Is Housing a Human Right?

[Brian4Liberty]

Bottom line: A group of women calling themselves “Moms for Housing” started squatting in a house that was empty. It was a strategically targeted house that had been bought by a corporate house flipping network. The goal is to push the idea that housing is a human right, and that vacant homes should be taken and given to “poor” people. The are trying to establish this in court as a precedent.

[Brian4Liberty]

In media reports, interviews and press statements, they push the bleeding heart angle, it’s only about hard working moms and their children. They also play the race card liberally.

In reality, the “mom” who started this is a social justice organizer and communist agitator. She just moved back to California. This is almost impossible for many people who leave, due to the high cost. She could have lived somewhere other than Oakland, but this is a political agenda, and not about practical living. As noted in the article, her relatives no longer live in Oakland.

By the time Dominique Walker started squatting in an Oakland home with her five-year-old daughter and one-year-old son, she’d exhausted all other options. Walker, who had fled domestic violence in Mississippi, knew it would be hard to find a place, amidst the housing crisis, in the city where she’d grown up. But she wasn’t prepared for what she encountered: Thousands of people, predominantly black and brown, forced to sleep on the street, in shelters, or on couches, despite the fact that many had a job—or two or three.
...
After moving back in April, Walker and her kids first stayed with relatives. They’d all been pushed out by high housing costs to neighboring cities like Antioch and Stockton. Walker spent hours each day commuting to work in Oakland and her kids’ daycare in Berkeley.
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Walker is a lifelong organizer. She was a student co-founder of her high school in Oakland, the School of Social Justice and Community Development. In Mississippi, She worked on human rights lawyer Chokwe Lumumba’s mayoral campaign and then with a radical worker cooperative in Jackson.

So, back in Oakland, when she found her family in a tough spot, Walker started looking into the causes of homelessness in her community. And that’s when she began to notice the “for rent” signs, vacant lots, and new, unoccupied high rises everywhere. Then she came across an empty house on a quiet block on Magnolia street in West Oakland (the “only eyesore on the block,” she says). She did some research and found out it was owned by Wedgewood Property Management, which labels itself as a “leading acquirer of distressed residential real estate.” The house had sat empty for about two years, and some neighbors, who Walker talked to, worried it would decay or become a trap house for drugs or other illegal activities. In November, Walker, another mother, and their kids moved into the vacant home.

Instead of trying to fly under the radar, Walker started Moms 4 Housing, using the previously empty house as a platform to draw attention to lots and homes that sit vacant while the city struggles with rampant homelessness.
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More: https://www.motherjones.com/politics...ess-squatters/

[Brian4Liberty]

And the other side of the equation. Corporate speculation. Housing as a commodity.

Investment Properties

Wedgewood and its partner, HMC Assets, offer a unique opportunity to qualified investors to access our portfolio of distressed residential properties. HMC Assets acquires and manages bulk quantities of non-performing and re‑performing residential whole loans purchased from banks, financial institutions, and US governmental agencies including the FHA and HUD.

https://www.wedgewood-inc.com/investment-properties/

[angelatc]

And the other side of the equation. Corporate speculation. Housing as a commodity.

Property is always and always has been a commodity. The problem isn't the"evil corporate" speculators, although the liberals insist it is. It's government intervention in the markets.

To answer the question, no - housing is not a human right.

[Brian4Liberty]

Property is always and always has been a commodity. The problem isn't the"evil corporate" speculators, although the liberals insist it is. It's government intervention in the markets.

To answer the question, no - housing is not a human right.

Of course. Housing is not a human right. This entire exercise by these “moms” is about communist redistribution of wealth.

In the broadest sense, everything is a “commodity”, but modern Wall St. commoditization is a specific thing. Is CO2 a commodity? They are trying to make it one (aside from whoever might want to isolate and compress CO2 for some use). It was a part of the instigation of the entire global climate change hysteria.

Back to the history of real estate and housing. Real estate for the vast majority of history has been simply the territory that you, your family or your group could hold and defend. Simple as that. Occupancy was always mandatory, or you very well might lose it.

For the second greatest amount of time, it was some form of royalty who actually “owned” the land, primarily for the same reason as above, they could defend it.

Individual property rights for real estate developed in the mid to late 1600s in the UK after revolutions lead to a greater distribution of real estate and codified protections of real estate rights.

The development of real estate as a wide-spread, exchange style commodity in the US started around 1960, when the law enabling REITs was passed and signed. That allowed smaller investors to invest in commercial property. The types of property in REITs expanded over time until as recently as 2012, REITs started to invest in residential houses. Of course a US citizen could have invested in residential real estate long before that, but in Wall St, exchange style terms, that is a very recent development.

There was a time when many foreigners could not directly purchase US real estate. That has also changed relatively recently.

Do these factors contribute to more houses sitting empty, owned by a remote entity that doesn’t care that it’s empty? Very likely. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence, although exact numbers are impossible to know. It certainly stands out when it happens in a nicer neighborhood.

