Bank of America is doing something illegal again? It must be a Monday. The Center for Investigative Reporting looks into the pattern of deception behind BoA’s legal documentation of foreclosure.
http://cironline.org/reports/error-claims-cast-doubt-bank-america-foreclosures-bay-area-4412
Witness the parasites at Morgan Stanley scheming how they and theirs can make a killing off the foreclosure crisis in their research paper “Housing Market Insights: A Rentership Society”.
http://fa.smithbarney.com/public/projectfiles/5bee89b1-94ce-45b5-b4b6-09f0ffdc626a.pdf
Especially rich is this sanitized language: rather than calling them “people being forced out of their homes”, Oaklanders are just “involuntary owner-turned-renters.”
United for a Fair Economy has released a concise, informative infographic explaining how deeply intersected institutional racism and housing justice are:
http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/05/the_racial_wealth_divide_why_housing_matters.html
Foreclosure and Eviction Free Oakland has thrown a couple of barbecues in the last month to spend more time with neighbors and hand out tasty bbq chicken!
F.E.F.O. has used these events as an opportunity not only to get to know our neighbors better, but also to do outreach work and get in touch with people who may be experiencing housing problems. F.E.F.O. also aired the warriors game last week on a big screen throughout the event.
Check out the photos from last time and be sure to come back to the website to see when and where our next BBQ will be.
FEFO held its second community meeting on February 25th, 2013. again at Community Fellowship Church. This meeting was focused on attending to specific individuals’ fights, some of whom had come to our first meeting and others who were new to the group. We gave a presentation on Just Cause Law and worked through whether the neighbors present were being mistreated by their landlords. We also discussed the idea of a neighborhood solidarity network and the notion of returning to what one neighbor called “the village model” of communitarianism and mutual aid.
This week we hosted our first community strategizing meeting in the Lower Bottoms. This meet up was part tenants rights workshop, part listening to people from the neighborhood speak on their experiences with gentrification, foreclosures and landlords. About 30 people showed up and talked with us about how to fight back against some of big developers trying to change our neighborhood.
