Broken Promises and Covert Operations: The Path to the Ukraine Conflict

There was a time in America when a family could afford a home on a single income. A time when renting wasn’t just a temporary solution but a stable way to live. A time when a house was something you bought to raise a family—not a financial instrument to be traded like a stock. That time is over.

For millions of Americans, homeownership is slipping further out of reach. Prices are skyrocketing, rents are crushing entire generations, and the very idea of stability has been turned into a luxury. The media tells us that this is just “how markets work,” that it’s all about supply and demand, that if we just build more housing, the problem will solve itself. They are lying. This crisis was manufactured. The financialization of housing—the transformation of homes into speculative assets—has turned a basic human necessity into a rigged casino, one where working-class Americans always lose.

Turn on the news and you’ll hear politicians and analysts insisting the economy is strong. Wages are up, jobs are plentiful, and if you can’t afford a home, you’re just not trying hard enough. Meanwhile, in the real world, Americans are being priced out of their own cities. Young families are being outbid by billion-dollar hedge funds. Renters are one bad month away from losing their home. The numbers don’t lie.

The median home price in the U.S. has exploded from $165,000 in 2000 to nearly $400,000 today. In many cities, home prices are 10 times the median income—completely unattainable for the average worker. Rents have doubled in the past 15 years, with some cities seeing even sharper increases. Half of American renters now spend more than 30% of their income just to keep a roof over their heads. Institutional investors own nearly 40% of rental properties in the U.S. In cities like Atlanta and Charlotte, hedge funds have purchased over 50% of single-family homes.

This is not the result of natural market forces. It is a deliberate consolidation of wealth and power. The people who need housing the most are being systematically pushed out by those who view homes not as places to live, but as financial assets to be hoarded, flipped, and traded.

The moment homeownership shifted from being a personal investment to being a tool for corporate profit, the market became a battleground. The 2008 financial crisis should have been a moment of reckoning, a time to reform the system that had allowed reckless speculation to inflate housing bubbles. Instead, Wall Street doubled down. After the crash, hedge funds and investment banks swooped in and bought up foreclosed properties by the thousands. They took advantage of rock-bottom interest rates, taxpayer-funded bailouts, and government policies designed to “stimulate” the housing market. What happened next was predictable—instead of stabilizing the market, these firms began hoarding real estate, renting it out at extortionate prices, and flipping properties to inflate values artificially.

Today, these same firms are still buying up single-family homes, outbidding regular Americans with all-cash offers. Their goal is simple: corner the market, drive up prices, and create a permanent class of renters. Investment giants like BlackRock, Vanguard, and private equity firms now own a massive share of the U.S. housing market. Homes that used to be owned by families are now controlled by corporate landlords, who charge whatever they want because they hold all the supply. Flippers and speculators have driven up prices by buying homes, making superficial renovations, and selling them at a 40% markup. Every house that gets flipped instead of sold to a homeowner, every single-family property turned into a corporate rental, and every unit converted into an Airbnb contributes to a deliberate scarcity designed to maximize profit. This isn’t about housing shortages. It’s about control.

The corporate stranglehold on housing doesn’t end with Wall Street. Foreign investors have also turned U.S. real estate into a safe deposit box. In places like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, entire buildings sit empty—purchased by Chinese, Russian, and Middle Eastern investors who have no intention of living in them. They don’t care about the neighborhood, the local economy, or the people struggling to find a place to live. They just want an asset that appreciates in value. Then there’s the rise of short-term rentals like Airbnb, which has hollowed out entire cities. In tourist-heavy areas, landlords have realized they can make more money renting properties to vacationers than to long-term tenants. The result? A drastic reduction in available housing and rent spikes that force residents to leave.

This is why the supply-and-demand argument falls apart. We already have more than enough housing—the problem is who owns it and how it’s being used. Politicians love to pretend that the solution is simple: just build more housing. If we build enough homes, they claim, prices will drop and everything will go back to normal. This is nonsense. Most new housing developments are luxury condos, not affordable homes for working-class Americans. Corporate landlords buy up new developments before regular buyers can even make an offer. Restrictive zoning laws and developer-friendly policies ensure that new housing is built for maximum profit, not for maximum need. Housing supply is not the issue. The issue is that homes are being hoarded, financialized, and deliberately kept out of reach of actual homebuyers.

The solution is not more weak, bureaucratic policies. It is direct action against the forces that have hijacked housing. Ban Corporate and Foreign Ownership of Single-Family Homes. If you’re not going to live in it, you shouldn’t be able to buy it. Housing should not be an asset class for institutional investors. Crack Down on Short-Term Rentals and Flipping. Cities need strict regulations to ensure housing serves communities, not tourists or speculative investors. Tax Vacant Properties Owned by Investors. If a home sits empty for more than a year, it should be taxed into circulation or repurposed as affordable housing. End Government Subsidies for Corporate Landlords. Right now, tax breaks and loopholes make it easier for Wall Street to buy homes than for families. That needs to end—immediately. Make Homeownership Accessible Again. Lower interest rates and tax breaks should go to first-time homebuyers, not mega-corporations. Provide financial incentives for long-term ownership, rather than flipping for short-term profit.

We have been told that this is just how markets work. That rising prices are inevitable. That we simply need to work harder, save more, and accept that housing will always be expensive. This is a lie. The housing crisis was not caused by a lack of supply. It was caused by the financial elite turning homes into speculative assets. It was caused by corporate greed, government complicity, and a system designed to extract wealth from the working class. A home is not an investment. It is not a stock. It is not a luxury. It is a necessity. If we do not act now—if we do not fight back against those who have hijacked our housing market—we will create a permanent class of renters, trapped in a system where shelter is not a right, but a privilege sold to the highest bidder. The housing crisis was manufactured for profit. It’s time to take housing back.