So if we want to look at it from a historical perspective, an empty house would have been fair game. “Adverse possession” laws would apply, and as they say, possession is nine-tenths of the law.

[euphemia]

The article does not say how all these people sleeping on the streets have tried to solve their problems. Nobody has suggested they pool their resources to purchase or rent a place and share expenses and child care.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://www.twitter.com/bypass_tv/st...81272614690816

[euphemia]

The right to own property at one’s own expense is a basic right. This woman does not own the property she wants to inhabit. She violates the owner’s rights when she lives there for free.

[Brian4Liberty]

The right to own property at one’s own expense is a basic right. This woman does not own the property she wants to inhabit. She violates the owner’s rights when she lives there for free.

With a slight modification. The right to work to attempt to own property at one’s own expense is a basic right. There is no guarantee that you will be able to do that though. Supply and demand applies.

And yes, she is violating the owner’s rights at this point, with our current laws.

[PursuePeace]

They can call it whatever they like, but all they're really doing is trying to steal a house.

[Brian4Liberty]

They can call it whatever they like, but all they're really doing is trying to steal a house.

Yes, but in a much bigger sense. They want to set a legal precedent for redistribution of housing. If I read correctly in an article, they intentionally chose a house recently purchased by this investment group, that had been vacant for a long time. In other words, it was probably on the verge of being cleaned up and rented or sold on the open market. They knew it would result in a high profile legal battle.

If they simply wanted to squat, they could have done that in a different empty house and laid low, probably for many years.

[PursuePeace]

Yes, but in a much bigger sense. They want to set a legal precedent for redistribution of housing. If I read correctly in an article, they intentionally chose a house recently purchased by this investment group, that had been vacant for a long time. In other words, it was probably on the verge of being cleaned up and rented or sold on the open market. They knew it would result in a high profile legal battle.

If they simply wanted to squat, they could have done that in a different empty house and laid low, probably for many years.

You're absolutely right.

I'm sure it all makes perfect sense to them. When people survive off of the fruits of other people's labor, it stops looking like "stealing" to you after awhile, and suddenly magically turns into a "right".

So their plan is....(if I'm understanding this correctly)...people start stealing houses from groups that legally own the houses. Then those groups end up losing money and have to start laying off employees. Those former employees then end up homeless and then end up being able to legally steal a house that was once owned by their former employer. Then their former employer loses everything and becomes homeless... then what? There are no more houses to steal.

[euphemia]

With a slight modification. The right to work to attempt to own property at one’s own expense is a basic right. There is no guarantee that you will be able to do that though. Supply and demand applies.

And yes, she is violating the owner’s rights at this point, with our current laws.

That is much more clear, thank you.

[Origanalist]

Hell no it's not a right. The fact that this is even being discussed shows how screwed up things have become.

[Krugminator2]

Hell no it's not a right. The fact that this is even being discussed shows how screwed up things have become.

This is an extremely common view for the base on the left. 98% of my political intake comes from this site but I started lurking on a left wing board some months back and they were having a debate over whether it should be illegal to be a landlord. Lot of rent control supporters to. And these are "smart" people.

Unless you see it first hand it is hard to grasp how off the rails the left wing base is in this country. Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky types are the norm not the exception. No more centrist Democrats. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter would never get elected to anything with their platforms.

[Origanalist]

This is an extremely common view for the base on the left. 98% of my political intake comes from this site but I started lurking on a left wing board some months back and they were having a debate over whether it should be illegal to be a landlord. Lot of rent control supporters to. And these are "smart" people.

Unless you see it first hand it is hard to grasp how off the rails the left wing base is in this country. Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky types are the norm not the exception. No more centrist Democrats. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter would never get elected to anything with their platforms.

I know, I see it too. !)%#ing insanity.

[Brian4Liberty]

Just an FYI, this has been the biggest news event in the SF Bay Area for the past two weeks. The media reports live almost every day, and today they were finally evicted. Media was hoping for violence, but it didn’t happen.

Homeless mothers evicted from vacant home as California housing crisis looms
Four people were arrested at the home in Oakland Tuesday morning.

A group of homeless mothers who refused to leave a vacant home they were squatting in with their children, were evicted amid the growing homeless crisis in California.

The mothers and their children moved into the home on Magnolia Street on Nov. 18 and continued to live there, despite a judge issuing an order on Friday for them to vacate, ABC San Francisco station KGO reported.

On Tuesday morning, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office enforced the eviction notice on the squatters. Four adults, including two women, were arrested, Sgt. Ray Kelly, public information officer for the sheriff's office, told ABC News. There were no children at the home at the time.

A heavy police presence surrounded the home Monday after dozens of protesters arrived to show their support for the mothers, even creating a human shield at one point to prevent the eviction.

The mothers were being backed by advocacy group Moms 4 Housing, an organization for homeless mothers and those struggling to find or retain housing.

According to the group, there are four times as many empty homes in Oakland as people without homes.

"No one should be homeless when homes are sitting empty," the organization's website reads. "Housing is a human right."
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More: https://abcnews.go.com/US/group-home...homeless/story