[U.S.] Squatters Call Foreclosures Home

suggested by Eric, re-posted from NYT

With Advocates' Help, Squatters Call Foreclosures Home
By John Lelandm 04/09/09

When the woman who calls herself Queen Omega moved into a three-bedroom house here last December, she introduced herself to the neighbors, signed contracts for electricity and water and ordered an Internet connection.

What she did not tell anyone was that she had no legal right to be in the home.

Ms. Omega, 48, is one of the beneficiaries of the foreclosure crisis. Through a small advocacy group of local volunteers called Take Back the Land, she moved from a friend’s couch into a newly empty house that sold just a few years ago for more than $400,000.

Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said about a dozen advocacy groups around the country were actively moving homeless people into vacant homes — some working in secret, others, like Take Back the Land, operating openly.

In addition to squatting, some advocacy groups have organized civil disobedience actions in which borrowers or renters refuse to leave homes after foreclosure.

The groups say that they have sometimes received support from neighbors and that beleaguered police departments have not aggressively gone after squatters.

“We’re seeing sheriffs’ departments who are reluctant to move fast on foreclosures or evictions,” said Bill Faith, director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, which is not engaged in squatting. “They’re up to their eyeballs in this stuff. Everyone’s overwhelmed.”

On a recent afternoon, Ms. Omega sat on the tiled floor of her unfurnished living room and described plans to use the space to tie-dye clothing and sell it on the Internet, hoping to save some money before she is inevitably forced to leave.

“It’s a beautiful castle, and it’s temporary for me,” she said, “and if I can be here 24 hours, I’m thankful.” In the meantime, she said, she has instructed her adult son not to make noise, to be a good neighbor.

In Minnesota, a group called the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign recently moved families into 13 empty homes; in Philadelphia, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union maintains seven “human rights houses” shared by 13 families. Cheri Honkala, who is the national organizer for the Minnesota group and was homeless herself once, likened the group’s work to “a modern-day underground railroad,” and said squatters could last up to a year in a house before eviction.

Other groups, including Women in Transition in Louisville, Ky., are looking for properties to occupy, especially as they become frustrated with the lack of affordable housing and the oversupply of empty homes.

Anita Beaty, executive director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, said her group had been looking into asking banks to give it abandoned buildings to renovate and occupy legally. Ms. Honkala, who was a squatter in the 1980s, said the biggest difference now was that the neighbors were often more supportive. “People who used to say, ‘That’s breaking the law,’ now that they’re living on a block with three or four empty houses, they’re very interested in helping out, bringing over mattresses or food for the families,” she said.

Ben Burton, executive director of the Miami Coalition for the Homeless, said squatting was still relatively rare in the city.

But Take Back the Land has had to compete with less organized squatters, said Max Rameau, the group’s director.

“We had a move-in that we were going to do one day at noon,” he said. “At 10 o’clock in the morning, I went over to the house just to make sure everything was O.K., and squatters took over our squat. Then we went to another place nearby, and squatters were in that place also.”

Mr. Rameau said his group differed from ad hoc squatters by operating openly, screening potential residents for mental illness and drug addiction, and requiring that they earn “sweat equity” by cleaning or doing repairs around the house and that they keep up with the utility bills.

“We change the locks,” he said. “We pull up with a truck and move in through the front door. The families get a key to the front door.” Most of the houses are in poor neighborhoods, where the neighbors are less likely to object.

Kelly Penton, director of communications for the City of Miami, said police officers needed a signed affidavit from a property’s owner — usually a bank — to evict squatters. Representatives from the city’s homeless assistance program then help the squatters find shelter.

To find properties, Mr. Rameau and his colleagues check foreclosure listings, then scout out the houses for damage. On a recent afternoon, Mr. Rameau walked around to the unlocked metal gate of an abandoned bungalow in the Liberty City neighborhood.

“Let the record reflect that there was no lock on the door,” Mr. Rameau said. “I’m not breaking in.”

Inside, the wiring and sinks had been stripped out, and there was a pile of ashes on the linoleum floor where someone had burned a telephone book — probably during a cold spell the previous week, Mr. Rameau said.

“Two or three weeks ago, this house was in good condition,” Mr. Rameau said. “Now we wouldn’t move a family in here.”

So far the group has moved 10 families into empty houses, and Mr. Rameau said the group could not afford to help any more people. “It costs us $200 per move-in,” he said.

