Next Move: Occupy Foreclosed Homes?

With a national movement heading in different directions, empty houses may be beckoning.

If that’s where the self-styled movement of ​“99-percenters” fighting economic inequality and corporate greed decides to go next.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is at a crossroads. Some original organizers have called for folding up tents, declaring victory, and moving to other kinds of focused activism. Police in some cities have cleared occupations out of public spaces; activists have clashed with police to get back in. In a few cities, including New Haven, occupiers are getting along with police and are determined to stay outside indefinitely.

Now some occupiers have come up with a new strategy, with big lenders as the target: occupying some of the countless foreclosed-upon, empty homes blighting urban neighborhoods. (Read about that tactic here.)

The New Haven occupation has the foreclosure idea ​“under serious consideration,” said stalwart participant Drew Peccerillo. ​“We’re trying to figure out the logistics of it.”

Is foreclosure occupation the right way to go? The question was posed to three leading New Haven political thinkers known for smart and unconventional or unpredictable takes on the news: State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, who represents Newhallville (the epicenter of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis); Business New Haven and New Haven Magazine publisher Mitchell Young; and Yale history professor Jennifer Klein, who recently got arrested while participating in an Occupy demonstration in New York.

They debated the question among themselves in real time for a half-hour on a shared Google document, and they came up with three different takes (or four?) on the foreclosure question, as well as the success of the Occupy movement so far.

Seize the houses! Klein advised: The banks caused this mess.

No they didn’t, argued Young: Some cities need to wither, and the movement has had no real impact.

It is making a difference, countered Holder-Winfield, but it should focus on ​“occupying” the legislature rather than messing with private property.

A lightly edited transcript of their online discussion follows. Feel free to keep the thread going by posting comments to the story.

“Now They Can Be On The Move”

Jennifer: I think going after home foreclosures is a great move. It links many people across class: working class and middle class folks have faced this issue. It deals not just with the individual experience of home loss but the systemic problems of banks that have hollowed out neighborhoods.

Mitchell: In spite of my history as an active participant in opening the City University of New York to minorities, and having been arrested multiple times in anti-war demonstrations, I am not a fan of the structure and tactics of the Occupy movement. … I don’t see that much evidence there is a movement. There are a great many people concerned about their economic issues, and their inability to get ahead. I haven’t seen as much concern about what is referred to as ​“economic inequality,” as some people believe.

Gary: I would agree that the ​“movement” moves between the notion that there is broad-based economic inequality and individuals advocating on a more individual level. But is that a problem? Still it moves the conversation.

Jennifer: I think, first, it’s great that they are on the move now and into the communities. The occupation of a common space in the ​“first phase” of the movement had incredible importance. It not only made discontent about the imbalances in economic and political power visible (especially when protesters were denied basic rights of freedom of assembly). It also enabled people who experienced various forms of economic precariousness or dispossession to see each other: students with debt, people who lost homes, those who lost jobs, those losing their pensions, disabled people facing medicaid cuts. The first step in any movement is creating a sense of shared experience, shared frustration, articulation as social rather than individual.

Now they can be on the move and taking on all kinds of places and institutions that represent the sources of economic insecurity and political powerlessness.

Gary: Truth is, like Mitchell, I would have very different designs for this movement. My thing would be to move beyond the Green and public spaces and occupy the politics that are so problematic. I would move people into positions (assuming they can) to tilt the discussions and decisions of people in office. As long as they stay on greens and parks they don’t have deep impact on elections. Seizure of private homes by the way might cause me to (because of my role as a legislator) find myself at odds with the Occupy movement for which I have much respect.

“All Cities Or Parts Of Cities To Die

Mitchell (pictured): … It might be worth to ask if we should do a better job allowing cities or parts of cities to die, rather than forcing them to remain uneconomic and inefficient. Maybe we should consider helping people move, rather than staying in places that are dying.

But beyond that it is a great stretch to blame the housing bubble on the banks, or the people that borrowed money. Too much money was chasing too few good investments. This has happened several times in the past 30 years. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea for so many countries to print money instead of build their societies in a more organic way.

Jennifer: The banks created a housing bubble. They used balloon mortgages with tricks built into them. They bet on bundling these mortgages and selling them for a quick profit before it resulted in dispossession.

So if dispossession was their route to excessive money and political power, I think people should push back on that directly.

Moreover, it’s not as though the banks are doing anything with a lot of these properties. There are blocks and blocks of abandoned housing all over this country. At the same time, there are people who have nowhere to live. Those left in the heavily abandoned neighborhoods live in increasingly dangerous and unhealthy circumstances. So why shouldn’t people take control of these spaces and turn them to positive social uses? (And politicize them!)

These kinds of actions have a long history in the U.S. Neighborhood activists and labor activists moved evicted tenants back into apartments or homes in the 1890s, in the 1910s, during the Great Depression. Before you had a labor movement that was legalized, there was the Neighborhood Council of Working-Class Women moving evicted families back into their homes. 

In response to Gary’s point about prompting public officials to act, it was these kinds of direct actions that compelled Roosevelt to put in place programs like Home Owners Loan Corporation during the New Deal, which was an incredibly successful program that did indeed ​“save” people’s homes. (I believe over a million homes.) Right now there are activists from New York to Chicago to L.A. who are going in collective groups to banks like Bank of America to pressure loan officers to let them renegotiate the terms of their mortgage, so that they can keep paying and stay in their homes. It’s not ​“shirking” some responsibility, but rather bringing the mortgage back in line with home value and adjusting fees, etc. But it takes direct action to make it happen.

