Evictions

General Strike: The Eviction Crisis Escalates

August 8, 2020 General Strike 2020. Resist! Cancel the Rent, COVID-19, Evictions, General Strike, Housing, Recession

With an estimated 17 to 40 million people at risk of losing their homes by the end of September, and with the failure of the federal government to pass an eviction moratorium or an unemployment benefits extension, the greatest eviction and foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression is now upon us. In some states in the Southeast, as many as 60% of renters are at risk of being evicted, and people of color are likely to be hit disproportionately hard. The Census Bureau’s Household Pulse survey in July, for example, highlighted that 42% of Black renters felt little to no confidence in their ability to pay rent this August, compared to 21% of White renters. For the percentage of renter households at risk of eviction in each state.

As New York Eviction Moratorium Ends, Tension Escalates

August 7, 2020 Popular Resistance. Resist! Cancel the Rent, Evictions, New York City (NYC), Recession

Dozens of New Yorkers marched through the streets of Brooklyn Wednesday morning before entering two landlord attorney firms buildings and Brooklyn Borough Hall calling for a ban on evictions and cancellation of rent in the Big Apple. The demonstration comes just hours before New York's residential eviction moratorium expires, leaving thousands of tenants vulnerable to homelessness. Fears are mounting over how many residents will manage to keep a roof over their heads as dismal research released at the end of July revealed almost half of New York renters were unable to pay rent.

28 Million Evictions Loom As Houses Sit Empty

August 4, 2020 Lee Camp, Consortium News. Resist! Evictions, Homelessness, Housing, Recession

Congress’s inability to actually represent the real-live human beings of America, combined with an economic system that rewards lack of empathy and an excess of greed, has brought us to a dark time when an oncoming tsunami of financial ruin, destitution and evictions towers over our heads, blocking out the sunlight. The impending evictions may soon kick 28 million people/families out of their homes. To put that in perspective, only ten million people lost their homes during the 2008 economic crisis, and that was considered by anyone paying attention to be the craziest thing to ever happen.

As Mass Evictions Loom, Practical Advice For Housing Takeovers

August 3, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Evictions, Housing, Philadelphia, Recession

Federal protection against housing evictions has expired and local and state governments are not stepping up to fill in the gap leaving tens of millions of families vulnerable to homelessness during this growing pandemic and deep recession. In Philadelphia and across the country families, out of desperation, are taking over empty publicly-owned housing. It is estimated that there are up to ten vacant homes for every homeless person. We speak with Cheri Honkala of the Poor People's Economic and Human Rights campaign about the practicalities of housing takeovers from identifying empty houses to how to turn on the utilities and talk to police. Honkala has decades of experience in this and other necessary actions to survive in poverty in the United States.

400,000 Marylanders Face Eviction As COVID-19 Spikes

July 26, 2020 Jaisal Noor, The Real News. Educate! COVID-19, Evictions, Maryland, Recession

After weeks of declining COVID-19 cases, Maryland is experiencing rising hospitalization and positivity rates, especially among those 35 years of age and under. The number of COVID-positive patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore doubled overnight from July 20 to July 21, according to two nurses who help treat patients recovering from the coronavirus at the hospital, which is helping lead the international response to the pandemic. The hospital had to transfer non-COVID patients from one unit in order to accommodate the influx of new cases, the nurses said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

Philadelphia Protest: ‘Housing Is Dignity!’

July 17, 2020 By Betsey Piette, Workers World. Resist! Evictions, Housing, Housing rights, Philadelphia

Residents of the James Talib-Dean tent encampment, set up on June 11 on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, held a press conference July 13 to denounce city plans to evict them. Calling for housing now for people who are homeless, camp residents say they are not willing to leave. Named in honor of a housing organizer who recently died, the JTD encampment brought together around 150 activists and houseless people to bring attention to the lack of affordable housing, poor conditions in city shelters and the need for permanent low-income housing. The city has posted notices outside the encampment that it must be vacated by 9 a.m. on July 17. Philadelphia Housing Action spokesperson Sterling Johnson, said, “The unhoused are demanding housing now! What has the city given us — lies, distractions, and promises of tiny homes, and out-of-sight sanctioned encampments. … They will simply shift the burden to another area of the city, and we will start this process all over again.”

