Post by Modesto Anarcho on Feb 26, 2008 19:24:31 GMT -5
Bringing Down the House:
The Current Foreclosure Crisis and Possibilities for Collective Action
by crudo
Anyone who lives in the Central Valley knows that rent is sky high (1). The influx of bay area people brings rent up on houses and apartments and predatory landlords and firms stalk elderly seniors and the poor in mobile home parks (2). But in the midst of all this money making comes a growing foreclosure crisis that is rocking the valley and having implications (3) upon global systems of capital (4). Modesto, Stockton, and Merced are now leading the whole nation in foreclosure rates (5). Banks and other financial institutions are ‘repossessing’ people’s homes after they cannot pay their loans or mortgage payments, often because the rates go up after several years, or people skip a payment and cannot pay fines (much like credit cards). Capitalism has forced us to rent not only our very lives out for wages, but also to pay for shelter and a place to sleep. If we decide to step outside of these roles that have been already decided for us, we face the police and prison system, starvation and homelessness. The rich have created the conditions that ensure that people will stay stuck in a cycle of debt while paying them more and more money. For us there seems to be only servitude and misery, for them prosperity and wealth.
Across the valley, lives are turned upside down, homes are taken away, items are seized as collateral and people are left without anywhere to go. This has lead to thousands of homes in the valley (6) becoming vacant and many empty properties are now owned by one bank or investment firm and then sold off to another. Many homes go unused or unsold for years, staying un-kept and becoming run down. Meanwhile, some people have decided to take things into their own hands and have taken back these homes, while the media vultures circle overhead and play up fears of “squatters”, “gangs”, and the “homeless” (7). The forces of ‘law and order’ and the media spectacle that supports it, reminds us over and over again of the various middle class values that we all are supposed to adhere to such as respect for rich people’s property and to never break the law. But why should we allow these banks, loan sharks, and capitalists to ruin our lives and take away our homes for their own profit? Why should we spend money on rent in the first place while so many homes go unused already? Who created the concept of rent anyway, but the rich who needed another way to suck our blood dry.
Some people aren’t buying any of this. Many people aren’t sitting by while they could be living for free and not paying some rich landlord scum rent (which means working for some rich scumbag boss). Many people aren’t sitting by while their homes go vacant. Some people are occupying these empty houses, some people are breaking back into their homes which used to be full of life and joy. Across the valley a new wave of action is fermenting; people are squatting. Of course, the developers, upper class, and police aren’t too happy about any of this. Bob Boyd, a local Turlock pig even recently commented in the Modesto Bee to the level that squatting has risen in some areas in the valley: “As soon as someone see vacant, they'll break a window and move in" (8). We can turn this ‘foreclosure crisis’ for our own benefit, by pushing for a collective (and individual) struggle not only against people losing their homes, but also the capitalist concept of rent slavery itself. The police don’t have the resources and skills (yet) to stop people from occupying vacant homes and they depend on people snitching out squatters. Our neighborhoods have now become a staging ground for people to begin to take back their homes and also resist the imposition of rent. They have made our lives unlivable - we shall make their streets ungovernable.
Foreclosure Housing Crisis
July 2007 marked the start of a ‘foreclosure’ crisis in the United States. This was caused in part by the failing housing market, the government’s rising interest rates, foreclosures brought on by ‘sub-prime loans’ and the bankruptcy of several dozen sub-prime mortgage companies. The federal reserve pumped literally billions into the market to keep it afloat, but the damage was already done. Sub-prime loans (which are the cause of much of the crisis) are loans that are aimed at people who have “bad” credit and are usually people who are poor and working class. When these people couldn’t pay their loans, or when their rates went up (or when perhaps they got laid off, had to pay for a hospital visit because they don’t have health care, etc) the bank repossesses their house or some of their stuff to pay the money that they owed the bank. Some home buyers cannot afford the “balloon payments or significant upward adjustments of interest rates” (8) that are often associated with sub-prime loans. Other people get caught in home equity loans, where they received money from banks on the assumption that when the housing market was good, their home would be worth a lot. When the housing market crashed, these loans threw many people into foreclosure as many people ended up owing banks more than their houses were worth (9). While the foreclosure crisis has hit even upper middle class people, the hardest hit, as always, are the exploited and excluded class.
