Date: Mon, 15 Aug 1994 22:44:05 -0500 (EST) From: "Russell Johannesson" ACT UP / Philadelphia AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power Post Office Box 15919 Middle City Station Philadelphia PA 19103-0919 Telephone: 215.731.1844................Facsimile: 215.731.1845 Electronic mail at russell@cpp.pha.pa.us First public revision, August 15, 1994 ACT UP Working Paper for Direct Action Housing Takeovers A White House study estimates the nation's homeless at "as many as seven million" over the course of a year. The National Commission on AIDS reports that at least 15 percent of homeless people are HIV positive, and that "one-third to one- half of all people with AIDS are either homeless or in imminent danger of homelessness...The homeless of tomorrow are being created by the failure to provide housing options for (those) living with HIV disease today." Homeless people with AIDS die faster. Decent housing is preventative medicine for AIDS. Deliberate government apathy and inattention towards the housing crisis and the AIDS plague is killing people. Homelessness is an AIDS issue, and AIDS is a homeless issue. This is a rather long and disjointed document that attempts to serve as a resource manual for a nation-wide direct action housing takeover organizing campaign, proposed at the 1993 AIDS Activist Conference. The end result of such a campaign should be self-managed housing for homeless people with AIDS, and an organizational shot in the arm for the AIDS activists movement and the grass roots housing movement. This document is intended specifically for use by ACT UP chapters and allies planning to participate in a coordinated day of takeovers late this fall or winter (very tentative date). Various parts of it are written by or based on information from people from around the country who have been involved in successful campaigns involving these tactics, or who have other, useful areas of expertise. All interested in participating in or assisting the organizing of a local action, or with comments on this text should call Paul Davis at ACT UP / Philadelphia @ 215- 731-1844 ext.5, fax 215-731-1845. [You can also send electronic mail to russell@cpp.pha.pa.us or jdavids@cpp.pha.pa.us.] Nothing contained here should be construed as the final word on waging a successful fight for a building, but should be read as the experiences of a handful of people who have used some of these strategies to win in the past. Hopefully, many ideas here will be of use to people organizing local campaigns, but (obviously), others will have better or more appropriate ideas for where they live. This paper does not attempt to detail every consideration in demo tactics, or teach every skill an organizer needs to know. It assumes that the reader has some experience doing 'activist' things. It is also written from the perspective of a person who has usually had a home or at least a friendly sofa in life, and is HIV negative. Others who plan local takeover actions, or give guidance to such efforts, will not speak from that same place, and the resulting action will be considerably better for it. There are four sections to this document. The first is background on this project and a bit about similar efforts by others in the past, with an overview of the specific goals of an ACT UP initiated takeover effort. The second part is an outline of tactics and strategies that local takeover efforts may want to consider when planning their campaign. These two sections are written by Paul Davis (me), and draw on housing issues organizing experience in Seattle, and information learned from squatting and from other squatters in New York and Philadelphia. The disproportionate amount of anecdotal information and articles from Seattle is simply because I did this kind of work there for four years, not because the organizing there is any better than the good work of others that has resulted in many victories elsewhere." The third part consists of the draft of an article detailing the campaign to open the Pacific Hotel in Seattle in 1992, an article on the subsequent opening of a self-managed shelter, and two articles about strategies for tenant ownership and self- management in properties that have been won by direct action organizing. All of the above mentioned stories were written by members of Operation Homestead, a Seattle grassroots homeless organizing group. There will also be a piece about past takeover efforts in Philadelphia, and a short piece on the how to's of squatting in Philly. The final section consists of a list of AIDS housing providers in different cities, compiled by Rich Jackman from ACT UP New York and the AIDS Housing Research Project. This list may be valuable for local planning groups. SECTION 1 What, Where, How, & Why Where did this come from? At the housing break out session of the national AIDS activist conference in Philadelphia this spring, activists from across the country talked about how people with AIDS now constitute a large and rapidly growing segment of the homeless population. Disproportionate numbers of new infections come from the unhealthy living conditions many homeless people must live in, denied access to health care, and lack of harm reduction information available to people on the streets. Also, many people with a positive diagnosis become homeless because of stresses, bigotry, and denied opportunities commonly experienced by PWAs, as well as poor health. Session participants discussed the need to make connections between the people and resources of local ACT UP chapters and groups such as certain service providers, housing activists, and homeless organizations who are working on tangible street issues of homeless people (particularly homeless PWAs). Conferees also concluded that, too often, AIDS activists are worn down by continually reacting to the actions and agendas of those who benefit from and manufacture the status quo. In other words, creating fundamental changes requires real direct action, in the literal and original meaning of that often misused phrase. ACT UP needs to focus on creating its own playing field, and let the elites respond to us for a change. It was decided that a nationwide day of takeovers that generate measurable improvements in the lives of homeless people living with AIDS or HIV was the way to accomplish these and other goals. ACT UP members and chapters seek to help create and be participants in ad hoc groups built around these specific issues. History & Propaganda In every urban area, there are thousands of units of abandoned housing. The fetishization of property, the rights of a few to make profits regardless of the social cost, and racist patterns of government-sanctioned deinvestment, speculation, redlining, and gentrification has led to a corresponding increase in both the homeless population and in the number of abandoned buildings. It it interesting to note that, with exceedingly few exceptions, every city has enough abandoned units to house every single homeless resident. It is more profitable for developers and contractors to build new housing, regardless of the fact that new (ugly) construction is invariably vastly more expensive than rehabing existing abandoned units or enforcing housing codes (that would prevent much abandonment in the first place). Therefore, what little money is spent for low income housing in the United States is usually inefficiently utilized on expensive new construction, while perfectly usable buildings go to waste and rot. Adding insult to injury, the great cost of these new buildings (plus a healthy dose of graft) often results in rents that are only marginally less than market rates, and sometimes even higher. For years now, housing and homeless activists have rallied for better utilization of these existing resources. Unfortunately, government officials have generally not responded to obvious need, logical arguments, or impassioned speeches, and have instead primarily facilitated the transference of capitol in its various forms to the control of those who already have power. Seeing this, groups like Union of the Homeless, The Society for Creative Non-Violence, Homes not Jails, and Operation Homestead have opened up abandoned buildings and taken them for and with the homeless people these buildings should have been housing. These and other direct action organizations have declared that the need of people to have a home outweighs the desire of landlords and developers to sit on buildings waiting for the neighborhood to gentrify. These takeovers have occurred with an eye towards both immediately creating housing for homeless people, and building power to more directly influence public policy decisions. The power of a group to fix its own problems is always infinitely greater than the power of individuals relying on courts or bureaucrats to do the right thing. The Proposal for Action: Individual ACT UP chapters will create local work groups that plan a well researched and coordinated organizing campaign that seeks to win buildings for and with homeless PWAs through direct action tactics, including a large, media-sexy building takeover. Work groups will organize primarily with homeless and marginally housed PWAs whose conditions can be directly and immediately improved through this action. In case the building is evicted after the takeover action, the local organizing groups will continue a campaign to win the targeted building, or equivalent, for self-managed housing for homeless people. 1. The work groups will be made up of both HIV positive and negative homeless people, and people from organizations and agencies that represent or serve these constituents. The entire campaign will be led by the people most effected by the issues at hand. 2. The buildings themselves will be as large and centrally located as possible. 3. The occupation will at all times be pointed at getting permanent control of the site in order to create self-managed housing for homeless people, with a special focus on housing for people with HIV infection. 4. The campaign includes a post-takeover commitment to house active homeless participants in case the building is evicted, and until it is re-opened permanently. This will be accomplished by various means such as priority referrals to existing services, establishing self-managed shelters, or through quiet, secure, and healthy squatting. 