Skip to content

Housing

Seattle Votes To Guarantee Lawyers For Renters Facing Eviction

March 31, 2021 David Kroman, Crosscut. , , ,
The Seattle City Council unanimously voted Monday to guarantee free legal counsel to poor tenants facing eviction, a system similar to the right to representation already enshrined in the country’s criminal courts. In passing the measure, members of the council hope to keep as many people in their current homes as possible and avoid the devastating and expensive downstream consequences — including homelessness — that often follow when someone is forcibly removed from where they live. "This legislation will not enough be itself and we know that we need a lot more," said Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who originally proposed the legislation. "We know that eviction destroys communities, wrecks households and even kills."

Victoria’s ‘Big Idea’ Pays Off In Housing For People In Need

March 29, 2021 Lindsay Kines, Times Colonist. , , ,
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps and councillors Ben Isitt and Jeremy Loveday were met with a heavy dose of skepticism back in 2015 when they proposed that the Capital Regional District borrow $50 million to build supportive housing for people without homes. Helps recalled Friday that their “big idea” was mocked by some and discounted by others as unworkable or too costly. More than five years later, however, their proposal — later scaled back to $30 million — has pried matching money from the federal and provincial governments, and continues to produce results. On Friday, the CRD’s Regional Housing First Program announced the completion of its latest project — 120 new affordable homes in a six-storey rental building on Hockley Avenue in Langford.

Demolition Of Palestinian Houses Continues

March 21, 2021 Prasanth R., People's Dispatch. , , ,
The report published on March 16 revealed that the monthly average of demolition of Palestinian houses by the occupying Israeli authorities has increased by 65% in 2021 as compared to 2020. In the month of February alone, at least 305 Palestinians, including 172 children, lost their homes and were displaced due to demolition of homes by the Israeli authorities.

The Housing Crisis: One Year After Lockdown

March 20, 2021 David Rovics, Counterpunch. , , ,
All the folks moving to Portland from California or New York and talking about how great the real estate prices are here may not know it (note: I was once one of them), but this city is the most rent-burdened city in the United States, and it exists within a country that, like this city, is undergoing multiple long-term crises, one of which is a housing crisis. The housing crisis, like so many other crises, got much worse one year ago this week, when the country, and much of the rest of the world, shut down. Although this is a city that lost half of its Black population to the rise in the cost of housing between the years of 2000 and 2010 alone, according to census data, one year ago this week, if we talked about the housing crisis as one neck-deep in institutional racism, we would often be met by blank stares.

The Southern Tenant Union Playbook

March 13, 2021 Sam Russek, Scalawag Magazine. , , ,
Despite an eviction moratorium that was intended to keep people housed during the pandemic, landlords filed more than 95,000 evictions in just eight major cities across the South last year.  With the passing of the most recent stimulus bill, Senate Democrats approved more than $45 billion in rental and mortgage assistance, but it won't be enough to stave off what housing advocates call the "tsunami of evictions" still to come. But the fight to keep people housed didn't begin when the country shut down, and it won't end when people can safely dine in restaurants.  The solution to the current crisis requires novel tactics just as much as it builds on old ones, tenants' unions and advocacy groups say—particularly in the South.

Housing Justice Group Puts Power Back In Tenants’ Hands

March 10, 2021 Bryce Covert, The Appeal. , , ,
Brandy Granados’s road to activism began in November 2018 when the heater in her Kansas City, Missouri, apartment exploded. She went without heat for two months during a winter that included multiple blizzards. She continued to pay rent, she said, but in response her landlord didn’t fix the heater; instead he tried to evict her and her children.  Desperate for help, she was connected with Tara Raghuveer, an area native who had returned after graduating from college with the goal of solving residents’ housing insecurity. “I figured I could either just sit there and be mad about my situation, or I could do something about it,” Granados said.  She was able to fight off the first eviction attempt in court, but the landlord removed her to retake possession of the house. She ended up in a homeless shelter for three months. The loss of her home has left her son suffering from anxiety and trauma.

KC Tenants’ Month Of Activism Broke The System

March 9, 2021 Emily Cox, The Pitch. , , ,
Daniel Halferty was behind on rent. “When I made a partial payment in October, [my landlord] texted me, berating me.” Halferty had been hunting for a job since April, but with a history of cancer and traumatic brain injury, he was cautious about finding a job that would be fairly safe from COVID-19.  Halferty started his new job at the end of November, and made a payment plan to catch up on past-due rent. That was fine with his landlord, Ellis Real Estate, until Halferty asked to delay just 2 weeks, so he could prevent his utilities from being shut off. Then his landlord stopped communicating. “They just cut out all communication to me, and then Christmas Eve, we had the notice from the lawyer on our door that we were going to be sued for $2,925. They had 30 days to collect the payment and get the apartment back.”

Tenant Organizers Protest The Re-opening Of Housing Court

March 6, 2021 Ken Lopez, The Indypendent. , , ,
New York City - Eviction proceedings resumed Monday at the NYC Housing Courts. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers have been unable to cover rent due to the pandemic and the economic crisis it has caused. Members of a variety of tenants’ organizations — including Crown Heights Tenant Union, Brooklyn Eviction Defense, Cosecha, DSA Housing Working Group, Met Council on Housing and and the PSL — rallied at Brooklyn Housing Court calling for cancellation of the rents.   Although the demonstrators tried to enter both Brooklyn Housing Court and Brooklyn Borough Hall, they were barred from doing so by a phalanx of police officers. “Direct action is the only thing we’ve seen that does anything. Getting arrested, making a scene, is apparently the only thing that moves our legislators so in terms of the moratorium, it was absolutely essential.

