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.
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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/
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