Hoarding Mama Earth
A WeSearch Release & Demand for Radical Redistribution to build Homefulness #2 by Formerly homeless Youth & Family Poverty Skolaz at POOR Magazine/Deecolonize Academy
WeSearch def: Poor People-led Research- a POOR Magazine project
Introduction:
Vacant lots and empty buildings are being “hoarded” i.e. not housing people who are in desperate need of housing , sometimes for years, and us homeless and formerly homeless youth and families at Homefulness by doing extensive research can help take them back for the good of the people. This is happening at an increasing rate year by year, and us at Homefulness, Poor Magazine and Deecolonize Academy are making sure the word of the Houseless people who need to live on these lots to avoid criminalization from the police is heard, and that in the near future, the template of Homefulness can be utilized on some of this stolen land on Mama Earth, taking it off of the Real Esnake Market once and for all.
We as youth and family skolaz who have been homeless for much of our life launched this WeSearch project by walking in our own poor people of color neighborhoods where land and homes are hoarded, where race and racism causes the “blighting” and destroying of our hoods and towns and barrios so that land can be flipped and we can be evicted, not redistributed. And now our communites are facing eviction and displacement at an extreme rate. We learned in this process that that the only way you can find out who the house flippers and snakes are is by going to the Tax Assesors office in Oakland. Which we did. After a long process of what we call poor people-led research aka WeSearch we created the following inter-generational, Poor people-led report:
The History of the Real Estate Industry in Oakland
The history of the real estate industry began within the wave of the first form of gentrification, colonization. California was one of the last states to be colonized in the U.S, first of all, because it was all the way to the west, and secondly, it was a part of Mexico. At the beginning of the 19th century began the brutal colonization and genocide of the people who were native to Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville, the Hiuchin tribe of the Ohlone. This is where the true founding of Oakland began. Luis Maria Peralta received the Rancho San Antonio that encompassed the entire East Bay region and called the area that Oakland now is its name because of its voluminous amount of oak trees.
Just stating that to show that the bloody history of Oakland didn’t begin with the crack epidemic. When the United States bought Oakland along with the entirety of California in the Mexican Cession, it was a completely white community. Until WW2, the black population of Oakland was only 3%. That completely changed however, when there was an onrushing when black and white but most importantly poor, workers migrated to California from the Deep South and brought the black population up to 12%. Since then, there have been numerous attempts to either get rid of the black community of Oakland entirely, as the government attempt of pushing cocaine and heroin into the streets of Oakland. The way they were able to do this so successfully is by a process known as “Redlining”.
Redlining is the process that was created when Oakland was still being laid out as a city, to completely separate, segregate and block off all of the black and brown people that lived in the city. They did this by specifically taking the neighborhoods that the black and brown people lived and made sure they sent fewer government funds than any other neighborhood. Redlining, as I said before, was also the primary way that the government was able to directly channel drugs into black and brown communities without them getting everywhere. Oakland isn’t the only city where redlining has happened and is still happening. All over the United States, there are redlined communities which have been used in various government experiments as well.
Now, after the redlined communities have been completely destroyed by the careful planning of the government, bringing guns into them for the residents to kill each other, drugs to become addicted to, liquor stores on every corner to encourage the decline of their health, the real current real estate market is seeing an opportunity in them. Because of the countless families that have fallen apart, and all of the other reasons that make the “hood” also known as redlined communities bad, are being used as propaganda by real estate agencies. For instance, the encouragement to “get out of the hood as soon as possible” will get the real estate industry an onrush of cheap houses that can be “flipped” to be made more expensive. Those houses are sold to unwitting “Gentrifiers” as we at Poor Magazine like to call them, for 2 to 3 times more than they are worth.
But see, most of the time, real estate agencies don't want to wait for a family to decide to move out of the hood. They need those houses, and that money, quickly, especially with the Bay Area being a popular place to move these days. So, they evict. They evict en masse. To get the already nervous and tired-of-life black and brown people out of their houses as quick as they can, the real estate agencies and landlords threaten us with all the prestige they have. The bigger the company, the easier it is. This is how I was kicked out of the city I was born and raised in, San Francisco. This is how many people have died, being kicked out of their house with nowhere to go. This is how 71% of that city’s houseless population is now on the street.
