Photo / jimwestphoto.com
As rent moratoriums — created to help people stay in their homes during the Covid pandemic expire — people across the country face a looming tsunami of evictions. An unknown number of more men, women and children will find themselves without a roof, traveling from home to vehicle or temporary couch-surf, to tents and the street. When there, they most often find laws in place to make life as hard as possible. Sweeps of encampments result in their losing the few possessions they have managed to cling on to. Millions find themselves one eviction, one illness, one vehicle-tow away from death itself: this is in itself a health emergency, on top of the pandemic and its mismanagement by the powers that be.
Photo / Anthony Criders
This crisis won’t be solved until people organize to demand housing as a right, along with health care and all human needs. And people ARE organizing. They are on the ground defending against evictions and the destruction of encampments. People are also demanding that the millions in funds sent to the cities for Covid relief be spent where they want. When the city of Kalamazoo, MI was callously closing down encampments, a protester shouted, “We’ve got an incredible amount of [Covid] money that came into the city,” suggesting the city spend stimulus funds, or other money including grant funds to address the problem. . . We could be an example of the rest of the country. . .”
In these pages you will read some of the stories of how people are organizing to defend themselves and their fellows.’ We must support all efforts. House everyone as a human right.
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