How The First US City To Fund Reparations For Black Residents Is Making Amends

March 2, 2021 Ashley Brown, Emilie de Sainte Maresville, and Allie Yang, ABC News. , , ,
Evanston, Illinois, is like a lot of American cities. The city just north of Chicago appears picturesque, updated and grand on one side -- but not far away, one can see the signs of economic and racial segregation, despite the city's proud, diverse and liberal reputation. What sets Evanston apart from other cities, however, is its groundbreaking plan to address the impact of that segregation and Black disenfranchisement: reparations. The impetus for the city's reparations resolution, first passed in 2019 and spearheaded by 5th Ward Alderman Robin Rue Simmons, is rooted partially in Rue Simmons' experience growing up Black in Evanston. "Early in my childhood I was invited to have a play date," she recalled. "My white friends never had a play date at my home."

No Evictions For 30+ Families In Philadelphia Takeover Houses

February 19, 2021 National Lawyers Guild and Poor People's Army, Popular Resistance. , , ,
The National Lawyers Guild stands in solidarity with the Poor People’s Army and all of the 30+ families that are sheltered in homes that are reclaimed, abandoned properties in Philadelphia. Three families in Philadelphia, residing in homes owned by the Department of Housing & Urban Development, have received notices or threats of eviction within the last 2 months, and could be thrown out into the freezing cold at any moment. Poor People’s Army / Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign has filed 3 pro se federal injunctions for these properties and are likely to go to court any day. The families should not be viewed as trespassers or criminals, they are human beings that have a right to safe housing.

An Improbable Vanguard Of Poor People Is ‘Reclaiming’ Vacant Homes

February 18, 2021 Robin Urevich, Capital and Main. , , ,
On the night before Thanksgiving last year, Sasha Atkins, a 31-year-old hair stylist and single mom, hauled a few carefully chosen belongings – her phone, blankets, pillows and a laptop – into a vacant duplex on Shelley Street in Los Angeles’ El Sereno neighborhood and held her breath. Busting into an empty house was a last resort, but the pandemic has turned her precarious housing situation into an emergency. For three years, she and her son couch surfed or occasionally landed a motel room. But work had become scarce, and friends and family feared COVID-19 if they let new people into their homes. So, even though she was afraid, she moved forward.

Louisville Is Failing Homeless People This Winter

February 15, 2021 Emma Austin, Louisville Courier Journal. , , ,
As much of Louisville remains under a layer of ice and with another winter storm on the way, the city is doing nothing to keep alive its homeless population, several advocates contended Saturday evening. Leaders from local homeless outreach organizations spoke in front of Hotel Louisville Saturday night, demanding city leaders address what they called a humanitarian crisis. Donny Greene, co-founder of Feed Louisville, said the city has given excuses for not helping people left outside in the below-freezing temperatures, contending there is no shelter space available. "The truth of the matter is the city is currently housing homeless people … in hotels in the city, and they have the ability to do that for everyone," Greene said.

Every New Yorker Has A Right To A Roof

February 11, 2021 Jose Lopez and Barika Williams, Gotham Gazette. , , ,
Well before the beginning of the pandemic that has turned life upside down, New Yorkers already faced a devastating affordable housing and homelessness crisis. Even without the dramatic wave of unemployment brought about by a global pandemic, low-income tenants and homeless people across the city faced a grave lack of truly affordable housing and the absence of an effective citywide plan to fix it. Now, of course, the crisis has deepened, with tenants who have long lived paycheck to paycheck unable to scrape together even a modest living to pay their rent, and the danger of living on the street or in a congregate shelter multiplied by a deadly virus.

US-Wide Eviction Ban Could Have Prevented Thousands Of COVID-19 Deaths

February 1, 2021 Jake Blumgart, City Monitor. , , ,
Julie Rey has been living on the edge of eviction for much of the Covid-19 pandemic. She’s a 42-year-old mother of two, and her family has also been especially afraid of infection, as her 19-year-old daughter suffers from a comorbid condition and is at greater risk from the virus.  In 2021, what they long feared finally happened. At the beginning of the year, Rey and her 14-year-old daughter contracted the virus, and a judge ordered them out of their home by 20 January. The only mercy was that the gears of eviction did not finish turning until their illnesses had faded. They were able to quarantine away from Rey’s older daughter, and she was spared from Covid.

Austin Will Use Money Cut From Police Budget For Supportive Housing

January 29, 2021 Meg O'Connor, The Appeal. , , ,
Texas - The Austin City Council voted today to purchase one hotel and turn it into 60 units of permanent supportive housing for people experiencing chronic homelessness. The vote to purchase a second hotel has been postponed to next week after a city council member asked for more time to gather feedback from her constituents. Under the measure, the city will spend approximately $6.7 million from its Housing and Planning Department’s general obligation bonds to acquire one hotel and use some money from a recurring $6.5 million fund taken from the police department’s budget to provide services to the residents of the hotel.
«12345678910»
assetto corsa mods

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.