The Economy: What Lies Ahead

July 17, 2020 Jack Rasmus, Predicting the Global Economic Crisis. Educate! Depression, Evictions, Finance and the Economy, Recession

The US economy at mid-year 2020 is at a critical juncture. What happens in the next three months will likely determine whether the current Great Recession 2.0 continues to follow a W-shape trajectory—or drifts over an economic precipice into an economic depression. With prompt and sufficient fiscal stimulus targeting US households, minimal political instability before the November 2020 elections, and no financial instability event, it may be contained. No worse than a prolonged W-shape recovery will occur. But should the fiscal stimulus be minimal (and poorly composed), should political instability grow significantly worse, and a major financial instability event erupt in the US (or globally), then it is highly likely a descent to a bona fide economic depression will occur.

Looming Evictions May Soon Make 28 Million Homeless

July 15, 2020 Annie Nova, CNBC. Educate! Cancel the Rent, Evictions, Homelessness, Recession

Emily Benfer began her career representing homeless families in Washington, D.C. Her first case involved a family that had been evicted after complaining to their landlord about the holes in their roof. One of the times she met with the family, one of the children, a 4-year-old girl, asked her: “Are you really going to help us?” Benfer struggled with how to answer. “I’d met them too late,” she said. “I couldn’t stop the eviction. They had already been sleeping on the subway, and in other people’s homes. And you could see the effects it was taking on them.” Today, Benfer is a leading expert on evictions. She is the chair of the American Bar Association’s Task Force Committee on Eviction and co-creator of the COVID-19 Housing Policy Scorecard with the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

Housing Activists Unite To Fight Mass Evictions And Defund Police

July 5, 2020 Candice Bernd, Truthout. Resist! Evictions, Housing, Police violence, Racism

As COVID-19’s second wave bears down, nearly half of all states’ eviction moratoria have already expired or are set to expire in the next two months. A federal moratorium that bans evictions of people in rentals backed by the government expires July 25. To make matters worse, the CARES Act’s supplemental boost to unemployment insurance ends July 31. The country is already in the beginning stages of a massive eviction crisis as housing courts nationwide reopen. As many as 28 million renters could lose their homes in the coming eviction wave, boosting the national homeless rate by as much as 40 to 45 percent by the end of the year. The wave will hit low-income Black and Brown people, who are twice as likely to rent as white people, the hardest.

Rolling Protest For Rent Forgiveness

April 8, 2020 Staff, Daily News. Resist! COVID-19, Evictions, Physical distancing, Rent

Protesting in a method that aligned with the social distancing urged by the state, county and city, tenant advocates climbed into their vehicles and rolled past the traditional Los Angeles Mayor’s residence — Getty House in Windsor Square — in a demonstration intended to urge Mayor Eric Garcetti to support sweeping anti-eviction measures amid the widening coronavirus crisis. The protesters, rolling up and down the street in cars bearing pro-eviction-ban messages, called for a complete moratorium on evictions, full rent forgiveness or the suspension of rent for those who can’t afford it and making hotel and motel rooms available for people without homes. In a marathon meeting on Friday, the City Council passed a collection of measures providing protection for people hit hard by business closures, layoffs and other aftershocks of the pandemic.

Grassroots Democracy And The Social Production Of Housing

December 29, 2019 By Cira Pascual Marquina, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Democracy, Evictions, Housing, New Economy, Venezuela

Pobladoras is a platform of organizations that have worked in a coordinated way for some fifteen years. That is one of its great successes: a fifteen-year history connecting different expressions of struggle for the right to the city, for the construction of a new collective habitat, and for an urban revolution. Pobladoras brings together five different organizations that struggle for the right to housing: Movimiento de Inquilinas [tenants’ anti-eviction movement], Campamentos de Pioneros [self‐construction housing initiative], Movimiento de Trabajadoras Residenciales [residential workers movement], Comites de Tierra Urbana [Urban Land Committees, henceforth CTU, formed in the early days of the Bolivarian Process to struggle for urban land titles], and Movimiento de Ocupantes de Edificios Organizados [vacant building occupiers movement]. However, we are not merely a housing-rights organization. The organization does not limit itself to fighting for reformist claims.

