(Banner outside of squatted home on Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.)
Dozens of people gathered throughout the day on Tuesday, November 11th, in front of what seemed to be a derelict house at 625 23rd St, on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Oakland. At 9am, a banner was unfurled from the second floor that read “They Can’t Evict Us All.” People brought food and coffee to share with residents and other supporters, and a pleasant attitude permeated the street into the afternoon. Radicals and activists mingled with the residents and their friends who had come to support them. Sheriffs drove by during the day, but made no action to evict the house.
Update 2/15: The residents and neighbors of 625 23rd St have informed the author they are less confident about REO Homes LLC or one of their shell companies being the new owner of the house, the article has been edited to reflect that.
The history of the multi-unit building is complicated, in a grey area between a squat and rental. Though one might associate squats with hubs of anarchist activity, the family living in this house has no political agenda. Instead, as one tenant describes, the landlord simply stopped showing up over the last three years to collect rent. But last fall, they find out the landlord had sold the property from under them, and the new owner is intent on getting them out.
Even before selling it, the previous landlord made multiple attempts to coerce the occupants off the property. One of the residents pointed to where the wires connecting the house to the power lines were physically cut off, which he said happened last summer. A few months after that incident, the fence in front of the driveway was removed. More recently, the two upstairs units were sealed off, followed by one of the bottom units. Then just last month, the front door was removed. Harassment was not exclusive to the owners, one neighbor claims the police often try to intimidate the people living there. The day before their date of eviction, cop cars lined the street for hours, after workers who were coming to gut their building under the guise of repairs were robbed at gunpoint in the middle of the afternoon.
The racialized nature of these events is unavoidable. The family living at 625 is the last black family on the block. 23rd Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Northgate Ave is a hotly contested area, right between rapidly gentrifying KONO and Uptown, and also sitting on the edge of west Oakland. The group who bought their house, 302EOF LLC, is one of several ominous limited-liability companies that have been buying numerous properties across the city, often flipping them for profit soon after. Along with bigger players such as REO Homes LLC (which owns another house on the block) and Community Fund LLC, this has been a driving force for gentrification. Investment groups and prospectors like these have been so successful in Oakland and elsewhere because they can pay cash for properties, so sellers don’t have to worry about loans from potential new homeowners.
Map showing properties being bought by REO Homes for rental conversations.
Beyond 625, the sidewalk opposite the house has long featured a homeless encampment, sometimes moving around the corner but usually not for too long. However, early last year, some of the new neighbors living in recently remodeled homes made their concerns about the homeless loud and clear. Shortly thereafter, the Oakland Police Department raided the camp on April 24th (the same day they joined the FBI to raid ACORN) and again on May 14th. Since then, Sullivan Management Company (SMC) has hired private security to watch and surveil the block, after a neighbor was mugged outside their home. These private security officers have also taken it upon themselves to harass not only the homeless, but also people living at 625. SMC is a property management group that run by Neill Sullivan, who also happens to be President of REO Homes LLC. Despite complaints from multiple residents on the block, private security still drops by multiple times a night.
While residents and supporters have no fantasies of countering the eviction permanently, they are determined to keep their homes for as long as possible.
http://fireworksbayarea.com/featured/squat-defended-in-oakland-from-reo-homes/
The vacant housing option for squatting in Oakland
02.16.14 – Until the masses rise up in anger and pressure their government to provide public housing for all of those in need, there are plenty of vacant residential buildings in Oakland and elsewhere that are available for people to freely reside in, if they make that choice. Housing is a human right, and poor people have the right to survive no matter how hard the Democrats and Republicans try to criminalize poverty.
By Lynda Carson – February 16, 2014
Oakland – Calvin, a Vietnamese immigrant who moved to this country with his family when he was a child after the so-called Vietnam war ended, is a squatter who has quietly lived alone in a huge two story (four unit) mediterranean style residential building, for well over a year.
Based on what I know, he faces many hardships day to day, and has an interesting life. Recently, speaking with a light accent Calvin said, “I used to live in South Vietnam with my family when I was very young, and I would like to go back someday to visit. We moved to this country when I was still a child after we lost the war against North Vietnam. I used to miss my country very much when I was little, but not so much anymore. I have seen much of this country, and lived in Canada for a while. However, Canada was too cold for me. Vietnam was much warmer, and only has two seasons there. Wet and dry.”
A few nights ago, as he spoke with huge dark rings around his eyes, Calvin said, “I am feeling weak lately from working too hard, and am very tired from a lack of sleep.”
At that moment as we were talking on the street, a huge raccoon quietly snook up on Calvin from behind a car, and I urged Calvin to take a look behind. In total shock, he suddenly leaped around four feet into the air and screeched loudly in panic when he spotted the raccoon. With both arms flying in all directions from the shock of seeing the large raccoon only inches behind his ankles, he rapidly collected his wits and chased the raccoon down the street. When he came back, Calvin said, “Raccoons are an urban problem and they do a lot of damage to the back yard where I live.”
