by Pat Kinsella
Squatter City has a post up describing one Miami group’s success in solving two not-unrelated problems: homelessness and foreclosure.
“A brilliant program from a Miami group vets homeless families and then moves them into foreclosed housing. The program is, at least technically, illegal. But no arrests have been made, and it seems a clearheaded way to prevent neighborhood deterioration while getting families desperate for housing into high-quality homes.”
As a sure sign of the surreal future in store for us, foreclosed oversized homes are finding new, unintended inhabitants. The scene described by the Miami New Times indeed sounds like something out of a bad, post-apocalyptic novel (where the rabble of the future live amidst the ruined decadence of today):
“This house is a castle,” says the slender, soft-skinned former university teaching assistant, shaking her head in disbelief. “I’ve never had a walk-in closet … and all this space.”
Two months ago, Cassy (not her real name) was homeless, out in the rain with her four kids. Now she has a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, sky-blue house on a tree-lined street in Miami’s Buena Vista neighborhood. She takes warm showers, cooks vegan dinners, and watches the news on a small, fuzzy TV screen. The only catch: The house isn’t hers. Cassy is a squatter and, at any moment, could be arrested for trespassing, even burglary.
The group responsible for Cassy’s tenancy is Take Back the Land, a small, well-run activist organization that relocates homeless families into empty houses and abandoned buildings. The irony of their work, which increasingly resembles a life-sized version of musical chairs, is that many of the families that are being moved into foreclosed homes are themselves victims of foreclosure.
So far, it seems, the system is working. According to FOX News, “for now, the neighbors - those legitimately living there - aren’t saying a word.” This silent support can be explained, in part, by the vetting process, which has the immediate effect of keeping abandoned properties from falling into a state of disrepair, which can happen rather quickly.
Max Rameau, co-founder of Take Back The Land, put it succinctly: “We think that vacant properties, when there are people living outside, is not good use of land,” and with the economy not looking like it’s going to get better any time soon, it’s not unreasonable to expect dramatic increases in both homelessness and foreclosure, for which Rameau’s strategy might just be the most logical, not to mention most affordable, solution.
However, in the event of government and private opposition to these measures, which is sure to follow, could this small, 10-person organization galvanize into a movement? In certain South American countries, this has long been the case, if for different reasons. But either way, we’ll probably start seeing things like the Brazil Landless Workers Movement (MST) take shape in the US, and we should be prepared for that possibility.
