Homes Not Jails Action Saturday

The actual squat address is 2161 Sutter St.

here is a pic of the squat that was evicted. the owner of this building runs the apartments at 2000 Post St. which an extension of is to replace the existing house that housed over 30 people for five months before being evicted by the police and landlord.

I can't belive what I have just read, to think that people who break into properties without the right to do so and then just ransack the properties and then move on only to do the same somewhere else and then want our support have no leg to stand on. You want rights and want to be heard but breaking and entering is not the way do get things done, you think people owe you something and why because you are too damn lazy to get a job, because those of us who pay rent and want to keep neighborhoods safe and clean for children, the elderly and ourselves are wrong for doing so. I have seen the effects that squatting has brought to many communities. Living in several different cities around the United States this is one problem that needs to be addressed. I understand your frustration, but in order to be heard and get things done you need to be a more unified front and just breaking into random proprties is not the way to go about things. First things first, nobody owes you anything , You Squatters owe it to yourselves to take pride in yourselves and your surroundings if you want to be heard. Second pull yourself up by your boot straps and kick yourselves in the ass, stop loafing around, do work in your community at centers for youth, open hand projects, churches and any other community based organization. You want to be heard, well do something for yourselves first because no one will want to help those who don't help themselves. Squatters enter a community, leave their trash lingering about, spray graffiti and piss and shit on our sidewalks and then somehow want the rights that tax paying people in the community have; it's crap and maybe if you all showed some integrity we might see your point here. DO SOMETHING for yourselves first and then ask to be heard.

Lisa,
Please try to get informed before you spout out your stereotypes. The squatters at this location actually are community activists that participate in many social programs including various civic based social programs. Secondly, the entire country of America has been squatted. Even the Republican Party was founded by the early squat movement via the Free Soil Party. Thanks for your willingness to stereotype folks. Why talk about an Open Hand with an closed mind. And yes, most of those squatters do work but refuse to pay other people money for a place to sleep. Others, are simply too poor and unable to find good paying jobs to pay the rent at excessive prices as perpetuated by real estate corporations such as United Dominion Realty.

Direct Action Housing, Three Arrested

Early Saturday morning three members of Homes Not Jails and the Autonomous Collective were arrested at the vacant home at 2161 Sutter St. which his owned by the real estate corporation, United Dominion Realty Trust. The home was previously the site of a long term squat or self-managed social housing project for 30 people before being evicted by the corporation which plans on turning the residence into over-priced lofts for the affluent in Pacific Heights.

Activists re-entered the house in a direct action civil disobedience early in the morning. The police swept the residence in what is now a regular defense of the corporation property. Protesters gathered at noon in front of the property declaring that the home will continue to be squatted periodically in defiance of the hording of property by real estate corporations in San Francisco. “We will continue to squat this property even if it is for one minute, corporations will either give up housing to the poor or they will have to guard ever vacant building in this city” protestors said.

After demonstrating in front of the building the protestors then proceeded to march up Fillmore St. to the Pacific Heights and locked down in the intersection of Fillmore and Sacramento. The blockade of traffic for a half hour further brought attention to the need for social housing in the city. The protestors claimed that they will continue there campaign for housing for the working poor and homeless.

If interested in participating in direct action social housing Homes Not Jails meetings are every 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month at 468 Turk St. 5:00pm, or contact autonomouscollective [at] mutualaid.org

There is a 9.3 meg / 4.24 minutes video of the protest in that area that took place on Feb. 2, 2003.

It will start downloading when you click below:
http://www.crazyjeff.net/giveitnow.mov

Rock On,
http://www.crazyjeff.net

I just read Lisa Weber's post and felt compelled to respond. Unfortunately, she reflects widely accepted notions in our society and her ignorance is why we (as a society) are making no progress in the areas of affordable housing, elder care, child care, treatment and shelter for the insane, sanitation facilities for the working poor - we are making no progress in any of these areas. In fact, our society is going backwards and the middle class is shrinking away as the gap between the rich and the poor grows.

Lisa, and her ilk, are into blaming the victims of our misguided economic policies or (more often) claiming to be victims themselves. Who is oppressing them, you ask? Could it be the corporations that no longer pay their fair share of community taxes and so have left communities scrambling for resources while they have also moved most manufacturing jobs offshore? Nope. Not in Lisa's world. It's the crazy person she has to walk by who smells like urine. He, even though he is relatively powerless, is the cause of all her ills. Could it be the planning commissioners who have let dense and affordable housing be torn to make way for cheap lofts that are now sitting empty? Nope, they don't hold a candle to the power of runnaway youths that are too young to work legally. In Lisa's world the poor are omnipotent but just lazy. The rich and idle people that actually produce nothing (i.e. realtors, marketing weanies, advertisers, stockbrokers) they are impotent and can't really effect social change - in Lisa's world view - all the rich can do is guard their precious communities and hope they don't get prayed upon by the super-powerful squatters - who have all these options available to them - but they just choose to urinate on public sidewalks and terrorize otherwise peaceful and compassionate citizens.

Lisa has no compassion, no empathy, no intelligence and no memory. She is a fattened pig living in the belly of new Rome.
When all the layoffs and cut-backs start to take effect ... when all the neglected veterans of all the new wars start to come home ... will Lisa feel safer and happier then? Maybe... maybe this is what she wants. America used to pride itself on having educated citizens and on its abitlity to provide middle class jobs. That is all gone now. Now, the victims point fingers at each and whine as they suck down 80% of the planet's resources and produce nothing useful themselves. Oh well, nature will strike back soon and will see how long Lisa can survive - cut off from communications and clean toilettes and lattes ... she will start to stink and I will walk by and scowl.

Love always, Val

Oh well, Whiz Whart fails to address the fact that the planning commission and the developers (whose nobs they had firmly lodged up their bungs) broke in and entered fine neighborhoods like the Mission with their government money and "developed" live/work lofts in residential zones.

Whiz Whart fails to see the fact that just because you work for subpoverty wages in the ever expanding service sector economy ... doesn't mean you can pay the rent that vacuous trust-fund youths can. Look up ... "vacancy rate" ... think about things like exhorbatant move-in costs and extensive credit checks. In other words, just because you get a job at Wendy's doesn't mean you are suddenly going to be welcomed into an appartment in this city. In 1999, something like 40% of the homeless were working. So, one might gather the resources to fix-up a squat but that doesn't mean that they can support some lazy swine who doesn't work (except for adding up the rent money that he collects from people who do - and most of the time they hire accountants for this as well) and owns a thousand units in this city.

Whiz Whart also reveals an incredible lack of knowledge about the situation with veterans of the US service. OK, after WWII, when corporations still paid 30% or more of the overall tax income to the government ... when public education was still supported ... in other words, when the society had the foresight to plan and invest in boreing things like infrastructure and so forth .... at this time, there was the GI bill and all kinds of other things awaiting the vets of that war. One nice feature of the vets life then, was ... guess what ... AFFORDABLE HOUSING ... which is gone now. So, compare this to the post-neoliberal treatment of vets after Nam. Go and actually interview many of the homeless downtown and you will find out that many of them are vets. How did this happen? Could it be that they were priced out of the housing market like so many other segments of our society? What about testing drugs and nuclear events on servicemen and vets? Is this good treatment? Have you ever been in a veterans hospital? Has the official military ever admitted that 'gulf-war syndrome' is real? So, yeah OK, if you come from a family of military brass and graduated from westpoint, you are probably doing OK. If, however, you are one of the many "grunts" who joined the military out of economic desparation and you come back damaged from combat, friendly fire or exposure to all manner of toxic substances ... sorry ... statistically you are going to wind up on the streets. So, the claim about our vets being well taken care of, is an insult from an insulated and overpriveledged civilian who knows nothing about defending the Constitution of the United States or the reality of modern, chemical combat.