5. Local work groups may or may not choose to campaign for legislative improvements in conjunction with the action, but any efforts to win new or better laws will be secondary to winning the building with and for the homeless occupiers. (small aside about post-eviction housing commitments). Almost all of the time, when a building is initially occupied, the residents are eventually evicted, sometimes within minutes, sometimes within weeks or months. Usually, some of the homeless people and their supporters in the building choose to get arrested in an effort to defend the new home. If the entire campaign ends with an eviction (or in a court room), then the action was mostly a symbolic one. A group waging a non-symbolic direct action organizing campaign will take steps to prevent the loss of its homeless participants to the miasma of life in the shelters and on the streets after an eviction, even as it continues to fight for the building until it is won. A campaign to build the power base of the housing and AIDS activist movements such as this one must hold on to its active homeless participants. To the extent that it is compatible with the goals of building power and winning a building, homeless members of the group should get housed in some way if the occupation is evicted. Campaign Goals: The desired outcome of the campaign is to win more housing for homeless PWAs by permanently winning particular buildings in each city that has an active ACT UP chapter, or similar action- oriented AIDS activist group. The secondary campaign goal is to impact policy decisions on a local and federal level with regards to policy and spending levels. Organizational Goals: The organizational goal is to build the AIDS activist and anti- homelessness movements, both of which are perceived as less powerful than in the late eighties. We will build and rebuild by moving our shared agenda forward together. The campaign does not desire to create a new groups or organizations. ACT UP seeks to create work groups in different cities nationally to win buildings to house homeless PWAs. Whether these work groups will be the projects of ACT UP, or some other involved organization, or if they are free floating ad hoc groups, is best left to the local planning group itself. Organizational Model, loosely defined: ACT UP Philadelphia is asking various homeless and tenant organizing groups, homeless PWAs, AIDS activists, and progressive housing, homeless & AIDS service providers to be both leaders and co-organizers of the local aspect of this effort. Planning group members are not necessarily new ACT UP members, nor must participants represent their respective organizations. The people who plan the local takeover campaign 'join up' as concerned individuals who hope to win improvements for our various constituencies, and to jointly and individually increase the ability of our organizations to make demands of the power structure. Local planning groups may choose to create a housing action committee of their ACT UP chapter. Other ACT UP chapters may decide to help plan AIDS housing takeovers as parts of other pre- existing local housing-issue groups. Some groups may choose to give themselves a new name under which the takeover campaign and related activities can be carried out under. If a local campaign is successful (i.e. won a building), then the balances of power have been shifted, and that gain should not be wasted. It is important that the organizational benefits of a successful campaign are shared equally between the participating individuals' organizations. National Coordinating Activities: Since this is to be a national action, an (extraordinarily informal) national coordinating group is evolving, consisting primarily of people from ACT UP in New York and Philadelphia. Each ACT UP chapter is an autonomous organization, as are (obviously) the local housing activist groups critical to this campaign. There is no president of ACT UP to order each chapter to do this or that. We hope to inspire each city to action, through ongoing information sharing, i.e. "look what they are doing in Peoria." The national coordinating committees' activities are as follows: -- We intend primarily to disseminate information facilitating the creation of autonomous local work groups and will be a resource of both organizing assistance and information about what each group is doing. -- We have compiled a national database of AIDS housing providers in each city. (Participating ACT UP chapters will need to find the active homeless organizing groups in their area.) -- We have begun spreading the word through the ACT UP Network general conference calls. The coordinating committee will find ways for different groups to communicate, through conference call, fax, e-mail, phone contacts, and snail mail. -- We are creating this, for lack of a better word, "manual", which is certain to be an ongoing process. -- We intend to coordinate national (not local) media strategy. -- The coordinating committee will research percentages of homeless PWAs in the general homeless population, number of AIDS housing units available by city, and so on. -- We hope to set a reasonably flexible timeline for the day of action. Our national message, when reduced to sound bites, will be something along the lines of: (The Problem:) Homelessness kills people. Homeless people with AIDS die faster. People with AIDS demand and deserve control over their lives. The government is complicit in the death of homeless people. Decent housing is preventative medicine for AIDS. There are a few proposals for national demands that address 'the problem'. ACT UP could demand that people who are HIV+ or have other so-called terminal illnesses be issued new Section 8 certificates, bypassing the multi-year long waiting lists (HUD currently does not issue new Section 8 certificates). We will (of course) ask for increases in funds for AIDS housing programs, in addition to general increases in funds for housing for homeless people. We also will seek better enforcement and application of portions of the McKinney Act, which states that abandoned federally owned or controlled units must be made available to non-profit housing groups. We expect, however, that our primary national demand will be that HUD or the Department of Health and Human Services funds and/or turns over the buildings that have been homesteaded. (Our Solutions:) PWAs can't wait. Waiting lists for housing end lives. We demand new Section 8 certificates. People die in the streets while buildings sit abandoned. Empty the shelters and tear down the boards. We demand enforcement of the McKinney Act. National Coordinating Contacts: Rich Jackman, ACT UP/NY, voice & fax 212-505-6310 Paul Davis, ACT UP/Philadelphia, voice 215-731-1844, fax, 215- 731-1845, electronic mail at russell@cpp.pha.pa.us or jdavids@cpp.pha.pa.us The national coordinating work group needs other people to help. People with experience with national actions, national media, or who are interested in helping out in specific ways, such as being regional information 'nodes', should contact one of the numbers listed above. Homelessness is an ACT UP Issue There are some fundamentals to address in building coalitions between ACT UP and various homeless organizations. ACT UP focuses on AIDS issues and has not generally worked with homeless people. Most homeless people do not have AIDS, and the members or constituencies of most homeless or housing issues groups are mostly not PWAs. The fact remains, however, that homelessness is an AIDS issue, and AIDS is a homeless issue. Many homeless people fall into "high risk" categories, most likely to contract the disease. People who are homeless are likely to rapidly "progress" to debilitating stages of unhealth. The bottom line for us all must be that AIDS kills homeless people, and it kills them faster. Deliberate government apathy and inattention towards both the housing crisis and the AIDS plague kills people. The aggregate of oppression that homeless PWAs face is intense and immediate. Decent housing is preventative medicine for AIDS, and, obviously, homelessness. The issues are linked. One important bridge between the apparent conflict between AIDS and homeless activists can be found in some AIDS service providers. Many agencies provide PWA housing. Some providers, such as We The People in Philadelphia, or Housing Works in New York are very much activist organizations, often on the front lines of battles that cross the lines between AIDS and housing activism. Since the goal of this organizing campaign is to generate AIDS housing through direct action, what is needed are flexible proposals for what "AIDS housing" means. Local planning groups will need to decide on a clear definition that works for their city in order to work together. Pre-existing homeless organizations are vital to the fundamental legitimacy of the campaign. While the primary focus of the takeover effort is to create AIDS housing, arrangements must be made so that HIV negative homeless people and homeless organizations that have not had an AIDS focus do not feel exploited. Some agreements must be made about the number or percentage of units that will be designated for HIV positive and negative participants. Organizing efforts should try to ensure that every homeless person who occupied a building is guaranteed a unit after the building is won. Questions to ask about overcoming perceived barriers to cooperation between AIDS & homeless activists: -- While planning the takeover, who will be involved? Will pre- action outreach include 'rank and file' homeless people, or concentrate on homeless or poorly housed PWAs? -- Once the building is won, will all the units be AIDS housing? Or will there be pre-decided percentage of units reserved for HIV+ people? -- How will the campaign assure that the ultimate residents of the building reflect the people who first reclaimed it? -- How will the group deal with class and race issues? ACT UP chapters right now are pretty much whitey environments. The experience of many AIDS activists is often very different from homeless people on the streets, or even from that of most PWAs in the second decade of the plague. To an increasing extent, ACT UP no longer reflects the face of the AIDS crisis. It is imperative to involve homeless PWAs throughout the campaign as empowered decision makers. Planning groups should make pre- action organizing directly with affected populations their first priority. There are many housing activist groups that involve both homeless and 'homed' people, just as ACT UP has members that are HIV positive and HIV negative. The key to successful work together both within and between these groups is a willingness to put the concerns of those most directly effected before all others. What follows are some possible proposals for what "AIDS housing" can mean to a diverse group of people working on a direct action: (Our working proposal is that any homeless person can participate in all stages of the campaign, but our pre-action outreach to 'unorganized' people will be to homeless PWAs. The building, once won, will have at least 50% of the units reserved for homeless people with HIV. This is merely a working proposal, and needs to be agreed upon by planning group members.) Making demands in addition to a building in a takeover campaign: A building occupation is a very powerful tool in the battle for decent affordable housing. Some groups have won their building, and then gone further to win legislative changes relating to the issues in their city. Different groups have fought for and won anti-abandonment laws, increases in funding for renovation, and other changes in laws relating to affordable housing. Secondary demands can also be useful in building a diverse, powerful core group at the beginning of a campaign. Ultimately, local organizing groups will know best what sort of goals are winnable where they live. The national coordinating group will not make or presume any local demands. In any case, takeover groups that have won extensive local legislative protections against homelessness have generally focused exclusively on winning a building first, and policy changes later. The power to effect politicians and bureaucrats does not come without struggle and organization, and it is important to fight for measurable, winnable goals. Usually, a new organization (or planning group, no matter who its members are) is not strong enough to make a bunch of demands for new laws before they have built their group enough to at least win a building. In Philadelphia, some possible secondary demands are: -- An end to the city requirement that all homeless persons on housing waiting lists must reside in a dangerous, unhealthy shelter. -- Homesteading Programs allowing people to squat in certain vacant city properties, with money available for renovation. -- The city must