Vacant houses should be filled

FOR A week now, I have been visiting family in Pearland, Texas, a largely suburban city outside of Houston.

Each day, I can drive for miles and see brand-new identical housing on one side and brand new identical franchises on the other. It's almost blissful here, manicured lawns, community pools, and enough restaurants and fast food chains so you never have to cook. There are cameras at every intersection to catch those reckless drivers speeding through red lights and surprisingly little litter. It appears a safe, clean and thriving community.

It doesn't seem possible in these times of economic hardship. And it's not.

Yesterday, at the grocery store, I saw an older woman with a Chihuahua nestled in a blanket among the few groceries in her cart. Making idle conversation, I said, "Oh I didn't see any of those for sale!" The woman tiredly explained to me that it was too hot to leave the little dog in the car. In this 90-degree weather I was not surprised, but when she continued I stopped and listened.

The woman was living in her car with her Chihuahua because she had no home. First she was foreclosed on, so she moved into an apartment. Then she got sick for three weeks and her boss fired her. She was forced to move out. Now she lives in her car, going in and out of stores with her dog so that it does not die in the unbearable heat.

I asked her if there is any place that she can go and she said flatly, "No."

When I came home, I saw a house two doors down that I learned has been vacant for a year. Why should this woman have to live out of her car, going from store to store, to keep her pet from dying, when there is an empty inhabitable place down the street?

TOO MANY people have lost their homes or are denied homes because they "can't afford it." With so many empty homes and too many people living in tents (or cars) in cities around the country I think it's high time we start taking what is owed to us.

According to an article in Time magazine, "The state of homelessness in the U.S.," just five states contribute to more than half the number of homeless on a given night; Texas was number four with 40,190. Unemployment is at 8 percent in Harris County (with a population of 3,984,349 and over 318,000 unemployed) and predictions for 2009 job losses are anticipated in many of the staple industries of Texas: real estate, transportation and construction.

This means that we can only anticipate more homeless in the coming days and months. Veterans, the mentally ill and minorities make up a significant number of the homeless in America. Here in Texas you can add victims of the hurricanes to that list too.

As Petrino DiLeo pointed out in his article "The other real estate bubble" it is estimated that 3.2 million homes will be foreclosed on this year. Last year there were 3.1 million.

If over 6 million homes will be foreclosed on by the end of 2009, is it surprising that there are currently 18.7 million empty houses in America? In the Houston Business Journal, Jennifer Dawson cites that between July 2008 and June 2009 there were 51,866 independent filings for foreclosure. This works out to about 142.1 a day just in Houston alone. And while the rate of foreclosure in Houston is less than the national average, these numbers have gone up since last year.

What is keeping people out of these houses? A system that makes the natural right to and human necessity of adequate housing a reckless gamble for profit.

During the Great Depression, homeowners and renters were physically evicted from their homes and their belongings thrown out to the curb. The Communist Party helped organize response teams, which helped the evicted break back into their homes and move their things back in. Such rapid and persistent responses helped many get their homes back and kept the police at bay. Much like the Communist Party during the Great Depression, we too can organize and move the homeless into empty houses now in this Great Recession.

Homelessness is getting worse around the country, and the suburbs, as tranquil as they may seem, are no exception. Millions are losing their homes because of job loss or unfair mortgage rates. And while many still have hope that the Obama administration will tackle this economic crisis, more and more are losing hope as all that they have worked for is taken away from them.

Now more than ever we need to revive the tradition of collective, grassroots struggle to fight for what over 3 million Americans need: a place to call home.
Angela Stoutenburgh, from the Internet