“It’s a waste to have empty homes and people with no place to live."

[cyu]

Excerpts from http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/article/2009/02/13/neighbors-helping-neighbors-break-vacant-houses.html

Poverty rights activists broke into at least a dozen vacant Minneapolis buildings this week and helped homeless families move in.

“This is the modern underground railroad,” said Cheri Honkala, National Organizer for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, the group organizing the “takeovers.”

Over 3,000 Minneapolis homes went into foreclosure in 2008. Advocates estimate that over 7,000 Minnesotans are homeless. Most Twin Cities’ homeless shelters have been filled to capacity for months.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Rosemary said, greeting a homeless couple looking for housing.

Honkala rose to national prominence in the 1990s by founding the Kensington Welfare Rights Union in an impoverished Philadelphia neighborhood. The activist group helped move homeless families into vacant properties, and used the publicity from those occupations to force the city to issue housing vouchers.

Honkala moved back to Minneapolis two years ago and started matching homeless families with vacant buildings. She estimates that about forty families have been housed since her return, including twelve this week.

“This is just a waste,” she said. “It’s a waste to have thousands of empty homes like this and people with no place to live.” Organizers plan to provide furniture and help the families with basic renovations.

Honkala said that the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign will continue to house the homeless in vacant buildings until the government can provide a safe, affordable alternative. More takeovers are planned for this weekend.

Meanwhile, Rosemary faces eviction in a few weeks, but has no plans to leave. “We’ll pack my house with people,” she said. “It’ll be a showdown.”

[MMIKEYJ]

Some Keynesian economists believe the answer to our problems is for the govt to buy these homes and then bulldoze them.. Its crazy. But theyre doing similar things with the latest "stimulus".. The govt will be buying cattle and then slaughtering them to rot in the fields.. all in an attempt to keep food prices high.. They did this same crap in the 1930s and it just made the depression worse..

People standing in bread lines and cows and pigs being slaughtered.. milk dumped down sewers.... l

[Pogue]

In the United Kingdom, we have a huge shortage of council houses. Theres at least 100,000 people on the waiting list. Every year up until 1980, 400,000 council houses were built a year to meet demand. Last year, 375 were built. Note how 1980 was pretty much the end of the post-war consensus and the beginning of the age of neo-liberal politics, started by Thatcher and continued by Major, Blair, Brown et al.

The crazy thing is, the building trade is currently in the shits, so most builders are unemployed. So we have our building force out of work whilst many houses need to be built. most developements in this country at the moment are private, i.e. car dealerships (at a time when no one is buying cars).

The market and private sector is failing us, as it always has, because quite simply it doesn't work, because it does not take into account need. Its simple. Build the houses, employ the builders. Thats two major birds down with one simple stone.

These are the sorts of issues the BNP latch onto with their 'Immigrants are taking all the houses, so we need to get rid of the immigrants' etc. Thats clearly bollocks, because we have more than enough room and materials and labour force to house everyone in affordable and high quality homes (and may of that needed labour force comes from overseas too, immigrant labour, and by god we could employ everyone easily) but the powers that be, the market and neo-liberals, they're not interested. They don't care about people without good and affordable houses. They don't care about hard working and skilled labourers being out of work. "This so called entreprenurial society has an utter contempt for skill."

Employ the builders, build the houses. Simple. Problem solved. But thats in the mind of an rational (not even benevolent, not even neccesarily left wing) human being, and the neo-liberals, the capitalist class, they're not rational at all, because all they want is profit. Hence, no more council houses.

[Lynx]

This is what wonderful capitalism does - it wastes human potential and squanders our natural resources and infrastructure. The system would have us live under tents because we can't pay someone else money. Blood from stone is what the system wants.

[bailey_187]

We have millions of unused bricks and other building resources not being used, thousands of builders out of work and thousands in need of housing

However, the "all knowing" market wont bring these together because there is not profit in it

[Pawn Power]

This movement towards occupying foreclosed houses seems to be growing (I know we have at least one member of RevLeft that actually is participating in this). In Florida Take Back the Land (http://www.revleft.com/vb/take-back-land-t97462/index.html?t=97462&highlight=back+land) is doing similar work and with a similar response from the local policy-- relative disinterest. I know in some cities, I think Detroit, that the Chief of Police has vowed not to foreclose on homes 'owned' by poor people.

[Pawn Power]

Even broad based liberal groups are doing it: Refusing to Leave: ACORN Members Step up Fight to Stay in Homes (http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12439&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=22525&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=12340&cHash=65793d23d7)


On Feb. 19, ACORN members will launch a new tactic in fighting foreclosures: civil disobedience. Participants in the ACORN Home Savers campaign nationwide will simply refuse to move out of foreclosed homes, or in some cases, will move back in. ACORN homesteaders intend to squat in their homes until a comprehensive, federal solution for people facing foreclosure is put in place.

[JimmyJazz]

We have millions of unused bricks

and so many untouched Army recruiting centers! It is a shame indeed.

[cyu]

The market and private sector is failing us, as it always has, because quite simply it doesn't work, because it does not take into account need. Its simple. Build the houses, employ the builders. Thats two major birds down with one simple stone.

Well said. However, the market does take into account "need" - however, it's not the need of the poor and unemployed, it's the "need" of the wealthy. Whoever has the most money to spend in a market economy determines "need" and "demand" - that in turn determines what resources are mobilized to produce things. That's why such a disproportionately large percentage of the economic resources in a capitalist economy are devoted to serving the wealthy, and such a disproportionately small percentage is devoted to serving the poor and everyone else.

[libertario30]

The solution is simple.........
Massacre the homeless, cut their disgusting families into little pieces and use it to feed the hunger....... that way we can eliminate poverty and hunger in one proletarian strike.

Now thats a socialism I like............. cannibal socialism.

Peace marxist fuckers.

[Pawn Power]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRrHZGTdhKw&eurl=http://openleft.com/showDiary

[Crux]

This is great news.

[SocialRealist]

This is a great step. I find homes without people to be a rather sad thing due to the fact you have to think how many people could these homes hold? When they are not used to their potential, such as this case where the homes will likely not be used. We have to think why should we not put the more unfortunate people of the society in these empty homes that no one is using? Not only do we stop one issue here, which is homelessness. We stop another issue which would be unused homes, its not only helping these people out it is working to create a community of people.

Again, very good news.