2,461 Evictions …Every Day

April 17, 2018 Homes for All, Portside.org Resist! Evictions, Housing

A new national database of court filed evictions filed since 2000 released this week by The Eviction Lab documented an estimated 2.3 million people who were evicted last year. The database - which doesn’t account for hundreds of thousands of evictions through intimidation and diception that happen without ever going to court - found that 2461 people were evicted EVERY DAY last year in the United States. In many communities like Richmond, Virginia, as many as 1 in 9 renters faced eviction. For women, particularly black women, that rate of eviction is even higher. We launched Homes For All in 2013 because we believe that every single person has a right to a safe, affordable and dignified home. We believe that if we guarantee that every child, person and family can live in a quality home without fear of eviction, rent increases or intimidation our entire society will be better off.

Where Evictions Hurt The Most

October 31, 2017 Sarah Holder, citylab.com Educate! Evictions, Housing, New Economy

By Sarah Holder for City Lab - Measuring the scale of America’s eviction problem has been a challenge—the data just isn’t available. While the U.S. Census bureau promised to start more diligently measuring evictions in 2017, there is not yet a national federal database. City-level records measure formal evictions, but are hard to access centrally, and miss off-the-books instances of (similarly damaging) forced moves. A new report from Apartment List aims to more accurately estimate the scope of the population at risk of eviction, building on data from its 8 million users, plus answers to 41,000 surveys on rental security. The scope, they found, is wide, and growing: One in five renters recently struggled or were unable to pay their rent, and 3.7 million renters nationwide have experienced an eviction in their lifetime as a renter. In addition to determining the frequency (and threats) of evictions,Apartment List tried to quantify the similarly insidious incidences of informal evictions, and the unhealthy nature of monthly rental insecurity. The survey asks if, in at least one of the past three months, a given renter has been unable to pay their rent in full. The one in five that answered “yes” haven’t necessarily been forced to leave their apartments under court of law, but they do face serious consequences.

Neighbors Form Human Chain Around House To Stop Eviction

September 25, 2017 Simon Robb, www.metro.co.uk Resist! Evictions, Housing, United Kingdom (UK)

By Simon Robb for Metro.co.uk - A woman facing ‘revenge eviction’ has been given a lifeline after her neighbours gathered to form a human chain around her home. Nimo Abdullahi, 39, claimed her landlord tried to kick her and her five children out of their home after she complained about the rising damp. But neighbours and campaigners turned out in force to stop bailiffs from forcing the family out of their home in Easton, Bristol. A newlywed couple living opposite even cut up their wedding cake for all the protesters. When the bailiffs arrived on Tuesday morning, they were unable to get past the 30 protesters who stood strong. Nimo claimed the landlord tried to evict them numerous times before and even threatened to get the police to do the job. She said: ‘It has a big problem with damp. This is bad for us, because my children have asthma and it is not a good place. ‘Until recently, the carpets everywhere were very old and dirty and we would ask the landlord to improve things, but he was difficult.

Solution To Eviction And Gentrification?

April 1, 2017 Staff, www.rioonwatch.org Create! Brazil, Evictions, Gentrification, Land, Land trusts

By Staff of Rioonwatch - This is the second in a series of three articles summarizing reports on Brazilian housing law, organized by the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice at request of Catalytic Communities. The second report, summarized in part below, with additional information compiled by Catalytic Communities’ team, was produced by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer US LLP. To read the actual report, click here. Inextricably linked to Rio de Janeiro’s identity for more than a century, favelas today serve the essential function of providing affordable housing to nearly a quarter of the city’s residents. In recent years, however, many favelas have been subject to immense pressure in the form of both forced evictions and gentrification brought on by real estate speculation, that have affected the city as a whole.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 »

Daily movement news and resources