Poor Magazine Youth Skola Reporter
-Tiburcio Garcia
Parcel Map
This is a map of every Brownfield*, Vacant Lot, Parking Lot, and Housing Opportunity Site* in Alameda County. Just by seeing this, you can see how much land could be available to housless people. Because most houseless people lived in homes, and were evicted. Because of the eviction, they were not able to keep up with their job, or even if they were, they weren't able to afford to keep up with the rapidly rising rent in the Bay Area and were unable to get back the house that they were evicted from.
This Parcel Map is a cry of help, from every houseless citizen of the Bay Area, all of us who are on the brink of having no home, and those who never even considered that there was another option besides giving up and living on the street. This is a cry of help to all of the owners of those unused properties, which most of which have not been developed on in the last 5-10 years.
Poor Magazine Youth Skola Reporter
-Tiburcio Garcia
10 Vacant “Privately Owned” Parcels of Mama Earth on BlackArthur (MacArthur) in Deep East Huchuin (Oakland)
NOTE- Thru this study we literally have 10 pages of addresses of vacant property - available on request if someone wants to sit down and enact a liberation move - buy one or more of them for use/housing for unhoused families/yout/elders
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7600 MacArthur ( lot 5580).
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7951 Richie and MacArthur.
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5139 Macarthur Boulevard
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4550 International Boulevard
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5115 Macarthur Boulevard
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6620 Foothill Boulevard.
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5107 Macarthur Boulevard
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2625 San Pablo Ave.
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4760 International Boulevard.
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5216 International Boulevard
Youth Skola WeSearch on the destruction, lack and removal of Poor People from Housing & Why so many of us are Houseless in 2019
What are “H.U.D, R.A.D, and Hope VI”?
My name is Solomon Kealoha-Campbell a Youth Poverty skola at Deecolonize academy. I live in Fillmore, SF with my momma and sister. There we are surviving on food stamps and section 8. In my segment, I will be talking about HUD, RAD, Hope VI and what they mean and how these “plans” are how the government is gonna get rid of us po folks.
HUD “ Housing Urban Development” is a (US) government lead organization working on making housing for low-income families “ fair and affordable”.section 8 Housing Voucher Program is a rental program administered by this agency. The tenant's portion of the rent payable to the owner is based on 30% of the family's adjusted gross income. HUD and section 8 keep my family alive and housed along with many other low-income families.
HUD was developed in the 1900s, helped by President Roosevelt to first help widows of white war veterans. HUD was thought of because starvation and homelessness were the worse it’s been. From the shallow beginnings of trying to segregate poverty and keeping the brown poor, HUD branched out welfare, food stamps, section 8 and more that help us brown poor people survive.
From the good, there is also evil. Hope VI is a plan by the government and HUD to “restore” the worst public housing neighborhoods and turn it into mixed-income developments. Their plan is to get rid of most of the poor people and replace them with the middle class and a few working class people to “ better the community and cleanse the violence”.
The Government is trying to erase poor people housing or any housing dedicated to low-income families by making this plan called RAD “ Rental Assistance Demonstration” but they aren't assisting anybody but the people who don't need help. They plan on making any public housing to private housing and wiping the poor people out.
In conclusion of “ What is HUD, RAD and Hope VI ?” we know that HUD was never made for us poor people of color. Since it was never designed for us, they are trying to erase it entirely. That's where RAD and Hope VI come knocking on your door. And by 2020 their plan is to have HUD and Welfare be a myth.
This subject on HUD, RAD and Hope VI relate with the vacant lots that are being held because these vacant lands can be turned into houses and more specifically Homefulness or even just more space for the poor people of the bay area. Let us create our own public housing.
Student of Deecolonize Academy
-Solomon Campbell
The Legacy of Redlining
I'm a 16-year-old youth poverty skola and I live in a blighted and gentrified area and this work here is my life. The past problems are still present today. Just like the people before me I will have to face these same problems of segregation and separation.
Segregation, Separation, and Racism of Poor people and our neighborhoods.
Redlining is: The separation of black and brown communities by district or neighborhood is called red-lining, this was a law enforced by the U.S government to enforce rase based separation policies causing communities of color to be criminalized and predated on by the real estate and banking industry.