With 2.4 million homeowners (10) facing the loss of their homes to banks and other capitalist institutions, much of the blame (and rightfully so) for the current crisis has been pointed at predatory mortgage brokers, faulty appraisers, and real estate agents. Most of this debate on the current crisis is one sided, however, with conservatives placing blame on the renter who is ‘supposed to know the risk’, (a.k.a. ‘blame the victim’), or liberals pointing the finger at companies and financial institutions who ‘don’t have enough government oversight’. Regardless of the limit of the current debate, some of the reform groups like the National Fair Housing Alliance have illustrated (through their online reports) that the nature of the sub-prime loan business is set up and aimed at the working class and communities of color (11). This illustrates that capitalism is always interested in exploiting those with the least chance of defending themselves.
Of course, none of this is addressed by groups like NFHA, who also don’t talk about the fact that capitalism has always been based upon exploitation, alienation, and domination. This reality shows itself in the workplace where we are forced to rent ourselves out in order to survive and then we must use our wages to buy back what we produce for the bosses. It shows itself with housing, we were are forced to rent a living space out from capitalists who have stolen the land from indigenous people, created an alien concept of ‘private property’ and made it a crime to live anywhere but a place that you have to pay for. It then also shows itself when we are forced to reproduce the daily conditions of this alienating, undignified, and polluted (both emotionally and physically) class society through our (forced) labors, so an elite class can grow rich and powerful. If we don’t fit into these roles of renters, workers, and consumers, we are faced with either starvation or jail time. Capitalism and the state crushes and smashes us under it’s boot heel, using it’s landlords, police, prisons, and school systems to not only break us to it’s will, but also to ingrain it’s twisted logic into our heads. The false opposition of the left with it’s political parties, non-profits, and unions, only helps to weed out and destroy self-organization and direct action by the exploited and excluded against the realities of our daily lives and instead integrate us further into the machine. The answer to the foreclosure crisis is the answer to the poverty of modern existence - it is the destruction of this class society.
Squat - Don’t Let It Rot
Squatting means occupying space that has (generally) become unused. Almost always this means that squatting is an illegal action. More and more, this space is not just some house that caught fire or hasn’t been sold in several years, but people’s homes that they have made a life in and have now had to leave. Squatting is illegal because this allows the police and other forces to stop people from opting out of rent (and wage) slavery. But what is bad for the pigs and the rich is often good for the rest of us. Thus, squatting means taking back a house or other buildings for ourselves - although the concept can extend to any sort of physical area or shelter. The purpose of squatting then is pretty straight forward: to shelter yourself without having to pay for it. Squatting as an action negates and denies the capitalist idea of having to pay a boss for shelter. This can allow people the freedom to apply themselves in other directions - perhaps spending more time to fight the class society that created rent and wage slavery in the first place. Squatting also creates and fosters new social relationships between people and the place in which they live which is based on autonomy - not subjugation to a landlord or slavery through rent. But while the benefit of squatting is clear: more control over your life and a free place to stay, squatting also can bring you in conflict with the authorities who want nothing more than for wage and rent slavery to continue. This is why solidarity between people looking to squat and those in the surrounding community is key. We must fight against the middle class detractors among us who will claim that squatting will drive down property values and bring in “undesirables”. We must also oppose the junkies who would come into these houses and use them as areas to use and cook their drugs. Without the solidarity between people in a set neighborhood, we will be right where the banks, the rich, and the pigs want us; disorganized, undignified, and acting against each other.