turn over X number of units for housing homeless PWAs within one year to non-profit housing groups or developers. -- A Just Cause Eviction Ordinance, which prevents the hideous no-cause evictions that landlords use against tenants who complain or organize or are the wrong color. -- Anti-Displacement Laws that require developers to replace low income housing they knock down or yuppify, and/or restrictive licence and zoning requirements that discourage development that would displace low-income residents. -- Citizens' Right of Eminent Domain Laws, which would allow tenant groups or tenant appointed non-profits to take over the title of their building from a negligent owner if housing code violations are not remedied within a reasonable amount of time. -- Anti-abandonment legislation, for instance: a) City must give first right of refusal on all (or a percentage of) sheriff sale properties to non-profits. b) Any city owned or controlled abandoned building with no current viable plan for the site that have been vacant for more than two years must be offered to a community based non-profit and/or homeless individuals at below market rates, or for a percentage of the new residents income. In order to win these progressive pieces of legislation, a building takeover would only be the starting point. In any case, a lot of the above ideas would never pass 'legal muster' in state courts outside of the over-regulated old FDR lovin' northeast. Local groups must formulate their own secondary demands that are needed and winnable where they are. It makes sense to be able to present a program for change to the world that goes beyond the takeover of a single building, and demonstrates how government fails citizens. However, a fight to win substantial policy changes is a fight to be approached from a position of power. So, when the campaign is new, these kinds of legislative demands (at the beginning, they are more like suggestions) are primarily presented to the public as needed fixes that would prevent the need for such 'nefarious' tactics as building occupations (in other words, as justification for direct action tactics). In all cases, the fight for a building will be the first priority. A Word on Self-Management Fundamental to direct action organizing is the belief that people can solve their own problems better than any politician or bureaucrat or social worker can. Also, creating new structures that allow people to experience their own power are better than status quo structures that do not allow people control over their own lives. Housing is a fundamental need of all people. In societies where much power is concentrated in the hands of wealthy individuals who use housing for profit, most people do not have very much control over their homes. Existing social structures do not meet the needs that people have for control over their own lives. First, we want to win buildings. Second, we want to build our movements. Third, we seek to create alternative ownership structures that allow the people who have been active in thew campaign to have control of the day to day management of their own housing. We do not want to emulate the existing power structure by creating landlord-tenant relationships that increase powerlessness for low-income people. We also do not want to redistribute property that can still be bought or sold or otherwise speculated on, continually fueling the cycle of rising housing costs. We want to create situations where community based non-profits take ownership of the buildings we have won, and hold the deeds in perpetuity, or at least have long-term site control. The residents of the property will run their own buildings, and hopefully will have a voice in the running of the non-profit where it relates to their building. Our efforts at every step should be towards institutionalizing liberation. ----------------------------------------------------------------- SECTION 2 The Actual Campaign The first step for your ACT UP chapter is to put together a group of homeless PWAs and skilled, experienced people to be the pre- action work group; the core group for the entire campaign. What follows are some suggestions for local organizers. Work with groups that aren't mostly white people While many kinds of service agencies and activists (thankfully) exist in the world, much care is needed when primarily white organizations like ACT UP attempt to instigate and assemble a campaign that primarily affects people of color. This document does not attempt to address the problems of race in various ACT UP chapters. It does suggest ways that a campaign with specific, measurable goals that tangibly improve the lives of homeless participants can try not to shoot itself in the foot. Often, cultural sensitivity trainings and the like offer useful information and a theoretical framework to understanding racism and/or classism. Unfortunately, after the workshops are over, white people go back to their lives, even activist lives, that sometimes do not cross paths with people of color. Organizations that exist specifically to confront racism rarely attract very many people for a long period of time, at least partially due to a lack of measurable goals. Sometimes, the best way for a diverse group to confront racism and classism is through a task- oriented approach, i.e., working on these problems at the same time as the group works on its other, more immediately tangible goals. A group that successfully deals with the apparent segregation in activist milieus will most likely be one that designs itself very specifically to be diverse at the outset, and chooses to work on an issue that is widely felt, and of real interest, to low income people and people of color (in this case, housing). Organizers must be proactively inclusive throughout all stages of the campaign. Pay special attention at the beginning to meeting location, outreach, speaking in public and in meetings, facilitation, and so on. ACT UP Philadelphia is, during the initial stages of the campaign, exclusively inviting members of organizations that address concerns of impoverished communities and are primarily staffed or led by people of color to help plan and take leadership of the campaign. While this leaves out many knowledgeable and skilled activists and service providers at the beginning, there will be many opportunities for larger participation later on, after the campaign has been designed, planned, and 'owned' by the people it is intended to benefit. ACT UP will contribute more than enough white activists to the campaign, and it is important that the planning group is dominated by the concerns of those most directly affected. Individuals who have historically been privileged in our society cannot assume that good intentions clear the slate of the last thousand years or so. Middle class white activists must let others in a group take the lead, and sometimes this can require getting out of the way in order to let other voices be heard. When the action approaches, then is the time that we will do massive outreach to other activist groups and service providers and so on. Work with activist service providers, not "poverty pimps" Due to worsening social conditions, homeless, housing, and AIDS support services have unfortunately become significant growth industries in the urban US. Most of these agencies receive large parts of their funding from government sources. Many service providers performing much needed work in their communities are understandably hesitant to step on the toes of "the hand that feeds". There are many exceptions to this rule, such as the aforementioned activist AIDS services groups in New York and Philadelphia, and it is vital to search out and encourage the participation of these groups. However, social service providers without significant histories of activism may not be the best place to approach for organizing or material assistance early in the campaign. Many social service agencies 'enjoy' very negative reputation with their clients. Homeless people often have very busy lives, running back and forth across town to stand in one line or another, dealing with paperwork and bureaucrats for hours, just to receive whatever pathetically miniscule bit of public assistance the state still begrudges them. Or, homeless people will find themselves booted out of a shelter because they came in 15 minutes too late, or have stayed longer than two weeks, or whatever. Too often, red tape or rule fetishism takes precedence over getting desperate needs met. People who have watched their health decline when some provider denied them meds because they didn't have the right peace of paper have no respect for or desire to work with "the poverty pimps". A direct action campaign is about people helping themselves and each other, not asking someone with a bunch of forms to (nominally) deal with the problem. While it may not be a good idea for your organizing group to be dominated by social work professionals during the planning stages, most of these folks are doing needed work, and should be enlisted as supporters as the action nears. Many shelter workers, case managers, and other service providers have lots of contacts for getting food delivered to an occupied building, access to computers, copiers and faxes, press contacts, blankets and cots, and all sorts of materials needed for the campaign. The good relations some agency staffers have with area non-profit housing developers could be an invaluable asset to your campaign. Do targeted outreach to homeless PWAs While many providers, due to funding sources, may not be willing or able to be a part of a direct action campaign, these groups are often the only source of specific, targeted outreach to homeless PWAs. It is necessary to have a positive enough relationship with local service providers to at least be allowed to speak with the clients. Flyering, street feeds, and, most importantly, one-on-one contact in or outside of places that serve homeless or dubiously housed PWAs are focused ways to contact the most important participants in a takeover effort. The kind of straight street or shelter outreach many organizers have done in takeover battles in the past is not clearly focused on organizing specifically with PWAs. Without the significant participation of people who are directly effected, preferably at the earliest stages of planning, the effort will be symbolic and vanguardist, and will most likely fail. Target the most vulnerable person who can give you what you want Some groups have chosen a person to target first, and some folks have found a building first. No matter which route your group takes, you will need to target both a building and its owner, and investigate both carefully. First, some rules of thumb. The building owner you target is always a person, even if your group is going after a corporation or government agency. If your target is HUD, you should go after the director of the regional housing authority. People feel more of their own power when they target a supposedly accountable public person than they do, say, a monolithic government agency. Your group must personalize your target. Sometimes, it makes sense to try to target a bureaucrat who is not doing the job they are supposed to, or a person or institution who is doing wrong and then try to enlist the support of sympathetic elected officials. Other times, the elected officials who the bureaucrats must answer to (and were appointed by) are themselves clearly obstructionist, in which case it probably makes sense to target someone above them, like the mayor. In any case, the person your group targets will always be