One of the most heinous of these policies was introduced by the creation of the Federal Housing Administration in 1934 and lasted until 1968. Otherwise celebrated for making homeownership accessible to white people by guaranteeing their loans, the FHA explicitly refused to back loans to black people or even other people who lived near black people. As TNC puts it, "Redlining destroyed the possibility of investment wherever black people lived." (A Racist Housing)
In the late 1930s, as Detroit grew outward, white families began to settle near a black enclave adjacent to Eight Mile Road. By 1940, the blacks were surrounded, but neither they nor the whites could get FHA insurance because of the proximity of an inharmonious racial group. So, in 1941, an enterprising white developer built a concrete wall between the white and black areas. The FHA appraisers then took another look and approved the mortgages on the white properties. (The Fair Housing Center)
20th-century Realities:
In the early 1980s and 1990s in the ghettos of AmeriKlann an epidemic of crack cocaine swept the nation off its feet. In my own backyard of Mcarthur Ave of Oakland California, had become inflicted by this drug. In 1986 us congress passed laws that created a 100 to 1 sentencing disparity for the progression or trafficking of crack when compared to penalties for trafficking of powder cocaine which Macarthur Blvd became a red line for black people 18 to 24 for search and use of the cocaine.
Gary Webb an investigative journalist had researched extensively of the flood of cocaine selling in the United States. Garry Webb had claimed the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A) was actually the one responsible for the enormous influx of cocaine, Gary claimed that there were documents that proved that this reality was nightmarishly true.
What is ‘’Sell Your ugly house’’ ?,
A group of a real estate agent’s that purchase your home, and then flip(Resale) your house at a higher price than the original price’’ you the owner bought it for’’. This type of work is targeting red-lined areas like Macarthur Blvd where billboards are as common as your local liquor store’s and blights are distributed like tickets.
The reason I wanted to go and research this in the first place, was because I wanted to be aware and make light of the situation to reflect on the many cases the U.S government made almost impossible for families of low income or no income to capitalist society. I also felt that it was very important to also understand the many obstacles poor people and people have to struggle to stay housed.
Also, I have had my experience with living in a red-lined community, in San Francisco called Hunters Point. Hunter’s point is decommissioned navy shipyard in the 1950s. This area is a place for low-income affordable housing. I know the red-lined area because of all of the police that constantly patrol the area.
Student of Deecolonize Academy
-Kimo Umu
What Are Ugly Laws?
San Francisco Ugly Laws were passed in 1867, significantly earlier than the1890s. Also,20 first century Ugly Laws were created to target unhoused people to arrest them for being homeless in the streets. Berkeley is especially harsh toward unhoused people, that’s why they have Ugly Laws in Berkeley, you can’t sleep in your car, or you can’t sleep in a public park,and some other Ugly Laws but if the police officer sees you do any one of these things you will get arrested right away.
Leroy Moore is a black male and co-founder of the international music company and organization Krip-Hop Nation. He was riding his bike on University Ave in Berkeley and a police officer pulled him over because the officer thought Leroy Moore was drunk but really Leroy Moore has a disability But the officer didn't know that but still pull over him over. I was criminalized by the police for being black and brown in Oakland too.
Ugly Laws that criminalize disabled people like Leroy and unhoused people like in Berkeley every day are criminalizing the people that are directly affected by the Hoarding and stealing of Mama Earth by these real Esnake agencies. All of the agencies that we are talking about here are the ones that are responsible for these Ugly Laws in the first place.
Student of Deecolonize Academy
-Amir Cornish
Business Improvement District
BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS, or b.i.d is a district dealing with gentrification and homeowners kicking people out that are poor and colored, putting them in the ghetto, making it only business property, and saying it will improve the place.
Twitter in San Francisco is an example of a corporation that is in San Francisco located in a BID zone, which if its in place in addition to the already existent race and class profiling of poor people, youth of color adds another layer to the criminalization. An example of this playing out was one of my friends got pulled over by the poLice for being Black and young and riding a bike in SF - and they crushed his bike. Why is that? That's because he is colored and has no race and class privilege.