Mary Trody hopes not to leave again. On Feb. 20, Ms. Trody and her family of 12 — including her mother, siblings and children — were evicted from their modest blue house northwest of the city, which the family had lived in for 22 years, because her mother had not paid the mortgage.

After a weekend of sleeping in a paneled truck, however, the family, with the help of Take Back the Land, moved back in.

“This home is what you call a real home,” Ms. Trody said. “We had all family events — Christmas parties, deaths, funerals, weddings — all in this house.”

On a splendid Florida afternoon, Ms. Trody’s dog played in the water from a hose on the front lawn. The house had mattresses on the floors, but most belongings were in storage, in case they had to leave again.

“I don’t think it’s fair living in a house and not paying,” Ms. Trody said.

She said the mortgage lender had offered the family $1,500 to leave but was unwilling to negotiate minimal payments that would allow them to stay. She said she and her husband had been looking for work since he lost his delivery job with The Miami Herald.

In the meantime, she said, “I still got knots in my stomach, because I don’t know when they’re going to come yank it back from me, when they’re going to put me back on the streets.”

The block was dotted with foreclosed homes.

Three of her neighbors said they knew she was squatting and supported her. One is Joanna Jean Pierre, 32, who affectionately refers to Ms. Trody as Momma.

Ms. Pierre said Ms. Trody was a good neighbor and should be let alone. “That’s her house,” Ms. Pierre said. “She should be here.”

Ms. Trody said that living here before, “I felt secure; I felt this is my home.”

“This is where I know I’m safe,” she added. “Now it’s like, this is a stranger. What’s going to happen?”

Even without furniture or homey touches, she talked about the house as if it were a member of her family.

“I know it’s not permanently, but we still have these couple days left,” she said. “It’s like a person that you’re losing, and you know you still have a few more days with them.”

[Maryland] Rare Jewish Sun Blessing

re-posted from NPR: All Things Considered

With Rare Sun Blessing, Jews Marvel At Creation
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, 04/08/09

Passover, or the annual celebration of Jews' exodus from Egypt, began Wednesday. This year, it's a once-in-a-generation event.

It coincides with the Birkat Hachamah — the "Blessing of the Sun" — a celebration that occurs every 28 years, when the sun is in a precise location in the sky.

To mark the occasion, a group of religious Jews gathered for a 7 a.m. standing-room-only service at the Chabad Lubavitch house in Gaithersburg, Md. Men wearing prayer shawls chanted from the Talmud before moving outside into the soft early light. It was time for a special blessing.

"Raise your hand if you did this either in 1953 or 1981. Anybody?" asked Rabbi Sholom Raichik.

Raichik surveyed the crowd of 100 men and women, and only a half-dozen hands went up. It's not surprising, since the blessing of the sun is so infrequent. He directed them to face east, punctuating the Psalms with explanations.

According to Talmudic tradition, on Wednesday morning the sun was at the exact position in the skies as it was the moment the Earth was created — 5,769 years ago. It's a complicated calculation. And after some description, the rabbi defaulted to modern technology.

"If you want to know what that means, our Web site has an audio of the class that explains that," he said.

Of course, at the last Blessing of the Sun, there were no Web sites, no cell phones, no text messages. It's a remarkable shift for Meir Shamoulian, who passed the previous blessing in Iran.

"Everything changing — but still sun is there, and universe is there, everything is as same as a long time ago, million years ago," Shamoulian said. "The nation is same thing. They make something new — Internet, telephone or something else. But still you're in the same world. God cannot be changed, and also the universe cannot be changed."

Shamoulian's 21-year-old-son, Moshe, says technology highlights the astounding precision of God's creation.

"And like, there are so many pictures that the Hubble telescope can capture — it's just miraculous," Moshe Shamoulian said. "So we say the blessing not only on the sun but on everything, really, like the entire universe. That God made such a beautiful universe."

Back in 1981, Rabbi Raichik was a 17-year-old yeshiva student. Today, he has a wife and eight children. He notes that the last time around, the Soviet Union, or what he calls the "evil empire," was America's major rival. President Ronald Reagan had just been shot. And word of the sun blessing ceremony got out by letter and word of mouth. But today, it's a different mode of communication.

"How did I get the word out? I didn't mail a piece of information out for this at all," Raichik says. "There was no mailing; there was e-mails and notifications and e-mail templates. One person creates it and another person posts it and you share your ideas. The world is obviously a much smaller place than it was back then."

