Advocacy / civil disobediance groups move squatters into foreclosed homes

[Liberal_in_LA]

By John Leland

updated 2 hours, 28 minutes ago
MIAMI - When the woman who calls herself Queen Omega moved into a three-bedroom house here last December, she introduced herself to the neighbors, signed contracts for electricity and water and ordered an Internet connection.

What she did not tell anyone was that she had no legal right to be in the home.

Ms. Omega, 48, is one of the beneficiaries of the foreclosure crisis. Through a small advocacy group of local volunteers called Take Back the Land, she moved from a friend’s couch into a newly empty house that sold just a few years ago for more than $400,000.

Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said about a dozen advocacy groups around the country were actively moving homeless people into vacant homes — some working in secret, others, like Take Back the Land, operating openly.

In addition to squatting, some advocacy groups have organized civil disobedience actions in which borrowers or renters refuse to leave homes after foreclosure.

The groups say that they have sometimes received support from neighbors and that beleaguered police departments have not aggressively gone after squatters.

“We’re seeing sheriffs’ departments who are reluctant to move fast on foreclosures or evictions,” said Bill Faith, director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, which is not engaged in squatting. “They’re up to their eyeballs in this stuff. Everyone’s overwhelmed.”

On a recent afternoon, Ms. Omega sat on the tiled floor of her unfurnished living room and described plans to use the space to tie-dye clothing and sell it on the Internet, hoping to save some money before she is inevitably forced to leave.

“It’s a beautiful castle, and it’s temporary for me,” she said, “and if I can be here 24 hours, I’m thankful.” In the meantime, she said, she has instructed her adult son not to make noise, to be a good neighbor.

'A modern-day underground railroad'

In Minnesota, a group called the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign recently moved families into 13 empty homes; in Philadelphia, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union maintains seven “human rights houses” shared by 13 families. Cheri Honkala, who is the national organizer for the Minnesota group and was homeless herself once, likened the group’s work to “a modern-day underground railroad,” and said squatters could last up to a year in a house before eviction.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30148409

[rucky]

1. K&R times 100!

[rcrush]

2. If they can do this in more cities

I believe a city in CA has a tent city but also tons of empty homes no one is using. If they can get more families in more cities into abandoned homes then it'll be harder to throw them all out on the street again.


Thumbs up.

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. Homes deteriorate without occupants. Make use of them.

[rucky]

4. Yep. It's a win-win.

It's costly for a bank to maintain an REO. Maybe they can cut a deal with the squatters?

[enid602]

9. SD

A friend of mine in San Diego mentioned that the trend there is for formerly middle class homeless to live in their cars, parked in mall parking lots.

[Liberal_in_LA]

10. and most likely, their foreclosed homes sit empty. Makes no sense.

[DBoon]

5. Similar to what the Communist Party did during the 1930's

http://www.tenant.net/Community/history/hist03d.html

But the first set of attempted evictions, at 2302 Olinville Avenue, set off a "rent riot" in which over four thousand people participated. As the city marshals and the police moved into position to evict seventeen tenants, a huge crowd, composed largely of residents of the Coops, gathered in a vacant lot next to the building to support the strikers, who were poised to resist from windows and the roof. When the marshals moved into the building and the first stick of furniture appeared on the street, the crowd charged the police and began pummeling them with fists, stones, and sticks, while the "non-combatants urged the belligerents to greater fury with anathemas for capitalism, the police and landlords." The outnumbered police barely held their lines until reinforcements arrived. As the police once again moved to disperse the crowd, the strikers agreed to a compromise offer that called for two- to three-dollar reductions for each apartment and the return of evicted families to their apartments. "When news of the settlement reached the crowd," the Bronx Home News reported, "they promptly began chanting the Internationale and waving copies of the Daily Worker as though they were banners of triumph."<17>

At 665 Allerton Avenue, the attempted eviction of three tenants evoked disorders of nearly equal magnitude. The same elements all appeared: tenants barricading apartments and hurling objects at marshals and police; sympathetic crowds gathering and engaging police in hand-to-hand combat; the shouting of Communist slogans and ethnic-political epithets ("Down with Mulrooney's Cossacks" -- an insult reserved for police -- being the favorite). "The women were the most militant," noted the New York Times they constituted the majority of the crowds, the arrestees, and those engaged in physical conflict with the police. This time, the evictions did occur, but only with the help of over fifty foot and mounted police and a large and expensive crew of marshals and moving men.

[Warpy]

6. Bankers would do well to look the other way

if the bills are being paid and the property is being kept up. These folks are providing a service, keeping vagrants, vandals and vermin away.

This is a good idea.

[Bluerthanblue]

7. it happened quite abit around here when i was

a kid. (rural new england) I actually know a family who 'squatted' for long enough that they now own the property they lived on as a result.

Having people homeless while perfectly usable dwellings sit idle and are vandalized makes absolutely NO sense, and says pretty terrible things about our society.

k&r

[zeemike]

8. Now your talking.

Take back the land is right.
there is no reason someone should live on the streets when houses set empty.

[Pastiche423]

11. I love hearing this!

I hope it continues all over our country.