Activists Help Foreclosed Families Retake Homes

In November 2008, the MWRO blog discussed the federal and local governments approach to the Detroit foreclosure crisis: bailing out banks, evicting families from their homes, and then demolishing good homes to make way for gentrified neighborhoods and more strip malls! In this story, we learn more about how comrades and other housing activists are helping families keep a roof over their head in foreclosed homes, instead of overcrowded shelters or on the street!

Excerpt reposted from the New York Times. Read the full story, "More Squatters Are Calling Foreclosures Home."

...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.

Other groups, including Women in Transition in Louisville, Ky., are looking for properties to occupy, especially as they become frustrated with the lack of affordable housing and the oversupply of empty homes.

Anita Beaty, executive director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, said her group had been looking into asking banks to give them abandoned buildings to renovate and occupy legally. Ms. Honkala, who was a squatter in the 1980s, said the biggest difference now was that the neighbors were often more supportive. “People who used to say, ‘That’s breaking the law,’ now that they’re living on a block with three or four empty houses, they’re very interested in helping out, bringing over mattresses or food for the families,” she said....

(Image courtesy of the New York Times)