It doesn't just happen in San Francisco it happens all through California. “October 2015 Sacramento PID Executives high-ranking members of the Sacramento Police Department STD and other City officials exchanged almost 2,000 pages of emails regarding homeless people 62 of 72 homeless people we surveyed who were the living within b I d boundary in Chico Sacramento and San Francisco Reported being approached San Francisco Union Square Biv Lobby for more police officers to enforce anti-homeless lost and received a 3 million Grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to increase police patrol during the holidays and crew install security cameras “ (UC Berkeley law University of California) also bid Was the solution to the economically Klein of the mid-twentieth century US government to prevent itself from collapsing bankrolled urban renewal project leaving Urban small businesses to compete desperately with their massive department store counterparts
I am a poverty skolar I currently live in public property.
Student of Deecolonize Academy
-Ziair Hughes
Definitions
Parcel Number = A number assigned to parcels of real property by the tax assessor of a particular jurisdiction for purposes of identification and record-keeping.
Situs = The place to which, for purposes of legal jurisdiction or taxation, a property belongs.
Documentary Transfer Tax (DTT) = Any kind of tax that is levied on the transfer of ownership or title to property from one entity to another. Transfer taxes are usually non-deductible, although they may be added to basis on the sale of securities and/or investment property.
Conclusion
Every single one of these topics, from the history of redlining to the Ugly Laws that once were and still exist, we wrote for a reason. We wrote on all of these specific topics to show to you, our readers, a connection between each and every one of the struggles that we face, the connection to the wealthy stealing and profiting off of Mama Earth. If it weren’t for the redlining techniques all those years ago, real esnake agencies wouldn't be able to make so much money on the flipping of houses in low-income neighborhoods, the same neighborhoods, or “hoods” as they are known which were redlined.
Without the Ugly Laws that were up in place in the late 19th century, and like I said, still exist today, there would be the means to criminalize the very people they are trying to kick out to make money off of. Without B.I.D’s, there wouldn’t be any reason for the customers of the real esnake agencies, the homeowners, to stay in the cities that they would figure out were not actually as pretty as they were made out to be.
We need liberated Ohlone Lisjen land to the unhoused people because they are tired of sleeping on the streets moving around to find a place to sleep and also find some food.
Lberated to homeless, that means let us unhoused people build our own houses rather than sleeping on the streets. We don't have to cover the sidewalk anymore we just need resources to build our own.
We need help, not for us, not for the popularity of Poor Magazine or for the good of Homefulness, but simply for all of us folks who are still on the street us unhoused people, who aren't able to go back home, to lay in a warm bed and not be rained on at night. We need help for the people who are being criminalized and brutalized by the police and the government simply for not having a home, because those people, are us. Those "homeless" people that the media alienates so passionately, are our brothers, mothers, sisters, cousins, friends, and acquaintances.
They are also poets, artists, and most importantly humans. Humans who should have the right to housing, because being in a house is a privilege that most don’t even realized they are blessed with.
Recommendations
As Unhoused and formerly unhoused youth and family poverty skolaz who are currently housed and educated on a small piece of liberated Mama Earth we poor folks call Homefulness- we know that the “answer” to our homelessness does not exist in more grants, lygislations and politricks- we know that liberation of Mama Earth is possible and one of the ways to end homelessness is through building more Homefulness projects - through the launching and supporting of the Bank of Community Reparations which supports poor and unhoused families to build their own solutions to homelessness and to stop buying, selling and profiting off of Mama Earth
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Liberate ( Buy & then Un-sell- spiritually and legally) vacant privately or publicly “owned” parcels of Occupied Huchuin Ohlone Lisjan land on BlackArthur, in Berkeley, San Francisco and Oakland) for the building of Homefulness and/or other poor and unhoused people-led projects with the leadership of 1st Nations communities llike the Sogorea Te Land Trust
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Take 20% of publicly and privately “owned” Mama Earth off of the “commodities” market (real estate) for the building of landless peoples self-determined land movements like First they came for the homeless and Homefulness to communities like “Friends on Wheels in Berkeley - Unhoused RV dwellers and RoofLESS radio in San Francisco
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Support/ Donate/ Radically Redistribute/Community Reparate resources, trust funds , 2nd or 3rd homes, stocks or assets you dont live in to the Bank of Come-Unity Reparations so unhoused elders, youth, families and adults can rent apartments, buy cars, stabilize their lives and income
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Come to a DegentriFUkation/Decolonization Seminar at PeopleSkool to learn about #RadicalRedistribution and Community Reparations
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Real Estate Industry pay a mandatory 20% Homefulness Fee to the Bank of Community Reparations whenever a sale is made of Mama Earth for profit and donate to the Shumi Tax
Sources:
-Poverty Scholarship - Poor People-led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth published by POOR Press
-WrapHome.org reports on Criminalization
-POOR Magazine WeSearch reports 2015-2019
-UC Berkeley report on the Business Improvement Districts
WeSearchers/Poverty Skolaz: Youth and Family Skolaz: Tiburcio Garcia, Amir Cornish, Ziair Hughes, Solomon Kealoha-Campbell, Kimo Umu, Zion Angeles, Tiny Gray-Garcia, Jasmine Hain, Muteado SIlencio, Aunti Frances Moore, Leroy Moore, Dee Allen,Queennandi, Jewnbug, Corrina Gould, Mama Dee Support Team: Yael & Paige - Ancestors, Creator and Mama Earth
What is the Stolen Land /Hoarded Resources Decolonization, Redistribution and Community Reparations Tour and the Bank of Reparations?