And, he thinks, a safer place. As for his wife, Hanna, she looks forward to the next Blessing of the Sun in 2037.

"God willing, we'll all be in Jerusalem," Hanna says. "God willing, we should have total peace in the world, and the Messiah should be here and there should be total peace in the world. And life will be very good for everybody."

In the meantime, they'll immortalize the occasion with a photo — which they are posting online.

[VT] Vermont Lawmakers Override Veto, OK Gay Marriage

re-posted from NPR.org

VT Lawmakers Override Veto, OK Gay Marriage

April 7, 2009

Vermont lawmakers on Tuesday overrode the governor's veto of a measure legalizing same-sex marriage, making the state the fourth to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed — but the first to do so through legislation.

Both houses of the Democratic-controlled Vermont Legislature mustered the necessary two-thirds vote to override Gov. Jim Douglas' veto, issued just hours earlier. The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House.

The move comes nine years after Vermont became the first state to allow civil unions for gay couples. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa also allow same-sex marriage after courts ruled gays could not be excluded.

The vote in Vermont was a major victory for gay marriage supporters, some of whom celebrated outside the House chamber as the vote was announced.

Robert Dostis said he and his partner, Chuck Kletecka, were making wedding plans for the fall. "We haven't decided who's going to propose to who yet, but we've been together 25 years in September, so I think Sept. 14 could be a nice wedding day," Dostis told NPR.

The veto's overturn follows an April 3 decision by the Iowa Supreme Court, which struck down a law limiting the definition of marriage to a man and a woman. The high court said the law violated the constitutional rights of equal protection. That ruling opens the door for gays and lesbians to exchange vows in Iowa as soon as April 24.

Iowa lawmakers had "excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification," the justices wrote.

[Iowa] High Court Strikes Down Ban on Gay Marriage

re-posted from NPR

Iowa High Court Strikes Down Ban on Gay Marriage, 04/02/09

Iowa's Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on gay marriage, saying the provision violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples.

The unanimous ruling issued Friday would make Iowa the third state where gay marriage is legal. The court's decision upholds a 2007 Polk County District Court judge's ruling.

The 2007 ruling prompted nearly two dozen people to apply for marriage licenses in Polk County, Iowa's most populous county and home to Des Moines. Only one couple managed to get married before the decision was stayed the next day.

The case stems from a 2005 lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal, a New York-based gay rights organization. The group filed a lawsuit on behalf of six gay and lesbian Iowa couples who were denied marriage licenses.

Gay rights supporter and former state lawmaker Ed Fallon told NPR that the ruling is consistent with Iowa's history.

"Iowa has always been on the cutting edge of civil rights," Fallon said, "whether it's regarding desegregation of schools or the rights of African-Americans to be full citizens."

"This is huge. And I think it's a testament to the fairness and sense of decency that Iowans have," he said.

The decision makes Iowa the first state in the Midwest and the third in the nation to legalize gay marriage. Massachusetts and Connecticut permit same-sex marriage; California did briefly before voters passed a ban in November.

During oral arguments before the Supreme Court in December, Des Moines lawyer Dennis Johnson argued Iowa's ban violated his clients' due process and equal protection rights.

Roger J. Kuhle, an assistant Polk County attorney, argued that the lower court's ruling for the plaintiffs violates the separation of powers and that the issue should be left to the Legislature.

During oral arguments, Chief Justice Marsha Ternus explained that the high court would determine whether the district court erred by finding that the same-sex marriage ban violated the state constitution and whether it erred by not allowing the county's expert witness testimony.

The timing of the decision could be awkward for state lawmakers who are on track to end the legislative session in coming weeks.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal (D-Council Bluffs) told reporters that it's "exceedingly unlikely" the Legislature would deal with the gay marriage issue this year, regardless of the court's ruling.

"This is the final step in a lengthy legal proceeding," said Gronstal. "We're going to wait and see that decision and review it before we take any action."

[Los Angeles] Cul-de-sac Communes

re-posted from NPR: All Things Considered

A Social Experiment: Communes In Cul-De-Sacs
by Jennifer Sharpe, 04/02/09

Ever since my next-door neighbor sent me hate mail, threatening to sue if I didn't cut down my eucalyptus tree, I've been having paranoid fantasies about how badly we'd do together in an apocalypse.

