Takeover!: A Human Rights Approach To Housing is a new book authored by Cheri Honkala with the insights from members of The Poor People’s Army, also known as the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC). Takeover! argues a simple yet profound point: housing is a human right, and in the absence of government action, we must act as a community to ensure our neighbors are housed. We decide not to die, or let each other die, due to poverty and homelessness.
From this premise, Cheri Honkala, 2012 Green Party vice presidential candidate running with Dr. Jill Stein, shares a manual for performing takeovers — the process of finding abandoned, unused homes to move families into. The first step is understanding just how many homes go unused, often because the owner has abandoned the property and failed to pay property taxes for years, causing the property to revert to municipal ownership. With proper scouting and research, properties which can be taken over most successfully can be identified and families can be moved in to help them off the street and rebuild their lives. The manual proceeds through a number of steps to answer questions about the process: getting utilities turned back on, paying bills, enrolling children in school, handling interactions with police, etc. Philadelphia municipal ordinances actually allow the family to eventually take legal ownership of the property by performing any needed repairs to bring it up to code and paying the property back-taxes owed. Takeover families supported by The Poor People’s Army are even connected with lawyers to make this happen. Thus, action to immediately house a family in need leads in many cases to long-term housing, reducing neighborhood blight in the process. While ordinances vary greatly by municipality, the experience and lessons provide activists with a roadmap for doing research in their own communities to start and support similar efforts.
The lessons in this manual come from over 30 years of hard-won experience. Honkala has grappled with many of the questions herself. The opening pages share her story of living out of a car with her son in the 1980s, which has made her an advocate for homeless and poor people ever since. Honkala’s dedication to ending poverty and homelessness for decades and willingness to take direct action rather than wait for others is incredibly inspiring in a time when society feels like it is falling apart. Reading the lessons and successes of PPEHRC makes one angry that the system allows such poverty and suffering in the first place, yet also encouraging to see the power a community can have when it comes together in love to help others. We truly can be our own heroes.
A brief history of the PPEHRC is provided for some context. While PPEHRC operates in Philadelphia, and municipal and state laws vary across the US, most, if not all, of the tactics and lessons should apply to readers looking to start a Poor People’s Army branch in their own city. A Principles of Unity as well as an expanded appendix on the philosophy of PPEHRC is provided to kickstart reading group discussions.
One noted absence from the book is a deeper discussion on how independent electoral campaigns could promote legislative policy to aid in The Poor People’s Army’s mission. While understandable as the manual is meant for activists looking to research and replicate direct action methods in their own locality, I think a multi-faceted approach to politics is likely to yield the greatest results, with independent politics and direct action methods working together to build momentum.
I inquired with Hokala via email what sort of policies Greens should run on to support The Poor People’s Army’s work. Honkala noted three important policies that I hope Greens will take into consideration for future campaigns, along with the other lessons in the book:
- formalizing housing as a human right on every level;
- a policy where nobody in any city or state is denied access to shelter;
- municipal funds should go towards rehabilitation of housing stock instead of demolition.
The work of Honkala and The Poor People’s Army is incredibly important to ending poverty for good. The book is an excellent manual providing practical experience with direct action to address poverty and homelessness. More than that, I think it is also a good model for how communities can come together to discuss and implement bottom-up solutions to problems democratically and non-violently, rather than merely waiting for politicians to save us from the top down. Perhaps this manual can help inspire other complementary communities organizing around related issues, as we all do what we can to build a new kind of world.
Takeover! A Human Rights Approach To Housing by Cheri Honkala and the Poor People’s Army is published by Poor People’s Press and is now available from distributors like AK Press.
You may want to clarify that these houses are owned by the government, they don’t takeover houses that are privately owned