Evictions

Lock Up The Men, Evict The Women And Children

June 1, 2016 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Evictions, Poverty

By Chris Hedges for Truth Dig - Matthew Desmond’s book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” like Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed,” is a heartbreaking snapshot of the rapacious exploitation and misery we inflict on the most vulnerable, especially children. It is a picture of a world where industries have been created to fleece the poor, and destroy neighborhoods and ultimately lives. It portrays a judicial system that has broken down, a dysfunctional social service system and the license in neoliberal America to carry out unchecked greed, no matter what the cost.

Baltimore Rent Court Privileges Landlords, Evicts Tenants

December 8, 2015 Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Evictions, Housing, judicial system, Rental housing

By Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. Baltimore, MD - Every year in Baltimore City, 6,000 to 7,000 renter households are judicially evicted for not paying the rent. These evictions result from a court system – known colloquially as “the Rent Court” – that is overwhelmed by landlord litigation, to the tune of 150,000 rent cases annually. The scale of this enduring crisis sets Baltimore apart from most rental housing markets in the nation. In fact, among metro areas studied in the 2013 American Housing Survey, Baltimore ranked second only to Detroit, Michigan, in the percentage of renters experiencing the threat of rent eviction.1 Many of these struggling renters feel that the public has tuned out their stories or flipped those stories against them.

Podemos Madrid Mayor Halts Social Housing Evictions

August 2, 2015 Sonya Dowsett, www.reuters.com Resist! Evictions, Housing, Madrid, Podemos, Spain

By Sonya Dowsett for Reuters - The newly-elected left-wing mayor of Madrid on Tuesday overturned eviction orders for 70 families living in social housing and safeguarded more than 2,000 similar rental contracts. The move is the latest by the administration of Manuela Carmena, backed by anti-austerity party Podemos, to protect housing in a country where a property boom-and-bust has resulted in tens of thousands of families losing their homes. "There were 70 processes under way, but today those families have recovered their homes. Nobody is going to be thrown out on the street," Carmena said after meeting activists. Carmena took office in June after her Ahora Madrid ('Madrid Now') alliance of community activists formed a coalition with the opposition Socialists to end 24 years of centre-right People's Party (PP) rule in the capital.

San Francisco Too Valuable For Poor People*

July 30, 2015 Carl Finamore, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Evictions, Housing, Living Wage, San Francisco, Tenants

By Carl Finamore in CounterPunch - Last year, San Francisco tenant rights’ supporters scored an important victory when voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition K, requiring all new housing developments provide 33% low and moderate-cost units. The objective was to put a lid on the unregulated, speculative construction boom that earned the city its most contentious distinction of being the country’s second most expensive place to live, just after New York City. Housing activists say Prop K was a partial victory but more is needed. That next step of “reining in record-high eviction rates” was announced at a July 27 city hall press conference attended by over 75 community, labor and political leaders. “The data clearly shows that the evictions crisis and resulting loss of rental units” is a big blow to the city meeting its affordable housing goals, said Board of Supervisor Jane Kim.

People Power Defends Detroit Homeowners

June 7, 2015 Patrick Sheehan, www.occupy.com Resist! Detroit, Evictions, Foreclosures, Housing

By Patrick Sheehan for Occupy.com. Antoinette Talley stands on a makeshift podium in the common area of a gray stone church on Detroit’s east side. As she addresses the audience, Talley is flanked by several of her neighbors, each of them recent homeowners in the new Gratiot-McDougall housing development just a few blocks north of the church. She and her neighbors have been fighting a dubious eviction notice from the project’s developer for months now. Today they are guests of honor at a fundraiser held on their behalf by the activist organization Detroit Eviction Defense. “Those houses are a part of us,” Talley tells the supporters, “That’s our family. And it would destroy me to have to leave my family behind and go somewhere else. You have all warmed our hearts, so thank God for fighting with us day in and day out.”

March On Vanguard Properties Keep Benito Santiago’s In His Home

April 6, 2014 Staff, www.evictionfreesf.org Resist! Evictions, Foreclosures, Housing, Video

In an action organized by Eviction Free San Francisco, it was estimated that nearly 200 tenants and community supporters congregated at the 24th Street/Mission BART station at 11:30 a.m. to march to the offices of Vanguard Properties at 2501 Mission Street in support of San Francisco native Benito Santiago’s campaign to fend off an Ellis Act eviction from his home at 151 Duboce Avenue. 63-year-old Benito has lived in his one bedroom apartment since 1977, but is now facing an Ellis Act eviction at the hands of his new landlord, Pineapple Boy LLC, owned by Michael Harrison, one of the co-founders of Vanguard Properties.

Eviction Resisters Using Stand-Your-Ground To Challenge Fannie Mae

February 6, 2014 Anna Simonton, www.truthout.org Resist! Evictions, Housing

He explains, "We oppose the Stand Your Ground law because it hurts people of color and poor people. But since it's on the books, we want to try to make it applicable to this situation and see if we can make American law really work for everyone. If it's supposed to apply to all Americans, let's see if it applies in this situation, where we have a big corporation hiding behind the law." The corporation in question is Fannie Mae, the government-run mortgage servicer that ordered Harris' eviction last August. Davis' goal is not only to save his clients from the 12- to 24-month jail sentences they face. The four defendants had a chance to take plea bargains that offered lesser punishments such as community service, probation and paying a fine. But they unanimously rejected the deals to take the case to trial. They want to use the opportunity to force transparency from the company that strung Harris along for years, leading him to believe he could save his house, then suddenly slammed the door on negotiations.

Victims No Longer: Spain’s Anti-Eviction Movement

December 21, 2013 Carlos Delclós, www.opendemocracy.net Resist! Evictions, Foreclosures, Housing

The story of Spain’s economic, social and political crisis is one about property, need and value. And at the heart of that story lies a question that is familiar to the point of cliché: what makes a house a home? It may sound trivial, but in a country where families are sleeping in the street, entire building blocks are devoid of residents, and housing remains out of reach for major swathes of the population (despite the ubiquity of “For Sale” signs in the urban landscape), it is a question that remains largely unanswered by policymakers. For over four years, the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH or “Mortgage Victims’ Platform”, in English) have pursued a simple and poetic response to this question: people living together, for one another. Their campaign for mutual aid, solidarity and civil disobedience strike at the very core of Spain’s power structure, and despite an often overwhelming institutional blockade, they have received the support of up to 90% of the population.

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