someone who can make the decision to give you a building. That is the second rule in picking your groups' target: go after the person with the power to give you what you want. By doing good research, you should find the most vulnerable decision maker with control over a building in need of recycling. Your target must be someone that your group will most likely be able to force into making a favorable decision. Another consideration is that you will have much more power over a local target (person) than one who lives somewhere else. Even if your target is really a multi-national corporation, make sure that the executive director for the area lives (the decision maker) in the city. If your target even lives in the next county, it is often better to find a new one. The last guideline in picking your target is that, extremely generally speaking, groups of people have more power over elected officials than private individuals or corporations. Public or private buildings? In some cities, groups have taken over buildings belonging to private owners. There are some benefits to this approach, in that a well researched target such as an unpopular slumlord or eighties real estate tycoon may be a "ripe plum to pick" in the eyes of the citizenry. Different takeover efforts have also been able to find private owners of buildings whose positions in the community are (or can be) so compromised (maybe they owe back taxes, or have been connected to dirty deeds, or are in some other tenuous legal position), that the target has been more willing to negotiate with the occupiers. It should be noted that city agencies responsible for dealing with public housing or properties are frequently in the above position, also. Sometimes, targets have been found who are just plain out to lunch, who have been easily bullied into turning over the building. Finally, in some cities, police will not evict an occupied building if the private owner of a building does not ask them to and/or cannot be found, whereas the police may be able to evict immediately if the building is owned by a government agency. Some disadvantages to targeting a private owner are that a private owner potentially has less to lose if they try to evict and/or press charges against the occupiers than allegedly accountable public institutions do. Also, in some cities, criminal penalties for trespass are steeper for privately owned buildings than public ones. There is much to be said for picking a "publicly owned" building. This organizing campaign seeks to take wasted resources from those who horde them at great cost to the public, and put these resources in the hands of those who are in life endangering need. The largest owner of abandoned housing in the United States is the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Most large cities have a local housing authority, and sometimes a few other development and planning agencies that also own abandoned buildings. A national day of occupations should have primarily a governmental and national target (HUD) which (handily) can be attacked on a local level by going after the director of a city's housing authority, or the regional HUD office. By targeting the government with an effective and strategic organizing effort, we are forcing it to clean up the homicidal mess it has made. By having, more or less, a single target, on a single day, cities across the country are able to have a greater policy impact than with isolated efforts targeting disparate building owners. (On the other hand, there are some very unpopular scumlords in Philly that are very tempting.) In the case of choosing which property owning government agency to go after, you may want to consider some of the same characteristics mentioned above that qualify a private owner as a good target. Sometimes, a citys' housing authority has recently been host to a scandal, or the sheer mismanagement of resources can be made into a scandal. Perhaps the director or an elected decision maker is in a politically vulnerable position. Finally, you must pick a target whose weaknesses are most likely to enable your group to remain in a building for the longest time. This criteria outweighs any other considerations. For every hour that your group can hold a building, there is a corresponding increase in the power your group has. The longer a building is occupied, the more opportunities the group will have to make your case to the public. Each day you are inside, the more people will come to you with bodies and support; an uncommon occurrence in the activist world. Each day you hold out, the occupiers will feel more and more of their own power by taking control over their own lives and being a part of a community that is helping itself and doing the right thing. Pick a large building in a central location that is in habitable condition. Some people ask their target for a building first. Many, if not most people feel that unless normal channels have not been pursued first, more 'drastic' actions are inapropriate. Others figure that the owner should not have let the structure be abandoned in the first place and do not feel the need to ask first, since he or she wasn't really going to deliver anyway. No matter what your group decides, it is a good idea to keep the location of the actual target building a secret. If word gets out, the owner has time to prepare, and it is unlikely that the takeover attempt will be able to enter the building. You don't want to put your target on notice to surround the building with police on the day of the action, or cut off utilities, or cement all the entrances shut. For groups that decide to ask the owner first, it may be a good idea to go after a target that owns more than one property, and make efforts to conceal which building you are asking for. Even if you never state that your group plans to occupy a building if the owner doesn't turn it over in some way, word usually gets out, or at least it is best to assume it will. Your planning group will need to trust a very small group of people to pick a building. No one other than this small (3-4 people) should know which building it is. The 'search committee' should decide on a list of criteria a good building will meet, and be capable of doing the research, planning the logistics of the day of action (like a march route), and find a way to enter the building, even if there are police present when the building is taken over. The search committee should also be prepared to break into a building surreptitiously in order to confirm its' condition (and 'unoccupiedness'). It is necessary to find a building in good condition. Not only do you want a building that could primarily be repaired, hopefully, by its future residents, but also one that best supports your argument that good housing resources are going to waste. It will also be easier to negotiate with a non-profit housing developer to buy or hold a building if it requires little renovation. Plus, and most importantly, few people want to move into a desolate shell of a building. In some ways, a building takeover is a tactic most appropriate for relatively healthy people. It can take a long time to permanently win a building, and just as long to extensively rehab a structure with severe repair problems. (Un)fortunately, most cities have so many abandoned buildings to choose from that there is no need to pick one in much less than immediately habitable condition. Because the action is for PWAs, the building must be in a condition that is reasonably conducive to good health. If certain utilities are not available or cannot be made to work by the time of the takeover, you might want to try to get a generator donated or have washing and refrigeration facilities nearby. The building should have some possibility for disabled access. You will need to decide what the bottom line is regarding reasonably decent conditions acceptable to homeless people living with AIDS. People who are HIV positive should (obviously) be making a lot of these decisions. Your group will also need to make some structural and systemic assessments of the building. Many homeless people have a lot of building skills that may come in handy while checking out a building. If someone in your group knows a (very) friendly housing code inspector, it may be worthwhile to call them up. Supportive union members are often willing to surreptitiously check out buildings with you, and this is a good time to involve the local Locals, and/or approach the labor council. Even if you already have people in your group with flashlights who can inspect the systems and structure of a building, no opportunity should be missed to enlist the aid of other organizations, once your action is more or less planned. It also can be useful to search your city's housing code files for information on repair problems in a building. Good research will enable you to quickly deal with, or at least anticipate, problems that will arise if the city sends inspectors of some sort around to get you out (which is nearly guaranteed to happen; the city would rather evict you because of some supposed 'concern for health and safety' than risk embarrassment by arresting everyone). Once you have narrowed down your building search to a few sites, it is extremely important that someone actually goes into them to check them out. All the Housing Codes files in the world don't mean anything if the roof has collapsed or someone has taken the floors out of the building since the last inspection. You also must check to see if there are squatters currently in the building. It is (obviously) unacceptable to displace old squatters to make room for new ones. If there is no one around when you go in, but it seems like people have been in the building recently, you can hang out for a while or spend the night, or leave a lot of notes, or whatever, to verify if the building is unoccupied. Life in an occupied building can be made immeasurably better if there is electricity and water, at least in some of the building. One can also rest assured that the city will use the absence of these utilities as an excuse to evict everyone. A surprising number of buildings are abandoned with utilities left on, and these are ideal. If this is not the case, it is probably worth exploring what it would take to turn them on. In some cities, the local utility company will turn on the electricity just because someone asked (very cleverly), or with the payment of a deposit. In other places, it is very easy to pirate various utilities (sympathetic union people have come in handy here also). There are some tactical questions to ask about possibly getting caught with pirated utilities (the answer, if confronted by utility co. officials, would probably have to be the truth: "the electricity was on before we all came in"), but groups have been able to pull it off. Groups should be aware that the city may try to cut utilities off, legally turned on or otherwise, once the building has been occupied. If possible, try to turn things on in such a way that makes this difficult (perhaps utilities can be turned on so that they can only be turned off inside the building without shutting down the whole block. Sometimes, utilities company people are reluctant to cross a picket line or enter a squatted building with a bunch of intimidating people posted at the door). In any case, make absolutely positive that turning on the utilities will not quickly flood the building or burn it down. Your building should also hopefully not have a preexisting plan in the works for the site that your targets have already spent a lot of money towards, unless the plan for