The Washington Peace Letter is published monthly for the social justice community of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Its purpose is to support local, national and international struggles against oppression. It seeks to present a radical analysis of current events, covering information not readily available in the corporate media.

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HNJ Confronts the Structure of a Doomed System
by Jenny Applesquat

April 2001
Volume 38, No. 3

On February 24th, for the third time publicly, Homes Not Jails occupied and began repairing a vacant building with people in need of housing. After three days of media attention and harassment by law enforcement, police arrested three activists at the house at HUD's beckoning. They then resealed the house.

In the wake of this last housing takeover, Homes Not Jails is realizing that our actions have an impact. We know that politicians and government agencies will quickly move to cover themselves if they feel implicated in the Districts' increasing homelessness. We know that the media will probably devote a great deal of time to covering these actions, and that many people will pause to express their opinions about the tactic.

So why all the hype?

I've come to think it's because confronting the idea of property "rights" is like messing with people's religion.

We are taught that wealthy people and property owners worked hard for what they have. We learn to accept that speculating corporations have more rights to vacant buildings than do people who would actually fix them up and use them as housing.

The reality is that nowhere in the US can a person working a full-time, minimum-wage job afford market-rate rent for a one-bedroom apartment, assuming that rent is supposed to be 30% of people's income, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. In DC, a minimum-wage worker would have to work over 100 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment at market rate. An alarming percentage of homeless people are employed.

Moreover, local and national policies actually encourage gentrification and speculation. HUD spends millions every year maintaining vacant buildings, which it eventually auctions off at market rate, often to investors. Meanwhile, over 18,000 families in DC wait for years on the list for HUD's Section 8 vouchers.

At DC's under-advertised annual property tax auctions, large speculating corporations, such as Breen Capital, buy up vast amounts of the Districts' vacant properties, for just the cost of unpaid property taxes. These companies then sit on the buildings, waiting for property values to rise before selling the houses at enormous profit.

Homes Not Jails holds that housing is a human right. Right now, housing is a market. It seems that housing activists too often end up battling a landslide of increasing rents and gentrification; trying to maintain our neighborhoods at a time when many tenants already pay over fifty percent of their income in rent. We need to demand more. As concerned people, what we should be asking is "Why isn't housing free?"

Because I hold that housing is a right, I believe strongly in the tactics of squatting and rent strikes. I believe we are never as inspired as activists as when we are physically creating the reality that we want. I have seen this ignite the spirits of people in the most hopeless situations. What if every day was a city-wide rent strike? What type of city would we create with our new freedom?

Since forming last June, Homes Not Jails has been acting on the view that our governmental social programs are largely set to fail. For decades, dedicated people have battled homelessness. The government has always been slow to make any improvements to the situation, though, and thousands of people are still homeless. On a small scale, through publicized and covert squatting, HNJ is attempting to address the immediate need for housing.

Large-scale, systemic change will obviously take much more. It will take the vision and creativity of a huge, united group of people. It will require us to set our goals higher than ever before and to truly believe that we can reach them. It will take organizing, outreach, and education. And it will take militant direct action and civil disobedience.

Jenny Applesquat is a Homes Not Jails volunteer. If you are interested in being involved with Homes Not Jails' efforts, please call 202-737-6444 # 24 or visit www.homesnotjails.org.

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