18 million empty homes. 3.5 million homeless. Move the homeless in! Overwhelm the police gangs!

[Zalatix]

Perhaps we should start moving the homeless into empty houses and force the cops to waste their time going after them.

Overload the courts. Every homeless person demands a jury trial. Cops either give up or consign themselves to overloading our already overcrowded prisons (like in California, where judges have forced prisons to let go of 40,000 prisoners!) by providing them with 3 hots and a cot at taxpayer expense. Taxpayers will revolt. The system will utterly crash.

Are there even enough police to handle such a mass movement???

[Systematic Chaos]

1. I'm completely for it!

Las Vegas is also full of foreclosed homes just sitting derelict, all over the damn place. Older homes with values down into the 30s, newer once which sold for half a mil at the peak of the bubble, and everything in between.

But there is one major problem, of course, in that during the summer you simply can't survive safely in one of these houses without electricity and decent air conditioning. 112 degrees (or more) outside means 130+ degrees in an un-air conditioned house with the sun beating down on it all day.

But in more reasonable climes I think it's time to give this property over to families in need en masse.

As for the cops, this would be a great way to weed out the bullies from the ones who would still rather "serve and protect" once and for all.

[99th_Monkey]

2. I love your fire.

I'm somewhat active in Occupy Portland. wanting to focus on this issue of foreclosures in particular.

It is very ripe for being a pivotal point of powerful leverage, public relations-wise, but there's more.

It is Poetic Justice Writ Large in the Sky, that homeless people should "Occupy" these homes.

[joshcryer]

3. OCCUPY FORECLOSURES

What are they going to do?

Rent is theft!

[Magoo48]

4. It's a wonderful plan!

The hard part is inspiring enough people to move in the same direction at the same time.

[Proud Public Servant]

5. The problem is where the homes are

My sense is that the foreclosures are generally in places like ex-urbs and sunbelt cities: areas without public transportation, where grocery stores can be a long drive away. What, pray, will the homeless do once you maroon them there?