Also, Whiz Whart fails to address the facts that during our big economic boom, we (San Francisco) were actually leading the nation in the number of evictions. And, guess who were the biggest targets of these evictions? Seniors. The Planning Commission was happy to sit by and let seniors be evicted because they were longterm tenants and couldn't "perform" or "compete" like their younger counterparts who were burning through investment capital while they were having a little internet pryamid party. A fantasy economy which subsequently crashed and left communities devestated and government coffers drained.
So now, 1-in-5 children in this country are living below the poverty line. Many actual families are one paycheck away from the streets themselves. And, now, there is no ethic of do-for-yourself like there was in the "great depression" of the 30's because there is no where to do forself in totally privatized funmall of information workers. "Hey brother can you spare a dime" has been replaced by whiney yuppies (who are themselves living on credit and borrowed time) pitted against the working poor and the laid-off masses. And the fact that the average CEO earns 475 times what the average worker earns is all good and dandy with the insulated idiots that lack the political will to do things insist on some public toilets (not the kind that cost millions to build, take a quarter to go into and waste tons of water in their scary, space-age cleaning cycle) ... but, the kind they have in other sane societies. Now, it seems we are happy to criminalize people for doing normal human functions - like urinating and defecating. Can Whiz Whart or Lisa live without pooping? Are they full of crap? Maybe. They certainly lack political will and informed vision.

They will all be forced to hide in "undisclosed locations." And, once behind the big walls of the burbclaves, they will continue to watch the mindnumbing spectacle of American TV and mock all their fellow americans who live in sqalor in the highly-policed sanctuary zones and abandoned districts of the world of the excluded. They will then be able to yell, "get a job" at TV monitors and feel satisfied as they email resumes to new would-be employers and await phone calls on their "land-lines." Never realizing that you can't get a job, if you don't have a call back number and if you have no place to take a shower ... So, keep paying for the police to protect the empty property and shouting at TV's and driving your kids everywhere in you bulletproof SUV's .... this is obviously way better public policy than trying to include people and create an economy which is somewhat sustainable. And, it must also be clear from their daily tv hypnosis, that a prolonged "war on terror" is going to make them far safer than a "war on poverty" at home. In the end, I hope they implode in their own world of debt-swollen plastic cards and high-speed bits of information and total surveillance. Maybe if they can escape the cascading space trash, they will feel safer while the satellite goverment whatches them defecate in nice, safe chambers of total oblivion.

a picture of HNJers locked down in Sacramento and Fillmore Intersection

I cant understand the comparison between squatting and resisting against breaking down a house in san francisco and the conflict in middle east between israel and palestine. could u explain it ?

Does anyone remember when the homeless mentally disabled were institutionalized. The state acted for better or for worse, and I'm sure by now would have been doing a better job, but what happened? Well the leftys said the state couldn't do this and that's when cities esp. NYC became awash with its permanent underclass of homeless....right on CJ

Tax dollars for social programs or tax dollars for US military squatters on foriegn land?

Tax dollars for social programs or tax dollars for US military squatters on foriegn land?

Tax dollars for social programs or tax dollars for US military squatters on foriegn land?

Ignorant bartender - serve another on of those corporate 'legal' drugs. HOw dare you... many of these HOMELESS PEOPLE are disabled with mental and physical challenges. Let's see how you fare on the street. And how did they get there? It's not a matter of pride or lack of. Many of these PEOPLE had a early start with incest, sexual abuse, physical and mental hardship. Would you rather your precious tax dollars go to killing children and innocent people in Iraq or wherever your tax dollar funded US military decides to squat - or to help your fellow man, woman and child with desperately needed social programs??? Be thankful that you have a job and that your life circumstances have lead to a peaceful and prosperous extistance. Think twice before you decide to give advice.

I thought this was decided in the last election. We want tax dollars for our military to squat on some foreign terrorists! I'll be sending my donation -- cans of jet fuel -- to some needy fighter pilots.

And repeat that again, after the economy becomes much worse than it is now and unemployment goes up several more points and all the white collar service workers from the computer industry who currently have zeroed out their bank accounts and are turning to credit will be out in the street. It's going to happen. Mark my words - all sorts of people who had some college are going to be turning to stealing, drug dealing and begging.