As for Mitch’s point, we should help people move on and let a place die? Are you actually saying that? Are you actually suggesting that we just accept some inevitable decline of a city like New Haven? Do you think that’s how we got out of the Great Depression? No! Exactly the opposite. We got out of it through massive public investment that upgraded and modernized cities and the countryside.

“Aim At Pathetic Politicians”

Gary (pictured): I don’t dispute the points Jennifer is making. I am just saying that I think there should be direct action aimed at the pathetic politicians sitting safely in their seats. It is one thing to voice solidarity with the occupy movement. It is another to act in office as if that is true. The reason I moved from being an activist into elected office is because I realized that the type of people I wanted in office are people like me. and they don’t get there just because I point out the flaws in those already in office

Mitchell: This is not the Great Depression. That was 25 percent unemployment. Also, by the way, in 1973 we had in Western Massachusetts and other areas with 12 percent unemployment; also not the Great Depression.

What we have is a huge gap between educated white people (not talking about millionaires now) who have today a 5‑percent unemployment rate and poorly educated minorities. One state to the north, Massachusetts, has a 7‑percent unemployment rate now.

I don’t think New Haven was ever on the death list. That has always been, or at least as long as I’ve been involved (since 1975), a fabrication of some in New Haven. I’ve watched it grow through fits and starts. But there are many places that we need to let go.

Unfortunately we did not provide northern blacks the mobility they needed in time to move to faster growing economies. Now many have found they can move. I’ve interviewed several young black professionals who assured me they would move to Atlanta; they would not stay in New Haven. They should go where the opportunity is.

And I know they may have changed the history, but in my day, the early ​‘60s, they told us those programs didn’t work, and it was World War II that pulled us out of the Depression.

Gary: Mitchell hits the nail on the head with the discussion of whites and minorities.

Jennifer: Although again, that is also a question of public investment and public services. Do we invest in good quality schools and libraries? What does it take to make those top priorities? We have to pay attention not just to some neutral claim of ​“disparity” but also imbalances of power. Why aren’t people with less education making more on the job? Why have their wages declined since the 1970s? Why don’t they have a pension?

Let’s think about the large corporate interests that block unionization. I don’t see that the Congress has moved in any way to reform labor law. In fact, they are about to let the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] fail to have a quorum altogether, so it can’t even function.

The fact is there needs to be pressure from below that creates a sense of urgency for people in office to act. There can be good jobs in any region. but workers have to be organized to assert those terms. A movement like ​“Occupy Wall Street” broadens the definition of that sort of movement, since the official labor movement at this point represents less than 9 percent of private sector workers and is under assault in the public sector; and since 11 million are officially unemployed (and estimates of those no longer looking bring it to 24 million total). It’s reinventing the possibilities of a broad-based economic justice movement, and I’m all for that.

Mitchell: I have to admit I’m not able to see this movement the way others do. Group action to create change is not new.

In this case this movement feels to me like the Kardashians. Sorry for the insult; I’m saying this of the the substance in the movement; regardless of the substance in its origins. I guess I’m old; I want people who are personally identified, who are clearly on the line. I know that there was only a fraction of people who think fought for civil rights or against the war in Vietnam, but there were clear goals, clear identifications. This isn’t new.

Gary: Disagree with the Kardashians comparison. I am somewhere between Mitchell and Jennifer here. When I read Jennifer, I see much of the discussion that goes on about economic inequality. But when I look at our country it seems that here Mitchell has a very valid point about the individual nature that undergirds all of this. There are many groups that have experienced economic inequality as a fact of life — not just now but from day one — and no movement springs up around that. It is when this hits some people’s door that it becomes a thing worthy of a movement. I don’t know if that makes it sustainable or not.

Previous coverage of Occupy New Haven and Occupy Wall Street:

• Bulldozed Elsewhere, Occupy NH Marks 2 Months
• 3 Arrested At Occupy New Haven
• Occupation Rejects ​“Victory” Declaration
• New Haven Occupiers Clash With NYC Cops
• Who’s In & Who’s Out At The Occupation?
• ​“I Knew It — He’s A Scumbag”
• ​“Occu-Pies” Arrive
• Occupation Weather(ize)s Its 1st Storm
• Clergy Bless The Occupiers
• Occupiers Eye Clock Factory
• In New Haven, ​“Occupiers” Embrace The Cops
• Midnight Drug Warning Sparks Soul-Searching
• Emergency Session Poses Democracy Test
• The Password (The Password) … Is (Is) …
• 1,000 Launch New Haven’s ​“Occupation”
• Klein: Occupation Needs To Confront Power
• Whoops! Movement Loses $100K
• New Haven’s ​“Occupation” Takes Shape
• Occupy Branford: Wall Street Edition
• Anti-Bankers’ Dilemma: How To Process $$
• Labor, Occupiers March To Same Beat
• Protests’ Demand: A ​“World We Want To See”
• Protesters To Occupy Green Starting Oct. 15
• Wall Street Occupiers Page Verizon
• New Haven Exports ​“Free”-dom To Occupiers