Activist Moves Homeless Into Foreclosed Homes
December 5th, 2008By placing this story in Collapse, I’m not making a value judgment on it; this is simply to indicate that we’re seeing the beginnings of a failed state situation.
From this story alone, it should be clear just how little power that state actually has. If somebody told you five years ago that homeless people would be squatting in foreclosed homes with tacit approval from the state, would you have believed it?
Not me, brother!
Well, here we are.
Via: MSNBC:
Max Rameau delivers his sales pitch like a pro. “All tile floor!” he says during a recent showing. “And the living room, wow! It has great blinds.”
But in nearly every other respect, he is unlike any real estate agent you’ve ever met. He is unshaven, drives a beat-up car and wears grungy cut-off sweat pants. He also breaks into the homes he shows. And his clients don’t have a dime for a down payment.
Rameau is an activist who has been executing a bailout plan of his own around Miami’s empty streets: He is helping homeless people illegally move into foreclosed homes.
“We’re matching homeless people with people-less homes,” he said with a grin.
Rameau and a group of like-minded advocates formed Take Back the Land, which also helps the new “tenants” with secondhand furniture, cleaning supplies and yard upkeep. So far, he has moved six families into foreclosed homes and has nine on a waiting list.
‘Everyone deserves a home’
“I think everyone deserves a home,” said Rameau, who said he takes no money from his work with the homeless. “Homeless people across the country are squatting in empty homes. The question is: Is this going to be done out of desperation or with direction?”
With the housing market collapsing, squatting in foreclosed homes is believed to be on the rise around the country. But squatters usually move in on their own, at night, when no one is watching. Rarely is the phenomenon as organized as Rameau’s effort to “liberate” foreclosed homes.
Florida — especially the Miami area, with its once-booming condo market — is one of the hardest-hit states in the housing crisis, largely because of overbuilding and speculation. In September, Florida had the nation’s second-highest foreclosure rate, with one out of every 178 homes in default, according to Realty Trac, an online marketer of foreclosed properties. Only Nevada’s rate was higher.
Like other cities, Miami is trying to ease the problem. Officials launched a foreclosure-prevention program to help homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgage, with loans of up to $7,500 per household.
The city also recently passed an ordinance requiring owners of abandoned homes — whether an individual or bank — to register those properties with the city so police can better monitor them.
Elsewhere around the country, advocates in Cleveland are working with the city to allow homeless people to legally move into and repair empty, dilapidated houses. In Atlanta, some property owners pay homeless people to live in abandoned homes as a security measure.
Now you teach these people how to set up permacultures in these yards, and you´ve got a win.
What fascinates me is, exactly how do you move into a squat-home without the neighbors calling the cops on you? I suspect the location is important, as well as some good diplomatic work.
In most suburbs I’d think the fear-factor is pretty high – I mean, people usually move to a suburb specifically to live in a conventional, quality-controlled environment. I imagine they’d report vagrants/squatters in the blink of an eye, and hound the cops if they didn’t do something about them immediately.
So my guess is that most of these squat-homes are more city-central, or at least in places where people are used to a wider range of suspicious characters. In those places, it might be comforting just to know the home next to your is occupied by a decent person. If I were in the situation of having to squat, I’d approach my neighbors and let them know flat-out that I was moving in illegally, but that I wanted to be a good neighbor, keep the house and yard in order, help maintain the market value of the neighborhood, and if they needed anything at all don’t hesitate to knock, etc.
That way they’d hopefully appreciate the fact that at least the house next to theirs wasn’t on it’s way to becoming a crack-house or bunk-house for far more serious hoodlums.