Herstory:
The Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources tour launched on Mama Earth Day 2016 in the stolen Lisjen/Ohlone Village of Yelamu (SF) in CalifAztlan, with poor & indigenous peoples touring “rich” neighborhoods across the US and knocking on doors humbly asking that wealth hoarders redistribute their surplus money, resources and assets to poor and indigenous led land liberation movements. The tour has so far toured 8 wealth-hoarding cities across the US including Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Oakland, Manhattan, Conn and Philadelphia Poor & indigenous Tour Guides are joined by conscious folks with race and class privilege walking in solidarity and change.
The tour is loosely based on the Bhoodan Movement of India launched by Vinoba Bhave who walked through India asking wealthy "land-owners" to gift their land to landless peoples. With a similar vision, this small group of landless and indigenous peoples being hit the hardest by displacement and gentrification will be intentionally crossing the invisible and visible lines between the land and resource hoarders aka the very rich and the victims of generations of white supremacy, theft, colonization, criminalization, racism, eugenics and silencing, aka the very poor.
Two action models/solutions that Homeless and 1st Nations folks are presenting is the poor people-led self-determined movement called Homefulness in Deep East Oakland (Huchuin Ohlone Land) as well as Sogorea Te Land Trust which is a Native Woman run land trust based in the land of the 1st peoples who lead it.
The Bank of Community Reparations
This tour officially launches the Bank of Community Reparations - a national fund of redistributed and stolen wealth that is distributed equally among poor and indigenous people-led land use projects - the 1st four of which are the following:
1)Homefulness in Deep East Huchuin(Oakland), a poor and indigenous-led landless peoples movement working to build 9 units of housing for unhoused families and elders, a liberation school, radio station, garden and healing center in Deep east Oakland
2)Sogorea Te Land Trust (Huchuin/Oakland) the first Native woman-run land trust working to reclaim stolen Ohlone/Lisjen land (Oakland)
3) Frohms Martial Arts- a Black-led Martial Arts studio displaced/gentrified from their East Oakland studio
4) Homefulness#2 in North Oakland, Berkeley or San Francisco ( Launched by fellow poverty skolaz from Friends on Wheels in Berkeley, (Unhoused RV dwellers and Manna From Heaven- a Black elder-led breakfast program being gentrified from their long-time North Oakland location)
Community Reparations is a concept launched by Lisa tiny Gray-Garcia and is rooted in Poverty Scholarship and the notion of Interdependence - Meant to be a healing medicine of resistance to the lie of independence and the separation nation that encourages the violent act of looking away. Instructing us all to recognize our humanity, and resist the normalizing of capitalist separateness, “success” through land-stealing and wealth-hoarding.
For more information on the Tour and/or Revolutionary Giving to the Bank of Reparations call (510) 435-7500 or email poormag@gmail.com. To register for the next PeopleSkool Seminar in Black August for Folks with Race/Class Privilege email deeandtiny@gmail.com or go on-line to www.racepovertymediajustice.org or www.poormagazine.org
