & Gun plantationplantationplantation lifestyle neighborhoods and resorts! They cannot continue to sully the Salt Life experience!
The situation playing out on Hilton Head Island and in the sections of South Carolina that have become or are in the process of becoming gated communities and playgrounds of the wealthy of the world at large is a perfect demonstration of the need for radical movement towards the decommodification of housing. This atrocity is going to keep playing out on Hilton Head Island, in Beaufort County, and in the chicified sections of South Carolina in general until the democratic socialist minimalist program for housing-a housing guarantee, a serious program for the construction of public housing, the elimination of property taxation upon low value owner-occupied primary residences, the imposition of a severely punitive property tax upon luxury and secondary residences, a ban upon short term rentals and long-term luxury single family home rentals, and prohibition of the construction of sprawling, ecologically destructive single family homes- is won via open, organized class struggle.
This can be a flash point. Comrades of the Lowcountry, South Carolina, and the South, let us seize this opportunity. We cannot continue to procrastinate. It is time we begin to branch out beyond our narrow circles, prioritize fighting these battles, and establish our movement as the force capable of ameliorating the everyday suffering of the proletariat. It is through “unglamorous" political struggles like this one and the labor union struggle that international democratic socialism will begin to establish itself as a credible political force striving towards the revolutionary emancipation of the working class and begin to develop general mature revolutionary proletarian class consciousness.
We must learn how to fight and win local and state reform struggles against the bourgeoisie and its institutions if we wish to build a socialist revolutionary proletarian consensus. We can have no greater immediate priority, apart from the formation of institutions capable of carrying out these efforts. Comrades of the Lowcountry, South Carolina, and the South, let us begin to undertake the task at hand.