Stranded on a residential street in Santa Monica, Calif., where the neighbors hardly ever interact with each other, I realized we might all die as casualties of our own self absorption.

So when I heard about a social experiment urging people in Los Angeles cul-de-sacs to start communes together, I had to see if this strange suburban mutation could possibly survive.

So architect and social designer Stephanie Smith, who runs the company Ecoshack, took me to the first official cul-de-sac commune potluck at the end of January on a newly developed bluff in Topanga Canyon, three months after she came up with the idea.

"We're finally here," Smith said.

Weeks earlier, Smith sat in her office explaining that she launched her project "Wanna Start A Commune?" after having an epiphany in the first moments of the economy's collapse.

"It couldn't possibly be that I have to keep having to buy in order to be green," Smith said. "I have to buy a Prius. I have to buy a fluorescent light bulb. I have to buy a solar array. And I just frankly just couldn't afford to be green — and that scared me."

Coming together to share resources is the basic premise of Smith's vision for the cul-de-sac commune. Hoping to learn what kinds of tools she should design to help facilitate sharing, Smith listened to Scott Vineberg, who lives in the commune, and his progressive-thinking neighbors as they brainstormed ways to go off the grid together, raise chickens and manage their stress levels.

"I'd like a communal massage, get somebody who comes up, you get a reduced rate, it's all outside... Ahh, that would be amazing, we should do that!" says commune member Helena Kriel.

The stay-at-home convenience of the cul-de-sac commune is, as Smith sees it, a solution to the biggest design flaw of its predecessors.

"In the past, utopian communities have often failed because people who started them have really insisted that the best way is to leave your old community, leave society, leave culture and start over, and it's a valid idea in many cases, but, it also leads to failure," she said. "So what we're interested in doing is make them effective as part of a culture, not a counterculture this time."

By some strange coincidence, the very spot where this first cul-de-sac commune gathering was taking place is exactly where Topanga Canyon's biggest 1970s commune once lived.

And if there's anyone who disagrees with Smith's strategy, it's that commune's founder, Sridhar Silberfein, whose divorce from society has gotten only deeper as his commitment to communal living has grown.

"I think there are going to be more and more people coming into communes — that's really where the future's going to be now," Silberfein says. "Because the economy is really breaking itself down, the government is breaking down, all the systems are breaking down. And all that's going to be left is going to be small communities living together and sharing the land."

I asked him what he imagines will happen to Los Angeles, for example.

"I think big cities are finished," he said. "That's why I left."

I'd driven two and a half hours outside Los Angeles to meet Silberfein, who lives in Yucca Valley, where he works as a real estate agent and is starting a new — as he now calls it — "intentional community," on 85 acres of high desert, where he plans to drill wells and build enormous greenhouses.

But as I looked out over the rocky expanse, I felt a premature nostalgia for civilization, and, despite Silberfein's pessimism, drove back to Los Angeles excited to see if the cul-de-sac communes were catching on.

"Every single neighborhood in America and around the world is a commune," Ecoshack's Smith says. "And every single apartment building is, and every office building is, and every single thing is built new using guidelines around sharing resources. Nothing less than that."

Smith's vision continues to expand. Within a month of that first potluck, at the end of February, cul-de-sac communes were bubbling up around the city, including one down in Santa Monica's Rustic Canyon, a short walk from my house. So perhaps it's just a matter of time before even my block turns, and my hostile tree-hating neighbor comes knocking on my front door.

More information at: www.wannastartacommune.com

[U.S.] Housing First study

re-posted from NPR.com All Things Considered

For Homeless, A Home May Be the Best Rehab
by Joseph Shapiro, 03/31/09

All Things Considered, March 31, 2009 · Richard Corbett has been homeless for long periods of time. He has struggled with depression and alcoholism. But he says he doesn't drink very often anymore and only moderately when he does. When he lived on the scary streets and in shelters, he says, he would drink just to fall asleep.

The difference, Corbett says, is that now he has a permanent place to live and that makes him feel safe. He says he no longer has "to worry about being hit in the night with a brick upside the head and being robbed."

Corbett, 61, lives in a sparse, two-room apartment with high, white ceilings in a solid row house in Washington, D.C. Staff at Pathways to Housing found him in a shelter and moved him into this building and then got him counseling, even though he was still drinking heavily at the time. That's a new way of trying to help the chronically homeless. It's a philosophy called "Housing First."