Keep on Squattin’ in the Free World
It’s not us who needs to be evicted, but the control the rich have had over our lives. But have people had any success with squatting and taking over homes in recent years? The answer is yes and what follows are some examples of squats that people have been involved with in the city (Modesto and local area) to give the reader some perspective of the possibilities and limitations of squatting in small groups. The first squat that we will look at is the “Black Star”, which was occupied for about 2 years in Modesto around 2004. The house was very dirty and full of trash when it was first occupied. Long hours went into fixing up the house, closing holes in roofs, and getting trash out of the building. The door that was used for the main entrance was already kicked in, so a banner and mattress were put against the door frame to keep the wind out and discourage people from entering. After the floors were mopped and cleaned of derby, squatters got loads of carpeting from a carpet dumpster and carpeted the floor. Beds and furniture that lined the street in various neighborhoods were picked up and brought to the squat. The house ended up serving two purposes, one was social, as it provided a place where people could communally interact with each other and share resources, hang out, and be together, and it also acted as a place to store materials for projects organized by an anarchist collective. While the Black Star was occupied for a long time, periodically people came inside (one time someone left a Bible with $100 in it), threw stuff around, vandalized the place, and took things. One time a police officer (called by people next door) at gun point came into the squat, but after finding that the squatters had no drugs on them, simply let them go. Squatters ended up going back to the house that same night and problems with the police did not happen again.
As time passed however, people stopped using the squat more and more and this vacancy left it wide open for drug users to come in. Police and junky presence (albeit a small one), could have easily been squashed by several factors. One would have been simply getting a new door with a lock on it to keep people out. The fact that the door was wide open (protected only by a banner) left the house wide open to anyone who wanted to come inside. The other was being more discreet about coming into the squat during the day. Although hardly anyone besides motorists could see a person enter the house, there was a senior center next to the squat and they probably didn’t take kindly to squatters living next door. Taking these small steps probably could have allowed the Black Star to still be shiny today.
The next house occupied we shall look at is the Bastallion Squat, (talked about in Modesto Anarcho #1, The Life and Times of the Bastallion Squat). The Bastallion Squat was different from the Black Star in it’s sheer size and also the fact that the power and water was still turned on when it was occupied (right after the former tenants left). By climbing onto the roof, squatters were able to access upstairs apartment rooms (and then lock the house when they left), take showers, watch movies, cook food, do dishes, and do a variety of other things. In essence, the house looked and acted like any other, except people were living collectively without a relationship that involved rent or a landlord. The squatters were also keen on not messing the house up, not vandalizing everything, cleaning up trash, etc. When one potential buyer came by, (although he scared the nuts out of the squatters), he commented on how good the house looked and told the group not to worry, he had been “homeless himself” and wouldn’t call the police. This solidarity (not pity) that was expressed by not snitching on the squatters was one reason that the group was able to continue to occupy the house. Squatters also saw neighbors every day (and city workers several times) and were polite and tried not to make messes or extra noise; in short, they were good neighbors. This also helped the cops not getting called. The biggest worry to the squatters was not the police actually, (who often parked right bellow the house at a nearby school), but the presence of a strung out looking guy that occupied another part of the house from time to time and found it necessary to sleep with his door open. While the fear was that he would accost the other squatters was nil, the squatters upstairs were afraid that their neighbors would get fed up with him and call the cops and everyone would be up nuts creek. Ultimately the Bastallion was destroyed by city workers on the date that the reality officials claimed via telephone it would be. Although the building was lost, by making a few short phone calls to the number listed on the for sale sign, at least the squatters were prepared to leave the house when the time came.
We have seen in the two examples above how squatters in different situations squatted houses without many problems because they stayed largely out of sight and people from the community didn’t snitch. We will now turn towards Manteca, where some recent news stories have highlighted squatting. In one neighborhood in Manteca, people called the cops repeatedly on squatters who were using a vacant house and entering it through the back door. When police finally decided to get rid of the squatters, they were “astounded” to find that they “had managed to bypass utilities - including water - to make the house livable with the basics. They even illegally bypassed the PG&E service to get the air conditioning to run.” (12). Squatters in the home even took the time to refill the swimming pool. While the pigs chased off the squatters, no one was arrested or (according to the Manteca Bulletin), cited, or fined. According to the Modesto Bee in a later article, the Manteca police chief stated that this was not an isolated incident and police found in “10 such homes [in which] squatters had taken up residence” (13). Instead of buying any of the crap that the media or police foist on us, we should be celebrating and sharing skills with the people like the squatters in Manteca, finding out how they managed to get power, air, water, and other standards of living working all without paying for it. When the system attacks us, we need to find our friends from within those that are attacking it in kind. This includes squatters that are acting against the horrors of daily life that are imposed upon them - just as they are imposed on all of us.