future use is so reprehensible that it becomes an asset to your group. Buildings that are not on extremely valuable real estate are more feasible than those in thriving business corridors or rapidly gentrifying areas, unless, again, those same inflated property values and resulting displacement are to be a part of your campaign. Finally, supportive neighbors can be a great asset to the takeover effort. It makes sense to approach nearby houses, apartments, and businesses immediately after an occupation. Sometimes, strong neighborhood support has come from the corner store which immediately benefits from a big ruckus down the street, as opposed to an empty building. Sensitivity is called for if your group enters somebody else's turf. Your group should hopefully mirror the racial makeup of the neighborhood. If the local neighborhood organization or block watch group can be made supporters, you will be considerably ahead. Neighborhood newspapers are also good places to talk to. There are issues surrounding the confidentiality of people with AIDS that directly impact the nature of your pre-action neighborhood outreach. PWAs in your group should figure out the best way to deal with this apparent contradiction. Your group does not want to alert the NIMBYs or the AIDS-o-phobes sure to be found in every area before the action, but to develop support and perhaps convert neighborhood leaders before those issues ever come up. The best case scenario would be to occupy a building that is in the same neighborhood that a lot of your members or supporters live. In any case, once you take the building, everyone will know that it is for PWAs. Some groups have, in the past, occupied several houses in outlying neighborhoods in their takeover campaigns. There are certain benefits to this approach, including lower property values, and the fact that some people would rather live in houses rather than apartment buildings. On the other hand, small disparate targets make for extreme strategic problems. Individual houses in neighborhoods do not provide the natural organizing base, or create the intense group focus, cohesion and empowerment that homesteading a large building together in a very public location can foster. It is much more difficult for spread out groups of people defend 'scattered site' takeovers. It also harder to generate media coverage if your group chooses to occupy multiple small buildings rather than one large one. A large, visible down-townish action that takes place at one site is the most efficient way to garner community support (and build in power). If your group has lots of homeless families, or for whatever reason decides to pursue a number of smaller houses, try to at least find a block of abandoned houses (with the same owner, of course) or houses located very close to each other. Research your building and its owner. Your group will need to do an investigation of both your building and its owner. The goal is not only to learn as much as you can about your targets, as in a free-ranging research project, but to learn the weaknesses of your opponents. It is also not enough usually to merely spread damaging information; the information must be actively exploited and used to gain power. The results of your investigation are just another organizing tool, not an end in themselves. Below are some good resources of information. The city or county tax assessors office has extremely useful information on all property owners in a city. Usually, one can check out either a name or an address. At the assessors office, you can learn about every property an owner pays taxes on, and if back taxes are owed. Sometimes the assessor will list descriptions and sales histories of properties. One of the most important things you can learn at the tax assessors office is where your target lives, and if they live in the county. The tax assessor will have the current assessed value of the building in question. The current assessed value should not be confused with the potential sale price, though, as some owners use their connections to appeal property tax rates down to an artificially low level, or sometimes a new assessment has not been made for many years. Every city or county also has records of mortgages, deeds & liens. You can learn if the owner has liens resulting from unpaid bills against their properties, and also learn who sold them the building, and for how much. Court Records can be an excellent source of information. Every court action such as divorces, lawsuits, and evictions are extensively documented. By looking through court records, your investigation may be able to unearth potential conflicts of interest, illegal evictions, and long histories of unpaid housing code violation fines, not to mention information about vacation homes and children thrown through windows, and that sort of thing (these are all things I learned about my old landlord). When investigating a corporation (or any sort of business entity) the best place to find potentially damaging information is always at the point of regulation. Almost all aspects of business are regulated somewhere, and all of these regulations result in lots of paper. For instance, if your target is a bank, then it has specific responsibilities under the Community Reinvestment Act. Records of a lending institutions' performance (or non- performance) under this Act are exactly the sort of specific, targeted research which relates directly to the issue at hand. Records of the housing code inspections and violations (and maybe fines for unremedied conditions) are kept by a city's housing or building code inspection or enforcement agency. These records are invaluable in determining the condition and maintenance history of a building. Local newspapers have extensive indexed microfilm news story libraries of all their articles. If your local paper allows you to access these records, you will likely be able to learn a lot about various local figures. Most city libraries will have various directories and registers of lawyers & firms (often with sample client lists), executives & directors (including lists of boards various directors sit on), and reports on corporations (including information about finances and ownership). Some larger libraries also have newspaper indexes. Reference librarians usually are very happy to help people with questions on where to look. Voter Registration Records are public information. The State Secretary of State will have certain records of corporations doing business in the state, including articles of incorporation. Non-profit as well as for-profit corporations are usually registered. Some state offices maintain lists of who is on the board of directors of each corporation. The secretary of state is a good place to look for information about corporate targets that do not sell stock. Pre-Action Ownership Strategies If your campaign is seriously demanding a building to house and be run by homeless PWAs, then your group needs to have a plausible proposal to hold it and fund it. Many (sometimes successful) takeover efforts have occupied a building first, and figured out how deal with the boring technocratic details later. However, if your group can have some ownership strategies lined up before you go in, you will obviously be considerably ahead of the game, and your issue will be even more clear cut: Here's a wasted building that the owner is not doing anything with, and here you are, homeless and trying to help yourself, with a sensible proposal (or a non-profit with clout, or whatever) to use the building. Ideally, the owner of your target building will have so many tactical weaknesses that they will have no choice but to donate the building, or give long term site control, to a non-profit developer (that you have picked out). Unfortunately, there often is a little more wheeling and dealing involved. Most of the absurd increases in property costs come at the point of sale, when a property is transferred from one owner to another. A land trust, or some non-profit housing developers, seek to hold the deed to a property in perpetuity, thereby removing the building from the speculative market forever. Traditional home ownership, or full-equity co-ops still allow a building to be sold at a profit, perpetuating the spiraling costs of housing. Your group may be able to work with a non-profit to set up a scheme where the actual occupants have control over all aspects of living in a building, but the building itself is held forever "off the market". Once your core planning group has made itself solid and you are at the stage of doing outreach to other organizations and people, you will want to involve local non-profit housing developers (preferably ones that have 'done' AIDS housing before, and whose projects are well run, as opposed to hell-hole jails for poor people), or a land trust that is ready and able to obtain new properties. You can assume that non-profit developers are looking for new projects all the time. You can also say safely that, if your campaign is well run, your group will be able to significantly adjust the selling price of a building, and/or the owner's willingness to make a deal. So, in other words, there can be compelling reasons for local non-profit developers to work with you. They may even be willing to negotiate with the owner with you, although they may not be comfortable 'going public' in support of direct-action tactics. Sometimes, a non-profit will know of a good building to take over. In one successful takeover effort, a certain non-profit developer already had designs on a building, but had been stymied in their negotiations with the owner. The developers then approached a local grassroots group with a wink and a nudge. The building was occupied by hundreds of people within two months, and the direct action organization which took the building kept a close relationship with the non-profit throughout the action as well as the subsequent post-eviction campaign to win the building. The building is now owned and being developed by the non-profit, and the people who did the takeover continue to have significant input in the final project. Your local planning group should be careful to get something in exchange from any developers who you ask to be a part of your effort. In other words, if a non-profit is able to get a building that they could not have obtained without your group, then you should have substantial input into the project. Think about bargains to strike with a developer or land trust before the action. Criteria to ask the developer to meet: -- Homeless PWAs who took the building over in the first place should have guaranteed rights to a unit when the building opens. It should be remembered that it can take a long time to actually win, fund, and, if necessary, renovate a building. Some homeless people who have participated in these kind of actions have moved, or have found satisfactory housing elsewhere by the time a 'project comes on-line'. Since we are talking about a building for people with HIV, it is even more important that a building be turned over to the occupiers quickly. -- The residents must be allowed to have control over the building they won. You group will need to, at some point, work out a self-management scheme. -- The building must be housing specifically for homeless people. -- The building have X percentage of units reserved for PWAs, with X number of those units having various support services available. -- Your group should be allowed to have input in to the development process at all times. Some groups who have done lots of takeovers have set up their own non-profit housing development groups. The benefits to this approach are numerous, but pulling it off requires a real pool of skilled developers/ architects/ grant writers/ and administrative people available to spend a lot of set up time. For new groups with no track record, it may be very difficult to try to set up, or even conceive of, such a technically demanding project. But, such a group can greatly enhance all housing activist work in a city for a long time to come. An activist controlled non-profit allows for more respectability when negotiating with building owners than a scrappy bunch of homeless people and activists who break in to buildings. A free standing non-profit formed by activists can also allow direct action organizing groups to go about the business of direct action organizing, without, to some extent, premature and/or draining time demands required by extensive negotiations with funders and other developers and such technocratic details. An article about such a group, set up in Seattle originally to hold and own self-managed housing obtained through direct action, is included in the next section. Section 8 is a HUD subsidy program where participants pay no more than 30% of their income for rent, and government funds make up the rest. Since there is a cap on the total amount the government will pay, this program is of limited effectiveness in very expensive cities like New York or San Francisco. However, the various permutations of the Section 8 program can be used as part of a package to fund the development of a building won through your campaign. In one city, a successful group has taken over abandoned HUD houses, and worked out a program with the targeted agency where the families that occupied them pay 30% of their income until the title of the building is turned over to them at the end of a year. (On the subject of Section 8 program: Certificates have been very difficult to obtain through normal channels since the Reagan years, with immobile waiting lists that more or less mean "wait till you die". Perhaps a fall back or short term demand of your campaign can be to voluntarily vacate an occupied building if all the homeless individuals are issued new Section 8 certificates.) There are also certain existing laws that can be utilized as part of a campaign. The McKinney Act, a federal law, has mechanisms for turning over abandoned properties to non-profits. The local application of the act should be explored with an established non-profit developer. A few cities have various anti-abandonment, nuisance abatement, or receivership laws or programs that can enable the transfer of property to a tenant group or a non-profit entity. Try calling your law department or city housing or development agency. Unfortunately, these laws are rarely ever enforced or utilized to benefit citizens unless people take action. Federal and local governments are quite content to ignore the problems of homeless people until a group builds sufficient power to force them to use these legal mechanisms positively. As always, the strength of poor people comes from the power of their organized numbers, anger, and action, not from some legal justification. Turnout Plans, or, Power Doesn't Grow On Trees Too often, activists feel that they have done the job by having 15 or 20 people hold a demonstration expressing a position on some issue. Unfortunately, the people who have power in this world usually act the way they do on purpose, not because they needed education on one thing or another. If decision makers' actions are deliberate, then the only way to get them to make better decisions short of abducting them is by creating a new power base they have not encountered before when making decisions. We have to make it the best short-term interests of the bad guys in the world to do the right thing, not only through rational and compassionate argument, but with power. Power is hundreds or thousands of people organized act on their own behalf when so-called 'representatives' do things that harm them. Power comes pretty much in the form of numbers (especially votes), money, or guns. We probably won't resort to weaponry. Groups like ACT UP, or the Union of the Homeless, will never be able to buy consensus like many of our opponents can, although a strategic hit that disrupts or threatens your target's cash flow (strikes, non-symbolic boycotts, large demonstrations, media campaigns, sneaky acts of sabotage & dirty tricks) can make a considerable difference. In any case, the primary form of power progressive organizations have lies in numbers, and the ability to mobilize them. Large numbers do not come naturally. Even if the issue taken on by an organization is widely felt amongst the general population, much strategic outreach appealing to peoples' own self-interest in an issue must be done in order to have real power. Because there is so little real effort to truly build the organizations that agitate for social change, there is very little real social change. In other words, in many cases a 15 person demonstration, unless your target is very small, is more harmful to the cause at hand than just staying home. A very small demonstration is likely to be perceived by your target as a demonstration more of weakness than of power. This is particularly true for organizations that have a history of turning out large numbers of people over and over again. When such an organization starts having 20 person actions, then their targets know that they no longer have to be concerned with the group or its issues. This paper assumes that your group will want to have a rally or some such public event, and be 'out' about entering the building. Set an attendance goal for the action that is the minimum necessary to win. Once your group has a turnout goal, you will need to make a plan to ensure that goal is met. One part of a turnout plan could be for each member of the planning group to commit to personally bring out a minimum number of people. Be sure that everyone doesn't say they will turn out the same 20 people. Everyone can give progress reports every few meetings or so about where they are according to the goal they set, and on the outreach they have done to friends and contacts and people at service agencies, and the mailing and/or phone lists obtained, and articles placed in newsletters and bulletins, and so on. Turnout goal considerations: -- Large cities have to turn out more people than smaller cities. -- Cities without responsive media have to turn out more people than cities with responsive media. -- Cities with a recent history of very large demonstrations must turn out more people than cities with few large demonstrations of local people in the last several years (national marches are not necessarily a factor in this equation). -- The historical turnout level of your ACT UP chapter or other organizations that are helping to plan the action can move the number up, but not down. In other words, your groups' past actions can raise expectations, but there is no way to lower the minimum number needed for a broad based action that wins. In order to have a powerful building occupation action in Philadelphia, a bare minimum of 200 people have to be turned out, with at least one third of those people being homeless or marginally housed, and one third being PWAs (with a good deal of crossover). That number was arrived at by A) conventional wisdom and a little common sense, and B) judging both the size of the city (at least three million people or so in the city limits, which increases the number of people needed), the responsiveness of the media (middlin', which increases the necessary turnout, although this is mitigated somewhat by the relative novelty of the chosen tactics), and the recent history of large street actions here (they have not been very big, which lowers the numbers needed to have a credible demo). ACT UP Philadelphia has not regularly turned out 200 people for actions. Extensive outreach plus work with members or staffers of other organizations makes 200 people a realistic goal. For the action in Philly to be a success, there will be at least 30 or so participants willing to actually stay in the building on an ongoing basis after the rally who are homeless, recently formerly homeless, or dubiously housed PWAs, although the final number is dependant on the size of the building. This number comes from the (very approximate) average number of units in abandoned buildings in the part of town we will likely 'do' (even the large apartment buildings in Philly, especially the viable abandoned ones, are not very large), and from guesses at both the needed and likely ratio of homeless to non-homeless participants who will actually sleep in the building (as low as possible, with non-homeless people perhaps tripling or quadrupling up in the units), and the willingness of homeless PWAs to sleep in insecure surroundings. The above number also takes into consideration that considerably more people will come to the initial occupation than will necessarily sleep there. As previously stated, power lies in numbers, and the more people who choose to cram in somewhere, the better. Your group should come up with a turnout plan, based on the number you come up with as the minimum number needed to show strength (and be strong). If the date of the action approaches, and it seems that your group is falling far short of its turnout goal, consider postponing and re-strategizing, national action or not. Homeless people and people living with AIDS are not in need of public displays of weakness. People in the advertising industry say that a person has to see or hear about a product six or seven times (or some such number) before it insidiously worms its way in to the consumer psyche forever. This 'product placement theory' may be useful for groups trying to do turnout plans. Planning groups should ask other organizations (especially the organizations that planning group members belong to) for their mailing and phone lists. Send everybody on them as many pieces of paper as possible. More useful than a piece of mail, though, is two or three phone calls, especially if someone receives a phone call after they get a piece of mail. Lots of groups put up thousands of posters before an action. Unfortunately, posters alone never really turn out more than a very few people. But, the very important purpose posters, community calendars, and bulletin boards do serve, however, is to reinforce the letter and phone calls some one has already received. By the time someone has gotten something in the mail, received two phone calls, and seen ten posters on her way to the train every day, and read about the action in the event calendar of the neighborhood free weekly, she'll probably start handing out crowbars on the street, or at least she'll show up at the action. Your group should also consider doing 'advance publicity': small, non-labor intensive media actions leading up to the big action. Perhaps a press conference a few weeks before the takeover publicizing your targets poor record on housing the homeless, or nonexistent funding for AIDS housing. If your group asks the target for a building first, then you can make a media event out of his or her inevitable waffling bureaucrat-speak refusal. You can start sending informational press releases each week several weeks before an action. Also, you can identify sympathetic reporters, and give them a special line that something big is coming up. If you know a trusted reporter, your group may ask them to actually enter the building with you when you go in. By doing advance publicity and media work in the couple of months or so before you actually take over a building, you build an 'institutional memory' of the story in the mind of the media. You also get your target warmed up & squirming for what's to come, and you've begun placing your issue before the public, breaking them in for more serious tactics. Be careful that none of your pre-action actions are so large that they outshine your takeover (unlikely), or wear out your welcome with the press. During all this press work (and any other pre-event publicity), you will have to decide if you are going to tell the world you are planning to take over a building or not (probably a bad idea), or, who to tell and who not to tell. It is quite difficult (though not impossible) to gain access to a building that has 4000 cops around it who were alerted by your own outreach. Homeless members of your planning group should turn out people from their shelter, health clinic, service agency, work place, or support group. They can leaflet and talk one-on-one with other homeless people 'from the inside'. You will need to do massive outreach to other groups at least four to six weeks before the takeover. You can try to have someone from your group invited to the staff or membership meetings of other activist groups. Ask for the phone and/or mailing lists when appropriate. You want to turn out these groups staff and/or members. Sometimes activist groups will make facilities available for phone banking, or lend their non-profit mailing code. Canvass organizations have a lot of speakers come around. They also have lots of young activists, who are all privately wondering if knocking on doors and asking for money is the only way to change the world. Sometimes, canvassers will distribute flyers for you. Whenever possible, ask to have an article or insert put in other groups' newsletters. If you are going to do outreach to non-english speaking groups (as you should), then make sure that your promotional materials (and meetings) are bilingual or are translated. Social service agencies also sometimes have a newsletter, or will allow speakers at staff meetings. In any case, you should try to have a couple of posters up inside and, if appropriate, around the agency. You can try to turn out at least a third to a half of all staff if the agency in any way addresses your issue. Your group may decide to talk to union locals. In talking to these groups, you should remember their self interest. Building renovation means jobs, and maybe you can promise them union contracts should your effort be successful. It should not be forgotten that most homeless people are or were once working people, as are most PWAs. The area labor council is a voluntary organization of what probably are the most active union locals in your area. Be sure you know what exactly you want from the union (or any other organization) before you take up meeting time. Find out which locals that have a history of activism. Many times, a surprising amount of support for progressive organizing comes from local religious institutions. For years, Operation Homestead, a direct action grassroots group in Seattle that reclaims abandoned buildings, was fiscally sponsored and organizationally supported by the Church Council. Most religious organizations see (some sort of) justice and ministry (outreach and witnessing) as fundamental to their missions. Often, synagogues and congregations are looking for effective ways to express these values, which your campaign, with its goals of housing, health, and self-determination, can fit in nicely with the interest that many religious institutions have in these areas. Churches need to be involved in their own mobilization, however, and it is useful to have a couple of connections to key congregations at the outset. Local church councils or interfaith organizations are often very socially progressive, and also are likely to have information regarding which individual congregations or synagogues have active social concerns committees. Local campaign organizers should try to have a bulletin insert for local congregations or synagogues, and may ask for the area council of churches to include a write up in their newsletter. P.S. Don't plan your event on a day that is a religious holiday. Obviously, individual ACT UP chapters will have to decide whether or not they are able to work with certain denominations if that will mean keeping quiet about that church's repulsive stance on queerness and other issues. There will always be individual churches, no matter what the reputation of the particular denomination, however, that do not accept the dictates of their hierarchy, and are very involved socially in their communities. The added clout, money, or numbers that can come from religious communities can not be undervalued. By taking up housing for homeless people as an issue, AIDS activists can begin to proactively defuse some of the religious rights' propaganda and organizing about us. Building diverse coalitions around widely felt issues that are led by effected people demonstrates that AIDS is everyone's problem, and that we are not some well heeled special interest group. Press Manipulation We all know that all major news outlets are corporate owned consensus factories, and that the mediated version of reality offered by these corporate interests usually has very little to do with the world most people actually live in. The mainstream media is sort of like a computer running a virtual reality program for the masses, except that this particular program snatches your purse. Nevertheless, the media is one of your organizing groups' only tools to reach very large numbers of people. Nonetheless, your targets all read the papers, and most of their constituents that they care about read the papers; you probably even personally know someone who reads the papers. So, your group should to get to work to use the media to your best (if inherently limited) advantage. A good month before the occupation, if not sooner, your group should be taking steps to build your issue in the local media sources. You can write letters to the editor (After the front page, the letters to the editor section is the most widely read part of the paper). You can also make the rounds on local talk shows. Most talk shows are surprisingly easy to get on as a guest, and no problem at all to call in to, if your target or someone with power over them or someone close to them is on the air. If your group is being featured on a talk show, be sure that your spokesperson is versed in controlling the topic and getting the message out, and be sure to have supporters secretly in the audience or calling the show. Another easy place to get stories are the local free weekly papers, which should be approached with a proposal for a feature. Small neighborhood papers are good places to try to 'plant' stories, especially the paper that serves your target's neighborhood. You should also send out a number of informational press releases to major outlets, especially to friendly reporters. One useful strategy is to try to find out which TV, radio station, and newspaper your target generally uses, and specially cultivate connections with individuals at those outlets. Progressive or alternative media is a good way to reach other activists, and it is fairly easy to solicit features about your campaign. Unfortunately, most alternative papers or TV shows do not reach a very large number of people, and they do not really reach the group of folks your target considers constituents. Unless the local progressive paper is very large (like the Village Voice or something), your target not only won't care that much what it has to say, but probably won't even find out. If your group hasn't done it already, you should flesh out your press list to include the names of sympathetic reporters who have written good stories before and editors that can be solicited for good, biased coverage. Individual editors and reporters are much more likely to be responsive than an anonymous city desk editor. Send out press releases so that they get out four to five days ahead of time, call up any individual contacts to make sure that they got them, and then fax out or deliver another round of updated releases the day or night before the action, and make another round of calls to news editors that morning, with a script, if necessary, to give your sound bites and answer any questions that might be asked. Don't forget to write "Photo Opportunity" somewhere near the top of your release, and send a copy to the newspaper's photo editor. Bring along lots of ladders and crowbars or something to take pictures of (this also prevents the cops from picking the one person with a crowbar from out of the crowd). The person(s) listed as press contacts should actually be available during the day. If, during the occupation, some stations or papers have been absent, don't be afraid to call them up and tell them what they are missing. During your rally, and hopefully throughout the occupation, you will want to have a few press spokespeople who know all about the owner and the building and the state of negotiations, have numbers relating to AIDS and homelessness in the area, are able to talk about all the other cities taking the same action, and are able to present some good four or five second sound bites. Once you get to the building, someone will also need to hand out your press kits which will have your latest press releases, documentation of damaging information regarding the owner, copies of laws broken by the owner in abandoning, evicting, or failing to maintain the building, and information documenting the excellent, habitable condition of the building in question. You may want to have someone with a cellular phone or something on site who is ready to call the press on short notice for late breaking developments (like an impending eviction, or a meeting with officials at the building). Especially in the first three to five days of an occupation, each day you are in the building should have some sort of press event, complete with visuals, carefully coached speakers, releases the night before, and follow up calls in the morning. The Rally Most groups will want to have a large, but short rally somewhere within marching distance of your target building. While this allows the police more time to mass against you, the rally affords more media coverage, and, more importantly, it allows the group to feel its own power and appropriateness in ways that sneaking in to a building and telling everyone about it later does not. Your group will want to plan strategies to throw off the cops as part of your rally (more on that later). Don't forget to have a person or two, suitably studied at the art of obfuscation, to play the role of the "spokesperson" that the police always demand to talk to. This person's job is (obviously) very different from that of a press spokesperson. When a rally intends to demonstrate power merely as a show of numbers, perhaps there is some justification for the endless speakers that often seem to clog up these sort of events. But the main power to be exercised and built by your group is not merely a show of numbers; the takeover campaign is numbers taking action to immediately alleviate suffering. So there is no real reason to have your rally go on for more that half an hour or forty-five minutes; long enough for everyone to show up, hear a couple of good speeches, chant something, and leave. In other words, the real action is busting open a building and keeping it. Some groups put together or arrange for a free public street feed that runs concurrently with the