Single Mothers and Their Children Are Taking Over Abandoned Public Buildings –

Eeg Strem­ist, a moth­er of eight, was born and raised in North Philadel­phia, where she’s now liv­ing in a pre­vi­ous­ly-vacant home owned by PHA. A friend told her that she could get her into pub­lic hous­ing, but Strem­ist thought she meant that she would be expe­dit­ed off the wait­ing list. When she real­ized that her friend actu­al­ly meant she could help her move into an emp­ty home, Strem­ist hes­i­tat­ed, but decid­ed to move for­ward. After all, a house would mean that she could final­ly live with all of her chil­dren, some of whom she had been sep­a­rat­ed from dur­ing the last three years. The house was dirty and dusty — Strem­ist and her kids spent the first day clean­ing one room, where they all slept. The next day, they tack­led anoth­er, and then anoth­er. Although Strem­ist isn’t pay­ing rent, she’s pur­chased paint, tiles and clean­ing sup­plies to fix up the house, and spent hours mak­ing it feel like a home. ​“The house I’m in was marked as unvi­able,” Strem­ist said, ​“but it doesn’t look like it to me.”

Strem­ist had spent the last three years mov­ing from shel­ter to shel­ter. Even when she had enough mon­ey to rent a place, she was con­sis­tent­ly reject­ed, either because her cred­it was bad, or because she was told she had too many kids. Now, as the Covid pan­dem­ic and its con­se­quences — unem­ploy­ment, loss of health insur­ance, poten­tial evic­tion — have con­tin­ued to wreak hav­oc on work­ing peo­ple, espe­cial­ly those who were already strug­gling to stay afloat before the virus stunt­ed the econ­o­my, peo­ple with inse­cure hous­ing are not will­ing to wait around. Unhoused peo­ple — who may live in shel­ters or on the street, or bounce from couch to couch — are some of the most vul­ner­a­ble to Covid. After all, you can’t quar­an­tine with­out a home. As the weath­er gets hot­ter and work­ers’ unem­ploy­ment checks run out, more and more peo­ple will be at risk of evic­tion or fore­clo­sure once states’ and cities’ mora­to­ri­ums end. And with­out enough pub­lic hous­ing to act as a safe­ty net for those who need it, more and more peo­ple will either join encamp­ments or find their own hous­ing by squat­ting in emp­ty buildings.

Although it’s PHA’s sole job to pro­vide hous­ing for those who need it, the author­i­ty has been under fire by activists in recent years for being inef­fec­tive. While it is the biggest land­lord in the state (and has 80,000 ten­ants in the city), there are still more than 40,000 peo­ple on the hous­ing wait­list, accord­ing to Ben­netch, and it has been closed to new appli­cants since 2013. Many of those on the wait­ing list have to wait up to 13 years to get housing.

In recent years, the hous­ing authority’s projects have includ­ed more mar­ket-rate hous­ing, which is unaf­ford­able for those eli­gi­ble for pub­lic hous­ing, and poten­tial­ly takes hous­ing from those who real­ly need it. And while thou­sands of Philadel­phi­ans lan­guish for years on the wait­list, PHA sells lots and struc­tures to pri­vate devel­op­ers who build mar­ket-rate hous­ing, and let oth­er hous­es sit emp­ty and decay. Strem­ist doesn’t know why there are so many vacant hous­es, and told In These Times that ​“it’s a bureau­cra­cy thing, or else I can’t explain it.” Activists have been orga­niz­ing to change PHA, cit­ing its role in gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, as well as its use of emi­nent domain and aggres­sive pri­vate police. The hous­ing author­i­ty has denounced the squat­ters, and called their occu­pa­tion a ​“health and safe­ty risk.” But so is liv­ing in a shel­ter or on the streets dur­ing a pan­dem­ic. The author­i­ty built a new $45 mil­lion head­quar­ters last year, and Kelvin Jere­mi­ah, the CEO, made near­ly $300,000 in 2018.

Philadel­phi­a’s home­own­er­ship rate is 53%, which is high­er than sim­i­lar­ly sized cities across the coun­try. The city is often laud­ed for its afford­able rent — com­pared to cities like New York, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and Boston — but one in 14 renters still has evic­tion notices filed against them. Philadel­phia is the poor­est big city in the coun­try, with a pover­ty rate of 25% and a deep pover­ty rate of 14%, and it’s impos­si­ble to stretch a dol­lar you don’t have. The Covid pan­dem­ic has pushed those already tee­ter­ing on the edge of sta­bil­i­ty into total dis­ar­ray, and house­less peo­ple have had no respite from it. But accord­ing to Ster­ling John­son, an orga­niz­er with The Black and Brown Work­ers Coop­er­a­tive and Philadel­phia Hous­ing Action, house­less­ness ​“was a pub­lic health issue before Covid.”