Evict the Rich
While some of these small local examples may be inspiring, we can see that they are often quite limiting as well. While squatting with a group of friends (or by yourself) may offer a break from business as usual and an escape from rent, often the stress and worry of a knock on the door is too much for many potential squatters. This is not to negate the actions of small groups of people who squat buildings because of their desire to live without rent - only to encourage more people to get involved and move these actions beyond those of a few individuals into full out rebellions against rent and wage slavery as a whole. If we do not fight the rich for control over our homes and lives then we will lose to them later. If we cannot show solidarity with our neighbors and friends squatting and taking back their homes - then what does that make us? It makes us snitches and rats. It places us on the side of the rich, the police, the bosses, and the landlords - somewhere we should never be. Our place is with those who are squatting, those who are taking back their homes, those who are reclaiming, those who don’t give a d**n about the law because they know it serves money and power and not us. Everyday another house goes empty and everyday another squatter is born. The more of us there are, the more power that we have. The more we fight and resist the police and the government, the more space we control and the more space that we control, the less that we have to work or rent ourselves out for money.
Capitalism is forcing people from their homes. Whether it is because they don’t have enough money, they have to many bills, they lost their job, they got screwed by someone who sold them a loan, etc., it is because of this system that people are losing their homes. People being pushed out and having their lives destroyed need to try and hold onto their livelihoods by any means necessary, including squatting. But without solidarity between neighbors and those that wish to squat, this isn’t likely to happen. The snitching on squatters needs to end now. We have to throw middle and elite class values out the window, such as working with the police, a distrust of those that break the law, and a belief in the systems of wage and rent slavery. With more and more people losing their homes, more people will start to resist. As this happens, we then can draw a line in the sand between those in our communities who stand with the bosses, police, landlords, and the current system, and those that are willing to resist.
When people on our block, in our neighborhoods lose their homes to banks or other institutions of the rich, we need to act in solidarity with those people because we may be next. When someone is going to be foreclosed on, get together in your area and agree not to call the police and help the family (or friends, person, or persons) stay in the house for as long as possible. We can keep the house in tip top shape and work together to gain access to fresh water and other necessities without having to pay for it. We can discourage potential buyers from buying the property, so the original occupants can stay inside for as long as they want. In this way, we can begin to actually create autonomous zones where we are in control. As more and more people begin to drop out of the world of rent and wage slavery more and more homes can become defended and occupied. And why stop there? We can tear up the roads and plant gardens. We can spend less time around this industrial cancer causing infrastructure or work, traffic, and pollution and start growing our own food, herbs, and medicines. We can put more energy towards ourselves and those around us instead of having to worry about paying rent or working for not a very nice persons. In homes that no one is using, we can get together with others and fix them up, allowing friends and family who don’t have a place to live a home to stay in. But of course to get to any of this we will have to fight, we will have to defend ourselves, and we will have to reject calls for alliances with those in power. We will have to resist and fight the police and landlords coming into our neighborhoods and trying to kick out our neighbors. We will have to fight attempts by junkies to take over our squats with their drugs and filth. We can also start showing solidarity with other types of resistance that can feed into this struggle, such as bank robberies or attacks on urban sprawl by those fighting for the earth (and labeled “eco-terrorists” by the police). Our strength lies in our ability to stand together, fight back, not work with the system, and defend ourselves. It is said that our homes are our castles, but unfortunately there are dragons at the gates. Load the cannons.
End Notes:
1.) Many Modesto apartments start at around $700 a month for one bedroom.
2.) See our article in Modesto Anarcho #2, or online, (‘For All Those on Rent Strike’), about the Ceres rent strikers fighting against rent increases in the hundreds in mobile home parks.
3.) The failure of the housing bubble sent shock waves into the stock trading markets. Head capitalist thinkers like Greenspan allege that if the Crisis gets worse, people will start buying less and send the economy even further down.
4.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_meltdown
5.) www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog ... re-cities/
6.) According to the Modesto Bee.