With rents rising to astronomical rates, and greedy nonprofit housing developers screwing the poor with minimum income requirements including rents higher than what poor people can afford to pay unless they are subsidized by the Section 8 program, many poor people end up homeless and are living on the streets.
Minimum income requirements discriminate against the poor at so-called affordable housing projects, and many homeless shelters all across the nation are charging poor people too much money for coming in out of the cold, making it impossible to save up enough money to rent a place somewhere.
Making matters worse, with the accelerated demise of our conventional public housing units that are rapidly being converted into privatized so-called affordable housing projects in Oakland, Berkeley and elsewhere, thousands of poor people are rapidly being dumped onto the streets with nowhere else to go. As a result, squatting has become one of the few options left for the working poor and impoverished that have become homeless in large urban cities with plenty of vacant housing units.
As an example, there is a large vacant residential house located at 805 9th Avenue in Oakland that has been vacant during the past two years. Asides from having a broken window or two, it appears to be a location that could provide shelter from the storm for anyone that is willing to challenge the laws meant to keep people from squatting at vacant properties.
As another example, 610 E. 19th Street is a large three story 24 unit residential building. Most of the rental apartments in this building have been vacant during the past ten years, during a period when the housing crisis keeps getting worse.
The Challenges Of Squatting Without Electricity Or Gas
Living rent free in a building with running water and no electricity or gas near Lake Merritt, has been a huge challenge for Calvin during the past year. After leaving work, he rides his rickety old bicycle to his hidden location. Before entering his home, he waits until it is dark outside and slips quietly through a fence in the backyard to enter the large residential building. Once inside the building, Calvin unlocks a front door from inside the building so that he can go out and bring his bicycle inside, and whatever else he brings back to his residence.
With no gas or electricity for cooking, or a working refrigerator to keep his food in, Calvin eats a lot of uncooked meals, resides in a cool environment, and lives mostly in the dark to conceal his activities. Sometimes he can be found washing his clothes at night on the sidewalk in front of his building when he believes no one will notice him.
Nearby street lights provide enough light when he washes his clothes by hand in some old large plastic paint buckets that he keeps lined up in a row on the front stairs of the building he resides in. Sometimes he uses two buckets, and stands in them bare foot with one foot in each bucket as he stomps up and down on his clothes until he feels that they might be clean enough to wear. For large loads of laundry, at times Calvin uses a recycling bin on wheels, and rapidly rolls the bin back and forth as a way to slosh the clothes around in the water long enough, until he believes the clothes are clean.
When I first spoke with Calvin a few months ago one early evening at his hidden location, he told me that the building was fully occupied with tenants even though I knew the building has been left vacant and in darkness for many years.
After joining Calvin another time while he was washing his clothes by hand on the front steps of his residence in the dark, I told him that I wanted to interview him for a story about squatters. Calvin suddenly changed his story about the building being fully occupied, and quickly denied that he was a squatter. He nervously said that he was watching over the property for the owner. He also claimed that the lights worked just fine in the building, despite the fact that the huge residential building sat there in total darkness for many years.
In time, as I kept stopping by to speak with Calvin as he washed his clothes at night on the steps of the building he resides in, he eventually ran out of stories to explain his existence at his hidden location that has no electricity. He allowed me to interview him for this story, and I will not reveal where he resides.
Calvin’s plight is very similar to the plight of so many other people who no longer can afford to rent a place in the Bay Area. With so many laws on the books meant to keep wages down including the laws meant to make poverty a crime, people are being forced to live in fear, and terror. They are being forced to hide in the shadows, and often are residing in inhumane conditions that are bad for their health, and their mental well being.
Compared to the huge homeless population living under freeway bridges, and the squatters living in filthy, damp, cold abandoned factories or warehouses in Oakland, Calvin has a better setup than most homeless people have. However, Calvin should not have to live in uninhabitable conditions, with nowhere else to live just because he is poor.
There are too many families being threatened locally with homelessness because they have been forced out of their housing by high rents, gentrification schemes, slumlords, and the loss of our nation’s public housing that is rapidly being privatized, and sold to so-called affordable housing developers.
The so-called affordable housing projects that are being heavily subsidized by tax payers, can never replace our nation’s rapidly disappearing public housing units that provide housing to poor families, or families and individuals that have no income at all.
Until the masses rise up in anger and pressure their government to provide public housing for all of those in need, there are plenty of vacant residential buildings in Oakland and elsewhere that are available for people to freely reside in, if they make that choice. Housing is a human right, and poor people have the right to survive no matter how hard the Democrats and Republicans try to criminalize poverty.
Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com