Clinton campaign staffers refer to luxury Brooklyn high-rise as "the dorm," lament small apartments

Regrettably, for Hillary Clinton campaign staffers forced to work for free, Hillary's campaign chose to set up shop in the least affordable housing market in the entire country.

This, of course, is problematic.

The lack of affordable housing has put an added burden on the Clinton campaign to play a Craigslist-like role in finding staffers a place to sleep, whether it’s pairing them with roommates or pleading with supporters for a spare room.

Jasmin Harris, a 22-year-old Clinton campaign worker, had been matched with a middle-age couple who agreed to host her in their Brooklyn Heights apartment. They even did her laundry. But after six weeks, they had out-of-town family coming to visit and needed the spare room back, and Ms. Harris was waiting on a recent afternoon for the campaign to pair her with another supporter. “I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but I’ll be somewhere else tonight,” she said. “I have my bags packed and am waiting for an email.”

A recent email from the campaign pleaded with donors to provide staffers with “a spare room — or just a spare couch!” because “you and I both know that finding a place to live in New York can take longer than an afternoon of apartment hunting.”

While there are certainly many staffers -- like Jasmin Harris -- who are legitimately struggling to find housing while attempting to contribute to the election of a candidate they deeply admire, I find it intensely unnerving how the Clinton campaign -- one so afraid of appearing out-of-touch that it forces all staffers to ride buses between Washington and New York -- refers to a high-rise, luxury apartment building as "the dorm." This, friends, is not the sign of a campaign that understands the poor and middle-class struggle in America.

Some have had luck at a rental building on the edge of Downtown Brooklyn, Avalon Fort Greene, where at least six Clinton aides have taken up residence, prompting some campaign staffers to affectionately call it “the dorm,” a reference to their small quarters and proximity to one another.

Does this description from the Avalon Fort Greene's Web site sound like a "dorm" to you?

Avalon Fort Greene brings new meaning to luxury with these unbeatable Brooklyn apartments built on fabulous green living principles. The massive Fort Greene Avalon Tower offers spaciously designed studios along with one-, two- and three-bedroom designs that boast spectacular views of Manhattan and Brooklyn while providing residents a high-quality living experience. Inside the homes you’ll find a wide range of amenities including spacious floor plans, vaulted ceiling, mini blinds, stainless steel sinks, linen closets, high ceilings, large closets and balconies or patios. Residents are also privy to community amenities like a state of the art fitness center, stylish resident lounge, urban park plaza and valet parking service. Adding to the list of enticing features is the fact that our Brooklyn apartments have a courteous and attentive staff as well as all the necessary amenities to cater to the most discerning New York residents.

Pity the campaign spokeswoman forced to live in such horrendous conditions.

Adrienne Elrod, 39, a campaign spokeswoman, is originally from Arkansas but moved to Brooklyn from Washington with her corgi-terrier mix, Bernie (not named after Mrs. Clinton’s primary opponent Senator Bernie Sanders). If she stretches her arms far enough in her tidy studio in “the dorm,” she can almost touch the foot of her bed and her kitchen countertop at the same time.

Right now, the cheapest-available studio in the building would rent for $2,568 plus utilities and fees/month (or $30,816 plus utilities and fees/year). Other studios in the building start at over $3,000/month, and chance are -- given these folks are likely renting on leases for less than a year -- that the rents paid by campaign staffers are dramatically higher than the Web site's teaser rates. These are most definitely luxury apartments.

(Oh, and in case you are curious, the wealthy corporate developer -- Avalon Bay Communities, Inc. -- got $22 million in tax breaks for this luxury building, the so-called "dorm.")

Another young staffer (i.e. unpaid intern) is struggling in this accommodation.

Eventually, he found a room in an East Village apartment just above the glowing red silhouette of a rooster that marks the famed gay bar the Cock.

Mr. Lehrich has three roommates and his room does not have windows, but at $1,700 a month (partly paid for with his saved-up bar mitzvah money), the price was right. “All I’ll be doing is working and sleeping,” he said, “so who needs windows?”

Again, that means at $1,700 plus utilities -- he's paying more in rent than most Americans will pay for accommodation for an entire family in a month. And he's doing it while not receiving any income from his primary job -- "partly paid for with his saved-up bar mitzvah money."

So, what is the big idea? Why are the housing "struggles" of Hillary campaign staffers worth a diary?

We have a candidate here who claims to want "to be that champion" of everyday working Americans. At the same time, we have a campaign spokesperson -- Adrienne Elrod -- whining to the New York Times that her luxury apartment is too small. (For folks not familiar with Avalon apartment buildings, they're basically like living in an up-market boutique hotel: dry cleaning and tailor services on site, lounges, free coffee in the morning, spacious gym, etc.) We have a young staffer who thinks nothing of dropping $1,700/month on a windowless room in the East Village above a famous bar, because he had to live in the trendiest neighborhood of Manhattan, am I right?

And, when you have a campaign run by folks like these people -- and, yes, I get it -- not all campaign staffers come from privilege -- you do not have a campaign -- or candidate -- that gets what it means to barely be able to afford a crappy apartment in a dangerous neighborhood or that understands the struggle of choosing between staying home with a sick child or going to work to earn $8/hour to pay for that sick child's doctor's visit co-pay.

When you jokingly refer to a luxury apartment building in one of the most expensive cities in the world as "the dorm," chances are you don't fully understand the real issues facing working Americans -- in New York City or elsewhere. Regular New Yorkers -- struggling with horrific living conditions -- would give their right arm (probably their left foot, too) to live in a place like "the dorm."

Now, this is a problem with all political campaigns: surely, Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul and Jeb! all have more staffers from relative privilege than from working-class backgrounds. It's not a uniquely Hillary problem. Nonetheless, basing your campaign for everyday Americans in the most expensive part of the most expensive city in America (presumably, I imagine, to seem young and hip), is an exclusionary act. And it a purposeful choice: hopping across the Brooklyn Bridge to visit "The Masters of the Universe" at Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup -- those wealthy bankers financing your campaign -- is pretty darn convenient.

But, let's not pretend there is not a cost for operating a campaign in this way, in this place, in this space. As an employee of a large international organization from a working-class background, I see how most other employees at this organization tasked with "eliminating poverty" come from wealthy backgrounds, from Columbia, Harvard, and Yale -- the children of bankers and lawyers. I see how a dominant neoliberal discourse -- free markets, public-private partnerships, predatory "microfinance" schemes -- dominates organizational thinking, because most of the folks working there to help the poor have never actually been poor. I suspect, based on the cry-me-a-river stories of harsh living standards in "the dorm," a similar dynamic is at play at Hillary Headquarters in Brooklyn.

All of us in the Kos Community care deeply about progressivism and the fight for social justice. So, it's important that when we elect a candidate to represent the Democratic Party in 2016, we do so not only thinking of the candidate at the top of the ticket, but also the culture of his or her campaign -- the backgrounds of the people running that campaign, the most elite of which will likely follow their campaign service with White House service -- and how that culture may impact public policy priorities once an individual -- fingers crossed it's a Democrat! -- moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Choose wisely.