7.) As stated in various articles in the Modesto Bee and Manteca Bulletin on vacant homes and the ongoing foreclosure crisis.
8.) Modesto Bee 9/05/07
9.) Manteca Bulletin.
10.) Merced Sun Star
11.) National Fair Housing Alliance
12.) Manteca Bulletin
13.) Modesto Bee
The Current Foreclosure Crisis and Possibilities for Collective Action
by crudo
Anyone who lives in the Central Valley knows that rent is sky high (1). The influx of bay area people brings rent up on houses and apartments and predatory landlords and firms stalk elderly seniors and the poor in mobile home parks (2). But in the midst of all this money making comes a growing foreclosure crisis that is rocking the valley and having implications (3) upon global systems of capital (4). Modesto, Stockton, and Merced are now leading the whole nation in foreclosure rates (5). Banks and other financial institutions are ‘repossessing’ people’s homes after they cannot pay their loans or mortgage payments, often because the rates go up after several years, or people skip a payment and cannot pay fines (much like credit cards). Capitalism has forced us to rent not only our very lives out for wages, but also to pay for shelter and a place to sleep. If we decide to step outside of these roles that have been already decided for us, we face the police and prison system, starvation and homelessness. The rich have created the conditions that ensure that people will stay stuck in a cycle of debt while paying them more and more money. For us there seems to be only servitude and misery, for them prosperity and wealth.
Across the valley, lives are turned upside down, homes are taken away, items are seized as collateral and people are left without anywhere to go. This has lead to thousands of homes in the valley (6) becoming vacant and many empty properties are now owned by one bank or investment firm and then sold off to another. Many homes go unused or unsold for years, staying un-kept and becoming run down. Meanwhile, some people have decided to take things into their own hands and have taken back these homes, while the media vultures circle overhead and play up fears of “squatters”, “gangs”, and the “homeless” (7). The forces of ‘law and order’ and the media spectacle that supports it, reminds us over and over again of the various middle class values that we all are supposed to adhere to such as respect for rich people’s property and to never break the law. But why should we allow these banks, loan sharks, and capitalists to ruin our lives and take away our homes for their own profit? Why should we spend money on rent in the first place while so many homes go unused already? Who created the concept of rent anyway, but the rich who needed another way to suck our blood dry.
Some people aren’t buying any of this. Many people aren’t sitting by while they could be living for free and not paying some rich landlord scum rent (which means working for some rich scumbag boss). Many people aren’t sitting by while their homes go vacant. Some people are occupying these empty houses, some people are breaking back into their homes which used to be full of life and joy. Across the valley a new wave of action is fermenting; people are squatting. Of course, the developers, upper class, and police aren’t too happy about any of this. Bob Boyd, a local Turlock pig even recently commented in the Modesto Bee to the level that squatting has risen in some areas in the valley: “As soon as someone see
Foreclosure Housing Crisis
July 2007 marked the start of a ‘foreclosure’ crisis in the United States. This was caused in part by the failing housing market, the government’s rising interest rates, foreclosures brought on by ‘sub-prime loans’ and the bankruptcy of several dozen sub-prime mortgage companies. The federal reserve pumped literally billions into the market to keep it afloat, but the damage was already done. Sub-prime loans (which are the cause of much of the crisis) are loans that are aimed at people who have “bad” credit and are usually people who are poor and working class. When these people couldn’t pay their loans, or when their rates went up (or when perhaps they got laid off, had to pay for a hospital visit because they don’t have health care, etc) the bank repossesses their house or some of their stuff to pay the money that they owed the bank. Some home buyers cannot afford the “balloon payments or significant upward adjustments of interest rates” (8) that are often associated with sub-prime loans. Other people get caught in home equity loans, where they received money from banks on the assumption that when the housing market was good, their home would be worth a lot. When the housing market crashed, these loans threw many people into foreclosure as many people ended up owing banks more than their houses were worth (9). While the foreclosure crisis has hit even upper middle class people, the hardest hit, as always, are the exploited and excluded class.
With 2.4 million homeowners (10) facing the loss of their homes to banks and other capitalist institutions, much of the blame (and rightfully so) for the current crisis has been pointed at predatory mortgage brokers, faulty appraisers, and real estate agents. Most of this debate on the current crisis is one sided, however, with conservatives placing blame on the renter who is ‘supposed to know the risk’, (a.k.a. ‘blame the victim’), or liberals pointing the finger at companies and financial institutions who ‘don’t have enough government oversight’. Regardless of the limit of the current debate, some of the reform groups like the National Fair Housing Alliance have illustrated (through their online reports) that the nature of the sub-prime loan business is set up and aimed at the working class and communities of color (11). This illustrates that capitalism is always interested in exploiting those with the least chance of defending themselves.
Of course, none of this is addressed by groups like NFHA, who also don’t talk about the fact that capitalism has always been based upon exploitation, alienation, and domination. This reality shows itself in the workplace where we are forced to rent ourselves out in order to survive and then we must use our wages to buy back what we produce for the bosses. It shows itself with housing, we were are forced to rent a living space out from capitalists who have stolen the land from indigenous people, created an alien concept of ‘private property’ and made it a crime to live anywhere but a place that you have to pay for. It then also shows itself when we are forced to reproduce the daily conditions of this alienating, undignified, and polluted (both emotionally and physically) class society through our (forced) labors, so an elite class can grow rich and powerful. If we don’t fit into these roles of renters, workers, and consumers, we are faced with either starvation or jail time. Capitalism and the state crushes and smashes us under it’s boot heel, using it’s landlords, police, prisons, and school systems to not only break us to it’s will, but also to ingrain it’s twisted logic into our heads. The false opposition of the left with it’s political parties, non-profits, and unions, only helps to weed out and destroy self-organization and direct action by the exploited and excluded against the realities of our daily lives and instead integrate us further into the machine. The answer to the foreclosure crisis is the answer to the poverty of modern existence - it is the destruction of this class society.
Squat - Don’t Let It Rot
Squatting means occupying space that has (generally) become unused. Almost always this means that squatting is an illegal action. More and more, this space is not just some house that caught fire or hasn’t been sold in several years, but people’s homes that they have made a life in and have now had to leave. Squatting is illegal because this allows the police and other forces to stop people from opting out of rent (and wage) slavery. But what is bad for the pigs and the rich is often good for the rest of us. Thus, squatting means taking back a house or other buildings for ourselves - although the concept can extend to any sort of physical area or shelter. The purpose of squatting then is pretty straight forward: to shelter yourself without having to pay for it. Squatting as an action negates and denies the capitalist idea of having to pay a boss for shelter. This can allow people the freedom to apply themselves in other directions - perhaps spending more time to fight the class society that created rent and wage slavery in the first place. Squatting also creates and fosters new social relationships between people and the place in which they live which is based on autonomy - not subjugation to a landlord or slavery through rent. But while the benefit of squatting is clear: more control over your life and a free place to stay, squatting also can bring you in conflict with the authorities who want nothing more than for wage and rent slavery to continue. This is why solidarity between people looking to squat and those in the surrounding community is key. We must fight against the middle class detractors among us who will claim that squatting will drive down property values and bring in “undesirables”. We must also oppose the junkies who would come into these houses and use them as areas to use and cook their drugs. Without the solidarity between people in a set neighborhood, we will be right where the banks, the rich, and the pigs want us; disorganized, undignified, and acting against each other.
Keep on Squattin’ in the Free World
It’s not us who needs to be evicted, but the control the rich have had over our lives. But have people had any success with squatting and taking over homes in recent years? The answer is yes and what follows are some examples of squats that people have been involved with in the city (Modesto and local area) to give the reader some perspective of the possibilities and limitations of squatting in small groups. The first squat that we will look at is the “Black Star”, which was occupied for about 2 years in Modesto around 2004. The house was very dirty and full of trash when it was first occupied. Long hours went into fixing up the house, closing holes in roofs, and getting trash out of the building. The door that was used for the main entrance was already kicked in, so a banner and mattress were put against the door frame to keep the wind out and discourage people from entering. After the floors were mopped and cleaned of derby, squatters got loads of carpeting from a carpet dumpster and carpeted the floor. Beds and furniture that lined the street in various neighborhoods were picked up and brought to the squat. The house ended up serving two purposes, one was social, as it provided a place where people could communally interact with each other and share resources, hang out, and be together, and it also acted as a place to store materials for projects organized by an anarchist collective. While the Black Star was occupied for a long time, periodically people came inside (one time someone left a Bible with $100 in it), threw stuff around, vandalized the place, and took things. One time a police officer (called by people next door) at gun point came into the squat, but after finding that the squatters had no drugs on them, simply let them go. Squatters ended up going back to the house that same night and problems with the police did not happen again.
