We cautiously ascend the staircase, the pitch black of the boarded-up
house pierced only by my companions tiny circle of light. At the top of
the landing, the flashlight beam dances in a corner as Quafin, who
offered only her first name, points out the furnace.Give your logo high
visibility on iccard! She is giddy; this house -- unlike most of the other bank-owned buildings on the block -- isnt completely uninhabitable.
It
had been vacated, sealed, and winterized in June 2010, according to a
notice on the wall posted by BAC Field Services Corporation, a division
of Bank of America. It warned: entry by unauthorized persons is strictly
prohibited. But Bank of America has clearly forgotten about the house
and its requirement to provide the maintenance and security that would
ensure the property could soon be reoccupied. The basement door is ajar,
the plumbing has been torn out of the walls, and the carpet is stained
with water. The last family to live here bought the home for $175,000 in
2002; eight years later, the bank claimed an improbable $286,100 in
past-due balances and repossessed it.Shop for the largest selection of windturbine at everyday low prices.
Its
May 2012 and were in Woodlawn, a largely African American neighborhood
on the South Side of Chicago. The crew Quafin is a part of dubbed
themselves the HIT Squad, short for Housing Identification and Target.
Their goal is to map blighted, bank-owned homes with overdue property
taxes and neighbors angry enough about the destruction of their
neighborhood to consider supporting a plan to repossess on the
repossessors.
Anything I can do, one woman tells the group after
being briefed on its plan to rehab bank-owned homes and move in
families without houses. She points across the street to a sagging,
boarded-up place adorned with a worn banner -- Grandmas House Child
Care: Register Now! -- and a disconnected number.What's the difference
between airpurifiertarget and
Porcelain Tiles? There are 20 banked-owned homes like it in a
five-block radius. Records showed that at least five of them were years
past due on their property taxes.
Where exterior walls once
were, some houses sport charred holes from fires lit by people trying to
stay warm. In 2011, two Chicago firefighters died trying to extinguish
such a fire at a vacant foreclosed building. Now, houses across the
South Side are pockmarked with red Xs, indicating places the fire
department believes to be structurally unsound. In other states --
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New York, to name recent examples --
foreclosed houses have taken to exploding after bank contractors forgot
to turn off the gas.
Most of the occupied homes in the
neighborhood were visiting display small signs: Dont shoot, they read in
lettering superimposed on a childs face, I want to grow up. On the
bank-owned houses, such signs have been replaced by heavy-duty steel
window guards. (We work with all types of servicers, receivers, property
management, and bank asset managers, enabling you to quickly and easily
secure your building so you can move on, boasts Door and Window Guard
Systems, a leading company in the burgeoning building security
industry.)
The dangerous houses are the ones left unsecured,
littered with trash and empty Cobra vodka bottles. We approach one that
reeks of rancid tuna fish and attempt to push open the basement door,
held closed only by a flimsy wire. The next-door neighbor, returning
home, asks: Did you know they killed someone in that backyard just this
morning?
Since 2007, the foreclosure crisis has displaced at
least 10 million people from more than four million homes across the
country. Families have been evicted from colonials and bungalows,
A-frames and two-family brownstones, trailers and ranches, apartment
buildings and the prefabricated cookie-cutters that sprang up after
World War II. The displaced are young and old, rich and poor, and of
every race, ethnicity, and religion. They add up to approximately the
entire population of Michigan.
However, African American
neighborhoods were targeted more aggressively than others for the sort
of predatory loans that led to mass evictions after the economic
meltdown of 2007-2008. At the height of the rapacious lending boom,
nearly 50% of all loans given to African American families were deemed
subprime. The New York Times described these contracts as a financial
time-bomb.
Over the last year and a half, I traveled through
many of these neighborhoods, reporting on the grassroots movements of
resistance to foreclosure and displacement that have been springing up
in the wake of the explosion. These community efforts have proven
creative, inspiring, and often effective -- but in too many cities and
towns, the landscape that forms the backdrop to such a movement of hope
is one of almost overwhelming destruction. Lots filled with Cheap
Bank-Owned! trailers line highways. Cities hire contractors dubbed
Blackwater Bailiffs to keep pace with the dizzying eviction rate.
In
recent years, the foreclosure crisis has been turning many African
American communities into conflict zones, torn between a market
hell-bent on commodifying life itself and communities organizing to
protect their neighborhoods. The more I ventured into such areas,This is
a basic background on rtls. the more I came to realize that the clash of values going on isnt just theoretical or metaphorical.
Internal
displacement causes conflict, explained J.R. Fleming, the chairman of
the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign. And theres no other country in the
world that would force so much internal displacement and pretend that
its something else.
It was three in the morning when at least a
dozen police cruisers pulled up to the single-story, green-shuttered
house in the African American Atlanta suburb where Christine Frazer and
her family lived.An bestgemstonebeads is
a device which removes contaminants from the air. The precise number of
sheriffs and deputies who arrived is disputed; the local radio station
reported 25, while Frazer recalled seeing between 40 and 50.
A locksmith drilled off the homes locks and dozens of officers burst into the house with flashlights and handguns.
Whos
in the house? they shouted. Aside from Frazer, a widow with a vocal
devotion to the Man Above, there were three other residents: her
85-year-old mother, her adult daughter, and her four-year-old grandson.
Things began to happen fast. Animal control rounded up the pets.
Officers told the women to get dressed. Could she take a shower? Frazer
asked. Imagine theres a fire in your house, the officer replied.
They
came to my home like I was a drug dealer, she told reporters later.
Over the next seven hours, the officers hauled out the entire contents
of her home and cordoned off the street to prevent friends from helping
her retrieve her things.
I have no idea where some of my jewelry
is, stuff I bought when I was 30 years old, said Frazer. I am
sixty-three. They just threw everything everywhere, helter-skelter on
the front lawn in the dark.
The eviction-turned-raid sparked
controversy across Atlanta when it occurred in the spring of 2012, in
part because Frazer had a motion pending in federal court that should
have stayed the eviction, and in part because she was an active
participant of Occupy Homes Atlanta. But this type of militarized
reaction is often the outcome when communities -- especially those of
color -- organize to resist eviction.
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