Housing

In this video by Huffington Post Investigative Fund, we learn the story Vicky Valentine who had her home seized by Sunrise Atlantic LLC, an arm of Bank Atlantic, because of an unpaid water bill of $362.  Ms Valentine's bill was owed to the City of Baltimore, which then sold the right to collect on the bill to a series of banks and real estate companies (third party investors) in a tax lien auction that quickly inflated the bill to over three thousand dollars. Investors then seized the home and put Ms Valentine and her family on the street. As the video details, this is a growing practice between strapped city governments and private investors (usually banks) which is dispossessing the poor and working class of their property.

In October, our friends at the Poverty Initiative were part of the New York Coalition headed by the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative along with Picture the Homeless to host the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing's US Mission.

In January of 2010, the Poverty Initiatve, a group based in New York that aims to reignite Dr. Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign, visited Philadelphia for an immersion tour. The tour highlighted the history of the struggles of poor people in this city. Willie Baptist and Liz Theoharis, of the Poverty Initiative,  shared stories about the struggle of the homeless in 1995 and 1996.

Across Philadelphia over 8,000 are people living with HIV/AIDS and without adequate housing. Living homeless through the winter while struggling with a sickness that weakens the immune system, these individuals face a crisis of healthcare, housing, and poverty.

On Monday November 11th 2009, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that it will abandon its $300 million dollar world research-and-development headquarters in New London CT.  This comes only  four years after a Pfizer-inspired development plan resulted in the landmark Kelo v. New London Supreme Court ruling, which sanctioned the use of eminent domain for private development.

 
Raquel Rolnik, the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing is holding a Public Town Hall Meeting at Union Theological Seminary to discuss concerns on public housing, social housing, homelessness, and foreclosure crises in the United States.   Personal testimonials from people directly affected by inadequate housing will be shared.Watch the event LIVE starting at 6:30 pm TONIGHT at this link.

Friday, Jonathan Stein from Community Legal Services and a past member of the Philadelphia Tax Reform Commission got a letter to the editor published in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for an end to Philadelphia's 10-year tax abatements for the "super-rich." The letter is reprinted below.
 

Last month in London a community of folks got together to demand decent housing for the poor and working class communities of the city. Many of the problems we are facing in Philadelphia are not just urban or national issues but rather global issues. Check out this video of the London Coalition Against Poverty, and the struggle around Alexandra Court.

According to this 12 minute 60 Minutes piece, the current mortgage foreclosure crisis is just the beginning. Over the next 3 years, two types of adjustable rate mortgages (Alt-A and Option B) are due to reset interest rates at a higher level starting this winter. This means that the monthly payments will go up, and its predicted that will produce another massive wave of foreclosures.

Several weeks ago Jill Porter of the Philadelphia Daily News reported on the death of a man named Roy Parker, a tenant in an illegal boarding house behind the shuttered Ivy Ridge Assisted Living facility in Roxborough. Parker and 9 other low-income residents had been renting 7 rooms at the property, at $450 each, in an effort to rebuild their lives after struggling with poverty, health, and in Parker' case, even homelessness.