As time passed however, people stopped using the squat more and more and this vacancy left it wide open for drug users to come in. Police and junky presence (albeit a small one), could have easily been squashed by several factors. One would have been simply getting a new door with a lock on it to keep people out. The fact that the door was wide open (protected only by a banner) left the house wide open to anyone who wanted to come inside. The other was being more discreet about coming into the squat during the day. Although hardly anyone besides motorists could see a person enter the house, there was a senior center next to the squat and they probably didn’t take kindly to squatters living next door. Taking these small steps probably could have allowed the Black Star to still be shiny today.
The next house occupied we shall look at is the Bastallion Squat, (talked about in Modesto Anarcho #1, The Life and Times of the Bastallion Squat). The Bastallion Squat was different from the Black Star in it’s sheer size and also the fact that the power and water was still turned on when it was occupied (right after the former tenants left). By climbing onto the roof, squatters were able to access upstairs apartment rooms (and then lock the house when they left), take showers, watch movies, cook food, do dishes, and do a variety of other things. In essence, the house looked and acted like any other, except people were living collectively without a relationship that involved rent or a landlord. The squatters were also keen on not messing the house up, not vandalizing everything, cleaning up trash, etc. When one potential buyer came by, (although he scared the nuts out of the squatters), he commented on how good the house looked and told the group not to worry, he had been “homeless himself” and wouldn’t call the police. This solidarity (not pity) that was expressed by not snitching on the squatters was one reason that the group was able to continue to occupy the house. Squatters also saw neighbors every day (and city workers several times) and were polite and tried not to make messes or extra noise; in short, they were good neighbors. This also helped the cops not getting called. The biggest worry to the squatters was not the police actually, (who often parked right bellow the house at a nearby school), but the presence of a strung out looking guy that occupied another part of the house from time to time and found it necessary to sleep with his door open. While the fear was that he would accost the other squatters was nil, the squatters upstairs were afraid that their neighbors would get fed up with him and call the cops and everyone would be up nuts creek. Ultimately the Bastallion was destroyed by city workers on the date that the reality officials claimed via telephone it would be. Although the building was lost, by making a few short phone calls to the number listed on the for sale sign, at least the squatters were prepared to leave the house when the time came.
We have seen in the two examples above how squatters in different situations squatted houses without many problems because they stayed largely out of sight and people from the community didn’t snitch. We will now turn towards Manteca, where some recent news stories have highlighted squatting. In one neighborhood in Manteca, people called the cops repeatedly on squatters who were using a vacant house and entering it through the back door. When police finally decided to get rid of the squatters, they were “astounded” to find that they “had managed to bypass utilities - including water - to make the house livable with the basics. They even illegally bypassed the PG&E service to get the air conditioning to run.” (12). Squatters in the home even took the time to refill the swimming pool. While the pigs chased off the squatters, no one was arrested or (according to the Manteca Bulletin), cited, or fined. According to the Modesto Bee in a later article, the Manteca police chief stated that this was not an isolated incident and police found in “10 such homes [in which] squatters had taken up residence” (13). Instead of buying any of the crap that the media or police foist on us, we should be celebrating and sharing skills with the people like the squatters in Manteca, finding out how they managed to get power, air, water, and other standards of living working all without paying for it. When the system attacks us, we need to find our friends from within those that are attacking it in kind. This includes squatters that are acting against the horrors of daily life that are imposed upon them - just as they are imposed on all of us.
Evict the Rich
While some of these small local examples may be inspiring, we can see that they are often quite limiting as well. While squatting with a group of friends (or by yourself) may offer a break from business as usual and an escape from rent, often the stress and worry of a knock on the door is too much for many potential squatters. This is not to negate the actions of small groups of people who squat buildings because of their desire to live without rent - only to encourage more people to get involved and move these actions beyond those of a few individuals into full out rebellions against rent and wage slavery as a whole. If we do not fight the rich for control over our homes and lives then we will lose to them later. If we cannot show solidarity with our neighbors and friends squatting and taking back their homes - then what does that make us? It makes us snitches and rats. It places us on the side of the rich, the police, the bosses, and the landlords - somewhere we should never be. Our place is with those who are squatting, those who are taking back their homes, those who are reclaiming, those who don’t give a d**n about the law because they know it serves money and power and not us. Everyday another house goes empty and everyday another squatter is born. The more of us there are, the more power that we have. The more we fight and resist the police and the government, the more space we control and the more space that we control, the less that we have to work or rent ourselves out for money.
Capitalism is forcing people from their homes. Whether it is because they don’t have enough money, they have to many bills, they lost their job, they got screwed by someone who sold them a loan, etc., it is because of this system that people are losing their homes. People being pushed out and having their lives destroyed need to try and hold onto their livelihoods by any means necessary, including squatting. But without solidarity between neighbors and those that wish to squat, this isn’t likely to happen. The snitching on squatters needs to end now. We have to throw middle and elite class values out the window, such as working with the police, a distrust of those that break the law, and a belief in the systems of wage and rent slavery. With more and more people losing their homes, more people will start to resist. As this happens, we then can draw a line in the sand between those in our communities who stand with the bosses, police, landlords, and the current system, and those that are willing to resist.
When people on our block, in our neighborhoods lose their homes to banks or other institutions of the rich, we need to act in solidarity with those people because we may be next. When someone is going to be foreclosed on, get together in your area and agree not to call the police and help the family (or friends, person, or persons) stay in the house for as long as possible. We can keep the house in tip top shape and work together to gain access to fresh water and other necessities without having to pay for it. We can discourage potential buyers from buying the property, so the original occupants can stay inside for as long as they want. In this way, we can begin to actually create autonomous zones where we are in control. As more and more people begin to drop out of the world of rent and wage slavery more and more homes can become defended and occupied. And why stop there? We can tear up the roads and plant gardens. We can spend less time around this industrial cancer causing infrastructure or work, traffic, and pollution and start growing our own food, herbs, and medicines. We can put more energy towards ourselves and those around us instead of having to worry about paying rent or working for not a very nice persons. In homes that no one is using, we can get together with others and fix them up, allowing friends and family who don’t have a place to live a home to stay in. But of course to get to any of this we will have to fight, we will have to defend ourselves, and we will have to reject calls for alliances with those in power. We will have to resist and fight the police and landlords coming into our neighborhoods and trying to kick out our neighbors. We will have to fight attempts by junkies to take over our squats with their drugs and filth. We can also start showing solidarity with other types of resistance that can feed into this struggle, such as bank robberies or attacks on urban sprawl by those fighting for the earth (and labeled “eco-terrorists” by the police). Our strength lies in our ability to stand together, fight back, not work with the system, and defend ourselves. It is said that our homes are our castles, but unfortunately there are dragons at the gates. Load the cannons.
End Notes:
1.) Many Modesto apartments start at around $700 a month for one bedroom.
2.) See our article in Modesto Anarcho #2, or online, (‘For All Those on Rent Strike’), about the Ceres rent strikers fighting against rent increases in the hundreds in mobile home parks.
3.) The failure of the housing bubble sent shock waves into the stock trading markets. Head capitalist thinkers like Greenspan allege that if the Crisis gets worse, people will start buying less and send the economy even further down.
4.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_meltdown
5.) www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog ... re-cities/
6.) According to the Modesto Bee.
7.) As stated in various articles in the Modesto Bee and Manteca Bulletin on vacant homes and the ongoing foreclosure crisis.
8.) Modesto Bee 9/05/07
9.) Manteca Bulletin.
10.) Merced Sun Star
11.) National Fair Housing Alliance
12.) Manteca Bulletin
13.) Modesto Bee