The traditional way to help chronically homeless people has been to get them into a temporary shelter where they can work on getting sober or dealing with a psychiatric illness. Only once that hard work is done are they considered ready for permanent housing.

Housing First turns all that upside down. It finds the permanent place to live first. It doesn't matter if the homeless person is still drinking or using drugs, because having a home is considered therapeutic by itself. Case workers are then around to help the person address the problems that caused him or her to be homeless.

Now a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association offers new support to the Housing First approach that helped Richard Corbett.

Mary Larimer, a clinical psychologist at the University of Washington, chose to study a 75-unit apartment building for homeless people in Seattle because it used a Housing First approach — and because it had created controversy.

"The controversy is that there are a number of individuals who feel that it's important to use housing as a carrot," Larimer says. "And that by housing people who are not yet ready or able to stop their addictive behaviors and allowing them to continue to drink alcohol … that we would be reducing their chances of sobriety or in some ways would be enabling them."

Larimer and her co-researchers studied the people who lived at a building called 1811 Eastlake. It takes on some of the hardest homeless people to help: Those constantly on the streets and drunk. The research found that their drinking dropped steadily over the first year they had their own apartments, from, on average, about 16 drinks a day to about 11.

That's still a lot of alcohol. But even a small drop made a big difference. The study tracked down records of the time they spent in detox, in hospitals and jail. The researchers also compared how much government spent on them compared with those still living on the streets. Larimer found the cost savings were enormous: about $2,500 less per person per month.

"Ultimately abstinence is the safest goal and the desirable goal," she says. "I also think that there are people who are not in a position to obtain abstinence immediately. And that certainly people's chances of becoming abstinent are a lot better when they are in a warm, safe environment and they have lots of caring people and services available to them immediately."

Back at his home, Corbett points out the pots in the front yard where he and his landlord are getting ready to plant flowers. "I'm in a much better place than before I got this place," he says. "It's a feeling of respect and dignity that I didn't have before."

Most programs for homeless people don't use a Housing First model. But it's an approach that has spread in recent years to more than a dozen major U.S. cities.

[Britain] Happy Financial Fool's Day

re-posted from NPR.org

G-20 Protesters Jam London, Target Banks
by The Associated Press, April 1, 2009

Thousands of G-20 protesters jammed downtown London on Wednesday and some tried to storm the Bank of England, pelting police with eggs and fruit and rocking the barricades designed to control them.

Demonstrators shouted "Abolish Money!" and clogged streets in the financial district known as "The City" even as Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama held a news conference elsewhere in the British capital.

Protesters had branded the day "Financial Fool's Day" ahead of Thursday's summit of world leaders who are gathering in hopes of resolving the global financial crisis that has lashed nations and workers worldwide.

"Every job I apply for there's already 150 people who have also applied," said protester Nathan Dean, 35, who lost his information technology job three weeks ago. "I have had to sign on to the dole (welfare) for the first time in my life. You end up having to pay your mortgage on your credit card and you fall into debt twice over."

Demonstrators hoisted effigies of the "four horsemen of the apocalypse," representing war, climate chaos, financial crimes and homelessness.

"The greed that is driving people is tearing us apart," said Steve Lamont, 45, flanked by his family and protesters who were banging on bells, playing drums and blowing whistles.

At least eight people were reportedly arrested for having police uniforms. One police officer lost his helmet and demonstrators tossed it around like a trophy and chanted slogans.

Helicopters hovered above the protests and some buildings were boarded up in case the protests turned ugly. Many banks had extra security and hundreds of police officers lined the streets.

Fearing they would be targeted by protesters, some bankers swapped their pinstripe suits for casual wear and others stayed home. Bolder financial workers leaned out their office windows Wednesday, taunting demonstrators and waving 10 pound notes at them.

Especially in Britain, bankers have been lambasted as being greedy and blamed for the recession that is making jobless ranks soar.

"It seems like everything is in a mess," said protester Steve Johnson, 49, an unemployed construction worker. "You get bankers getting massive bonuses, and the MPs (British lawmakers) are lining their own pockets."

Musician and political activist Billy Bragg said the time was now to make a difference.

"It's better than sitting down shouting at the television at these bankers," he said. "We cannot go back to the way things were before to the million-dollar bonus culture."