RealtyBizNews - Real Estate Marketing and Beyond
Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Home » Housing » US Real Estate » Real Estate » Mortgage » Occupy Homes: Get Ready For Action

Occupy Homes: Get Ready For Action

By Mike Wheatley | December 6, 2011

Tuesday is set to be a big day of action for homeowners on the protest front, as an orchestrated “Occupy Homes” campaign gets under way to promote the basic human rights of housing, reports IB Times.

Occupy Atalanta

Occupy Homes protesters plan to stage demos in 25 US cities today. © Rahul Sengupta - Fotolia.com

The movement, which is an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street protests, will see organized protests take place in 25 cities around the US, bringing together a mix of tenant groups, affordable housing activists, homeless advocates and others. The protestors have signified their intention to occupy foreclosed and vacant homes in their cities, in order to highlight one of the most visible problems that have resulted from the recession.

One of the chief organizers of the Occupy Homes protests is Max Rameau of the Take Back the Land movement, a group that has been advocating community controlled land as a way of dealing with foreclosures. He said that by occupying foreclosed homes, it would give the movement a visible presence that would help it achieve its goals:

“I think it's a natural evolution. You can't organize except face to face. You can't do that through Twitter."

The Occupy Homes protestors have come up with a number of innovative gambits to draw attention to their cause, reports IB Times. Chicago activists are planning on taking over three vacant homes in the city that were previously foreclosed, and then moving families to live in them. A similar plan is set to be carried out by East New York activists, who have their sights set on moving one family back into a vacant home.

Meanwhile, protestors in Portland, Oregon, are planning to hold a press conference at the home of a cancer-stricken couple who are currently threatened with foreclosure in order to highlight their plight, before moving onto local police stations to ask police not to enforce evictions.

Protestors from the Take Back the Land movement in Madison, Wisconsin have said they plan to liberate a foreclosed home that has been repossessed by the Bank of America – it will be the group’s third such attempt to take over a bank-owned property that lies vacant, following two previous failed attempts.

In Atlanta, protestors from the Occupy Atlanta movement are planning on going one step further by hijacking three foreclosure auctions that are scheduled for Tuesday morning, before setting up protest camps at two foreclosure-threatened homes in the state, according to their spokesman Tim Franzen.

Discussing the goals of the Atlanta protests, Franzen explained that they were designed to challenge an economic system that many people believed were unfair.

"Tomorrow is really about challenging the banks," he explained. "It’s about challenging the economic system that’s snatching up people’s homes. People are getting ripped off. The American people are getting ripped off. That is an intolerable injustice."

Mike Wheatley is the senior editor at Realty Biz News. Got a real estate related news article you wish to share, contact Mike at [email protected].
  • One comment on “Occupy Homes: Get Ready For Action”

    1. WOW! Talk about a movement that's challenging the banks. In some cases, it's the right of the bank to seize a home that the Occupier has inhabited for years without regard to payment to the bank, HOA, property taxes, and maintenance.

      Yes, there are exceptions to every rule, but quite often the bank is not the bad guy when the homeowner could have short sold, received moving allowance, and lowered their payments or taken up residence with a family member or friend.

      We've all hit hard times and yet our first inclination is to blame the profit-making banks.

      It's all a matter of focusing on the right solution to a terrible problem.

  • Sign up to Realty Biz Buzz
    Get Digital Marketing Training
    right to your inbox
    All Contents © Copyright RealtyBizNews · All Rights Reserved. 2016-2024
    Website Designed by Swaydesign.
    linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram