By Michelle Chen, ColorLines
Posted on May 26, 2009, Printed on May 26, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140236/
Last fall, Yolanda James and her three
children were lost in their own city. After foreclosure had forced
them from their South Los Angeles apartment, they ran into closed
doors at every turn. Aid agencies offered referrals to other offices, but
no relief, and neither the shelter system nor the city's high-priced
housing market had room for them. James burned through her welfare
money to pay for motel rooms and later resorted to sleeping with
her children in their car.
"I was, like, two or three different people at one time," she recalled. "I had to get on the grind, to hustle, to make sure my kids--when they get out of school, I could feed them, or I could take them somewhere to shower and bathe for the next day." Like others in Los Angeles's Black community, James, who is 34, had some ties to public resources: a rent subsidy voucher under the federal Section 8 program, a monthly food stamp allowance and hard-fought experience with the social service system, having worked as an advocate with a local anti-poverty group. Still, she wasn't prepared when the foreclosure wave hit her apartment building. Caught between a delinquent landlord and the bank, James, her 12-year-old son and her two teenage daughters lost their apartment and fell straight through the holes in the city's tattered safety net.
James finally landed an apartment in November 2008 before her housing voucher expired. She said she feels safe for now but is still shaken by homelessness. "I've been a single parent for so long. I've always had a place," she said. "I just felt like I was totally wiped out. Like, 'What the hell happened? I'm not in control of anything.'"
With foreclosures and job losses dragging down the whole economy, low-income families of color are plunging into an even deeper hole. While the mortgage meltdown has devastated Black and Latino homeowners, some of the hardest-hit foreclosure victims did not even own the homes they lost. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, about 20 percent of properties facing foreclosure in 2008 were rentals, and rental foreclosures are especially prevalent in poor communities and communities of color. In many states, the situation is complicated by a lack of legal protections for tenants against sudden eviction.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness has predicted that at
the current rate, the
recession will result in 1.5 million additional homeless people
within two years. According
to the advocacy group First Focus, nearly two million children
will be impacted by
subprime foreclosures, including some half a million Latino
children and more than
280,000 Black children. In a national survey of school systems,
several hundred districts
reported a surge in homeless children last fall compared to
the previous school year.
As displaced families struggle against poverty and a shortage
of affordable housing, social
service systems--a patchwork of local charities and government
agencies--grapple with
deep budget cuts. Resources for families are especially sparse
in the shelter system, where
many programs are designed for single adults. Though the federal
stimulus package has
boosted funds to address homelessness, including $70 million
for educational assistance
for homeless youth and $1.5 billion for Housing and Urban Development's
Emergency
Shelter program, need has far outstripped local resources.
"All the agencies are full. All of the food banks are to capacity
in terms of what they can
provide for people who are lining up outside their doors," said
Susie Shannon of the Los
Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, where James
worked before being
laid off in 2006. "It's a train wreck in slow motion, and it's
going to pop all at once."
The trajectory of displacement turns on how much a family has
to fall back on. They may
avoid full-on homelessness for a few months, often moving in
with relatives or friends--until
a layoff, hospital bill or some other setback pushes them over
the brink.
Sabrina Otis, a Black 35-year-old mother, was skirting the edge
of crisis well before
foreclosures consumed her city. Her journey began, she
said, when she moved to
Cleveland in 2001 to escape an abusive ex-spouse. She could
not find stable housing
initially and lost her five children to foster care for several
months. She later settled into a
Section 8-subsidized house in Lakewood, a predominantly white
Cleveland suburb, but
was uprooted again in 2007 during the housing implosion. She
was forced to leave, she
recalled, after realizing that the landlord was failing to maintain
the property and that the
house was sliding into abandonment and foreclosure.
After staying with friends and relatives for months, Otis and
her children, who range in age
from 8 to 16, found another house in the same neighborhood,
only to be put out again
when the owner moved to sell the property amid the housing market
collapse. After a
complex legal dispute that ended in eviction, Otis found herself
starting over for the third
time. Throughout the ordeal, she recalled, she battled thyroid
cancer and a chronic
respiratory condition, which had put her on medical leave from
her custodial job with the
county.
Though Otis received a new housing voucher, the family spent
another nine months circling
among friends' and relatives' homes before finding a place that
fit their subsidy--calculated
according to the local market rent and the tenant's income.
She said renters like her have
been blindsided by the foreclosure crisis: "We are in a drive-by
shooting. We got shot. We
had nothing to do with this. And we have no recourse to get
anyone to be responsible."
While economic tumult rocked Miami's neighborhoods, Mary Trody's
household gradually
crumbled. Her husband lost his job delivering newspapers, and
her part-time work did not
pay enough to make rent. Trody, a white woman in her forties,
her husband and two
teenage children moved in with her mother, whose modest home
in a nearby
predominantly Black neighborhood had long been a refuge for
the extended family. But
late last year, the house got swept up in Florida's foreclosure
epidemic, due to what the
family believes was a predatory refinance loan.
Trody then sought out local shelters but was told there was no room for the whole family.
"The shelters talked about separating us," Trody recalled," and
I said, 'How you gonna
separate my family? My family's the only support I got now.
I'm already without a house.
And then you want to tear away everything that is my support?'"
By February 2009, a dozen family members--including Trody's older
daughter and
grandchildren--saw just one way to stick together: they decided
to pile into their van and
live there for three days, awaiting a chance to reclaim their
home.
The obstacles that the Trodys encountered are common in shelters
throughout the country,
which often restrict access by barring children or setting age
restrictions. For many
families, staying intact may mean staying on the streets. The
dilemma may be deepened by
a looming fear of separation by child welfare authorities, who
may place children in foster
care.
For Yolanda James's 16-year-old daughter, Mary Quaker, the threat
of separation
dwarfed material hardship. She struggled through living in a
car, even sleeping in her school
gym when her mother could not afford a motel, but she clung
to what mattered. "I just
wondered," she recalled, "is she going to put us somewhere so
we can be able to eat and
take a shower and all that? I'd always tell everybody, 'Just
don't split us up. We'll all get
through it together.'"
Dr. Ellen Bassuk, president of the National Center on Family
Homelessness, said that as
family homelessness intensifies, "The system is not set up to
deal with this kind of
complexity. And what you want is holistic, family-oriented care.
It's not available in a lot of
places."
Displaced families are also fractured by legal definitions. Homeless
programs under the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, commonly known
as HUD, target only
"street" or "shelter" homeless. So children living in doubled-up
arrangements or motel
rooms may qualify for educational assistance such as transportation
to their original
neighborhood schools, yet their parents may be excluded from
HUD programs using the
narrower definition of homeless.
Advocates are pushing for legislation that would enable motel
and doubled-up families to
obtain HUD services like shelter and transitional housing. A
technical redefinition of
homelessness could impact thousands of families: about 470,000
children eligible for
education-related services have been excluded from HUD programs,
according to the
National Association for the Education of Homeless Children
and Youth. The
organization's policy director, Barbara Duffield, said now is
the time to expose previously
neglected needs. "Right now, it's ludicrous for somebody to
say that someone who's been
evicted, who's been foreclosed, who's temporarily staying on
someone's floor, is not
homeless," she said. "And from a youth development perspective,
they're absolutely in
crisis. They're absolutely homeless."
As the economic crisis plows through marginalized communities,
advocacy groups are
seeking a paradigm shift in the country's housing policy--moving
past the rhetoric of the
"ownership society" and recognizing the critical role of affordable
rental housing and social
supports for low-income families. One step forward, advocates
say, would be a funding
injection for the recently established federal housing trust
fund, which would support
housing development for lower-income households. State and city
governments have
already seeded similar, smaller-scale programs to fund affordable
housing opportunities.
Federal financing could build on efforts to revive blighted
houses in Cleveland, for instance,
under a "land bank" initiative that enables the county to take
over and rehabilitate
foreclosed properties as a public investment.
Meanwhile, community organizers are forging new paths in the
ravaged landscape of the
foreclosure crisis by exposing the paradox of scarcity and excess
in the housing system.
Grassroots activists have launched civil disobedience campaigns
in several cities to
encourage foreclosed homeowners to squat in their houses in
protest.
In Miami, Take Back the Land, a campaign focused on the Black
community, has seized
vacant properties and moved in local homeless families. Through
direct actions, the group
ties political empowerment to reclaiming control of community
resources.
"We've got too many empty houses, and we got too many people
who have nowhere to
live," said Max Rameau, a campaign organizer.
In Rameau's view, displacement in communities of color has historically
taken myriad
forms, from homelessness to gentrification to foreclosures--but
the underlying crisis is
about self-determination.
"The real issue is that we don't have control over the land upon
which we sit, live, worship,
work and play," he said, adding, "We have to get down to the
core of what the problem
is."
In February, activists with Take Back the Land and other local
groups stood alongside the
Trody family on their foreclosed property. Reporters and police
stood by, too, watching
the family reenter their home of more than 20 years as "trespassers,"
defying the bank that
had just seized ownership of the house.
Trody hoped to hold onto her mother's house and arrange to make
payments the family
could afford. But she saw a broader struggle beyond her home's
walls. "Maybe we can
make the change," she said. "Maybe we can make this stop happening
for the next person.
'Cause I don't want to see nobody go through this pain and the
hurt that I'm going
through."
Michelle Chen has written for the South China Morning Post, Clamor,
INTHEFRAY.COM and her own zine, cain.
© 2009 ColorLines All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140236/
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