As sin­gle moms and their kids fix up their new hous­es, oth­ers have camped out in front of PHA head­quar­ters and a boule­vard that runs through Cen­ter City. John­son said that both encamp­ments were cre­at­ed after long-stand­ing encamp­ments else­where in the city were evict­ed. (CDC guide­lines sug­gest that encamp­ments should not be evict­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, but on March 23 the city evict­ed an encamp­ment out­side the con­ven­tion cen­ter.) Those evic­tions, cou­pled with the urgency of the pan­dem­ic and lack of move­ment from the city, forced unhoused peo­ple to take mat­ters into their own hands by cre­at­ing the encamp­ments and squat­ting in aban­doned build­ings. The new encamp­ments are not just hous­ing, but pur­pose­ful protests against the way unhoused and hous­ing-inse­cure peo­ple are treat­ed in Philadel­phia. The orga­niz­ers’ demands include an emer­gency trans­fer of all city-owned, vacant prop­er­ties into a com­mu­ni­ty land trust, legal recog­ni­tion of the encamp­ments, and an end to both home­less sweeps and the sale of pub­licly-owned prop­er­ties to pri­vate devel­op­ers. They also echo the call heard at many protests around George Floyd’s mur­der to dis­band the Philadel­phia police department.

Accord­ing to Ster­ling, unhoused peo­ple go through many of the same dehu­man­iz­ing expe­ri­ences as Black peo­ple across the coun­try: sur­veil­lance, harass­ment, and being ​“stopped and frisked” and ques­tioned just for their very exis­tence. The pur­pose of the encamp­ments is to house peo­ple, but to also cre­ate a space where ​“they are treat­ed with dig­ni­ty, like they have the right to exist,” says Ster­ling. And because 75% of unhoused peo­ple in Philadel­phia are Black, the rela­tion­ship between the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment and the right to hous­ing are inex­tri­ca­bly linked.

Orga­niz­ers met with May­or Jim Ken­ney and PHA CEO Kelvin Jere­mi­ah on July 20. Accord­ing to Ben­netch, the meet­ing went bet­ter than expect­ed, and ​“the May­or seems open to mov­ing for­ward with some of our ideas to deal with the hous­ing cri­sis.” But she said that Jere­mi­ah, on the oth­er hand, is not: Ben­netch says that, dur­ing the meet­ing, Jere­mi­ah sent PHA police to intim­i­date those using PHA hous­es. (The hous­es that were raid­ed were from a sep­a­rate occu­pa­tion.)

Although Ben­netch got a ​“cease and desist” let­ter and was threat­ened to be charged with felony crim­i­nal tres­pass­ing for assist­ing with the occu­pa­tion, she believes that, ulti­mate­ly, the fam­i­lies will be able to stay in the homes. A lawyer has stepped up and offered to rep­re­sent the fam­i­lies, which have also been sup­port­ed by hous­ing and home­less activists across the city. Ben­netch says that ​“PHA is in the spot­light right now and they know bet­ter than drag­ging women and their chil­dren out of their homes.” Strem­ist, on the oth­er hand, isn’t sure whether she’ll be able to stay in her new home, and hasn’t allowed her­self to get too com­fort­able: ​“My life isn’t sta­ble yet, because the house isn’t mine.”

May­or Ken­ney told the Philadel­phia Inquir­er that orga­niz­ers’ ​“motives are sin­cere — they want to see peo­ple housed.” After a dis­as­trous few months for the city — includ­ing the tear-gassing of peace­ful protests — orga­niz­ers won’t accept plat­i­tudes. And the May­or is right: They want to see peo­ple housed. As of 2010, there were over 40,000 vacant lots in the city, 3,000 of which include build­ings — plen­ty of room to start hous­ing the near­ly 6,000 unhoused peo­ple (includ­ing 1,000 who are unshel­tered), accord­ing to orga­niz­ers. The city says that rough­ly 25% of these vacant lots are pub­licly owned, mean­ing that there are around 10,000 lots that could be used for pub­lic hous­ing as soon as pos­si­ble. Ben­netch believes that the vacant prop­er­ties attract crime and con­tribute to blight­ed neigh­bor­hoods, and says that ​“there’s no rea­son that tax­pay­er-fund­ed hous­ing that is sup­posed to be pub­lic hous­ing just sits emp­ty when so many peo­ple need homes.” Dick­er­son, who has been on PHA’s pub­lic hous­ing wait­ing list for five years now, agrees: ​“If you make 700 bucks a month, there’s nowhere you can live in Philadel­phia” with­out help from the city or the state.

While there’s been some tem­po­rary munic­i­pal and state-wide relief for renters, there’s been no leg­is­la­tion that actu­al­ly for­gives rent or mort­gage pay­ments dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Ben­netch believes that ​“the city knows that when courts open back up, there’s going to be a way big­ger prob­lem than what we have now. People’s land­lords are already try­ing to evict them ille­gal­ly now.” With the pan­dem­ic and its eco­nom­ic rever­ber­a­tions ongo­ing, mass evic­tions and fore­clo­sures are like­ly, mean­ing more peo­ple could join encamp­ments like these. As Dick­er­son put it, ​“If I could afford my own place, I couldn’t afford to eat.”