Missoula panelist: housing must be treated as a social good, not a commodity
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Summary
Josh Decker told a Missoula audience that housing is dignity and not merely shelter, criticized local camping restrictions that target unhoused people, and urged tenant unions, land trusts and co‑ownership as alternatives.
Josh Decker, a longtime Missoula resident, carpenter and tenants union member, addressed housing as a fundamental need and a site of power under capitalism. He urged reframing housing from a market commodity to a social good that includes dignity, privacy and community.
Decker contrasted housing's economic scale—he cited housing at roughly 18% of U.S. GDP and about $4.04 trillion—with the lived experience of dispossession and insecurity. He criticized local rules that criminalize unhoused people, referring to an ordinance cited in the discussion as "12.60," which he described as prohibiting camping in public parks specifically for unhoused people.
For alternatives, Decker promoted tenant unions, land trusts, co‑ownership models and consensus‑based decision making practiced by local organizations such as the Missoula Tenants Union. He framed these models as "seed" practices that can scale into broader democratic housing decision structures and emphasized just transitions and asset redistribution as necessary to change housing from something exploited into a tool for community security.
During Q&A, participants asked about property nationalization and historical countermeasures; panelists acknowledged external subversion risks and highlighted local organizing, divestment campaigns and democratic structures as partial defenses.
