20 March 2009

Check out this interesting video about reclaiming vacant housing for occupation - proclaiming shelter as a basic human right. Seems rather pertinent considering the foreclosure crisis, and considering how many vacant houses there are right here is Syracuse. In May 2000, Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation released a housing market study for the City of Syracuse (The Syracuse Neighborhood Initiative Housing Market Study, 2000). According to this study, there are approximately 8,710 vacant housing units in the city.

While our city has experimented with a dollar house program, where they literally gave away several hundred of these houses for $1 to people, without any requirements such as credit checks or proposals, it apparently failed because these people did not know how to fix up the houses and came back asking for help (when there was no capacity to give them that assistance). Perhaps what we could do as a city is to use funding to offfer free training to anybody and everybody who is willing in carpentry and green rehab practices so that they then have the skills to go into these houses and fix them up for themselves and their families... This morning, homeless people and community allies took over a vacant building in El Barrio/East Harlem. The target was a beautiful two-story building at the corner of Madison Avenue and 116th that has been vacant for decades...

Upon seizing control of the property, the occupiers determined that the building was structurally unsound, with a roof cave-in and significant floor damage, and that it was not safe to remain inside the building (earlier attempts to gain entrance to the building to assess the conditions had resulted in immediate unwanted police attention). The takeover crew left the building to join a crowd of hundreds of supporters who had braved the rain to hold a solidarity rally outside. While we're sad that the occupation of the building could not be sustained, the sorry state of this beautiful building is just more proof that the City needs to prioritize development of vacant property into housing for low-income folks. A building like this would make an amazing community center, something El Barrio sorely needs.

So on Friday night at 7PM, we'll be turning the SIDEWALK into a community center! We'll be holding a SLEEP-OUT celebration outside the building, and we would love it if you could come! Bring poems and songs for a community cultural event; bring food and blankets and sleeping bags—for yourself, or to share.

EL BARRIO SLEEP-OUT, SPEAK-OUT, & CULTURAL CELEBRATION
Friday, March 20. 7pm til dawn! Corner of Madison & 116th Street.
For more information, contact Joe at 646-314-6423 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

For more info. visit: http://picturethehomeless.org/blog/node/84

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