rally, and should start a half hour or fifteen minutes earlier than the speakers. The local Food Not Bombs, or AIDS meal home delivery program, or a homeless street feeding organization can be asked to make and serve the food. It is important to have the rally end quickly, so as to not give the police any extra help, and so as to not lose the media before your 'main event' (be sure that the your press spokespeople give good quote, good press kits, and good instructions on the need to stick around). The two or three speakers selected should be (short winded) people chosen from key organizations who helped plan the event, and/or people who are directly effected by homelessness and AIDS. Don't feel too concerned about not inviting speakers from important supporting organizations, since there will be ample opportunity for those groups, like the Labor Council or Action AIDS or whoever to speak their pieces in the coming days of hectic activity for your group. Evicted or not, you will want to plan a press event of some sort for the day after the takeover. Be sure to provide supporting organizations a good platform to plug your effort (and themselves) later, though. If you expect to have significant numbers of non-english speakers at your rally, be sure to have a translator available. If there is a small enough group of people needing translation, then it is probably okay to have the translations occur simultaneously on the side. If your group has a large number of Spanish (or other) speakers, then you should plan to have a translator on stage, and at least one of the rally speakers should talk in the language of that part of your constituency. Some groups have drawn up a march route that passes several abandoned buildings, ideally owned by their target, and stopped at each building to tell the story of what happened to the building and the people who used to live in it (try talking to local tenant organizers, if they are not already involved in your planning group). Not only does this draw connections between your building and policy decisions that put property over people, but it also confuses the police who may be following ("escorting") your march, and gives you an idea of what they will do when you get to your actual site. Tricking the Cops & Figuring Out How to Get Inside Once you are inside, the police usually cannot evict without the permission of the owner, whoever that may be (although in a government owned building, they may already have standing or blanket permission). They can, and usually will (if there are enough of them and they are not taken by surprise), try to block entrance to the building. Your organizing group will need to come up with a strategy to get in, even if there are numerous police. It is very empowering for a group to outsmart the police, and gain entrance to a building that is surrounded. One group in Seattle has dealt with this several times. When Operation Homestead occupied the McKay Apartments, which were owned by the State Convention Center, word had somehow leaked out (as it often does) that they group was going to occupy a building, and the city (in a grotesquely cynical display of where the governments' sympathies are) advised owners of illegally abandoned buildings downtown to post security guards. The group planned a rally in the afternoon, and decided to sneak an advance team of homesteaders into the building in the very early hours of the morning with tools, blankets and food. This group entered the building with a ladder to a landing in the back of the building. The advance team was unfortunately discovered shortly after entering, and the fire departments' hydraulic battering rams made quick work of their best efforts to barricade themselves. The early morning group was arrested, but released in time for the rally. Later in the day, the large group attempted to enter the building by putting a ladder up to a window, but were turned away after a confrontation with the police. The group then moved to the convention center, conveniently located next door, for a mass sit in. Almost eight months later, the Homesteaders had not yet had success in reopening the building, and decided that there was no alternative but to try to take it again. This time, the group had both publicized another large rally, and slept out in front of the building for a week. After the last eight months of campaign work to open the building, everyone in the city knew exactly what the group was going to do and exactly where and when they were going to do it. The group determined not to be pushed back again, and decided on a multi-pronged strategy to enter the building. The rally had a few speakers, and then marched from several blocks away. Many people in the crowd in the crowd carried (brandished) crowbars, bolt cutters, and a prominently displayed ladder. When the march reached the building (unwillingly escorted by about 4 million cops) the main part of the crowd, led by the ladder, went around to the back of the building. The police remembered where the group had tried to enter the year before, and most of them followed the ladder too. Much display was made of pushing and shoving and trying to get the ladder placed against the back of the building. While this was happening, a group of ten or so lashed cables around the locks on the front door, and tried to yank the locks off. This group was immediately set upon and repelled by the dozen or so police who remained in the front of the building (although one person did manage to get through). At the same time as these two attacks on the building were being made, a third group casually opened another door they had surreptitiously changed the locks on during the sleepout the night before. All of the third group managed to enter before the police figured out what happened. Someone was posted to re-close the padlock as soon as the police came running. When the larger part of the crowd came back around the building and saw that a bunch of people had gotten past the police, people were so energized that they were able to pass a few people over the (numerous) police to a window above. In another building, the same group snipped and swapped the locks to the back door the night before, and an advance group entered it at the same time as the rally started a few blocks away. There purpose was to open windows for the large group, and to lay low in case the group could not get by the police. Had this been the case, then the group inside could let people in later, after the police were led to other abandoned buildings on the 'tour'. Other groups have tried using decoys to 'fake 'em out'. People (preferably on highly mobile bicycles) can call the police and report that they just witnessed a handful of people break in to an abandoned (decoy) building. These calls should come from pay phones near an abandoned building that is located within marching distance of your rally site, but in the opposite direction from your target building. This tactic presumably works best if tried both early in the morning, and right at the end of your rally, to tip off the police about which building you'd like them to go to.. This will often times draw off a lot of the 'heat'. P.S. This is a publicly distributed document. By the time you are ready to take over a building, every cop in the universe will probably have read it. The Big Day So, the big national action day rolls around, and your organization has met attendance goals, you have built a group of homeless and non-homeless leaders, called in hundreds of people from all sorts of organizations, talked to clients of every AIDS service agency in town, put up thousands of posters, found a couple of people to be press spokespeople, massaged local reporters for stories, yelled at the (as yet nearly nonexistent) national disorganization work group, mailed thousands of pieces, gotten a translator in case a lot of non-english speakers are present, found a building with hardly any code violations that still has all its wiring and plumbing that was in fact fully occupied two months ago and the doors and windows are all left open, finagled a land trust into saying (off the record, of course) that it will buy the building if the owner makes the right deal, done benefits and fund raisers, found through your investigation that your target regularly kills and eats public housing residents while diverting funds from new low-income housing developments to the marble and gold plate jacuzzi in his office, worked out self-management schemes, made press packets, gotten your event on every calendar, newsletter and church bulletin in town, arranged for food, blankets, and tools to be delivered to the site daily, planned a press event for each day you are going to be in the building, gotten lots of attorneys and legal observers, managed to get the utilities turned on (with a back up generator ready to go), shipped out dozens of press releases, planted callers on local talk shows, figured out a sneaky way to get in to the building even if there is a heavy police presence, held press conferences, organized a big rally with (hopefully very few) key speakers, borrowed a cellular phone or brought a lot of quarters, figured out a march route to the site, set up a very respectable negotiating group of community leaders to talk to your target at the same time you open up the building and coached a number of homeless leaders to take over the job later, secreted people inside of the building, changed the locks, set up decoys to distract the police from your actual building, made press calls that morning, crashed public hearings, and bought a big crowbar and a pair of bolt cutters. Time to takeover a building. Develop Leadership and Community Amongst the Homeless Occupiers The power of our groups to effect change in the world stems not only from what the world sees outside of an occupied building, but from how well your group runs itself inside the building. Once you are in a building, your group will invariably grow. The power of your group is sustained by its ability to develop leadership amongst disenfranchised participants by sharing skills and responsibilities. Victimization and powerlessness are defused when people gain a sense of their own power. People with a sense of their own rightness and power are no less intimidated by the policy setters who dictate that they are doomed to die on the streets from a disease everyone seems to have forgotten about. Organizations grow when people who are active in them are more enabled to take back control of their lives from the bureaucrats, landlords, researchers, politicians, and doctors who would wring them dry and then leave them dead. Inside the reclaimed building, there are hundreds of tasks that need someone to take responsibility for them, and there will be dozens of fundamentally disenfranchised people who want to 'do stuff'. A homeless person with AIDS participating in a building occupation wants the respect of his or her peers and the world, and they are angry at the people who have dictated their misery. They want to take action that improves their conditions, and it is wrong for anyone else, (especially some self-styled organizer who has a home) to deny them. Every opportunity to give or share a task with someone else is an opportunity to develop leaders. There is no reason for the organizing group to oversee every single element of material donations to the reclaimed building, or produce an entire meal each day. Or, for that matter, there is no reason that people with homes should be talking to the press all of the time, or be the only people negotiating with the owner or city officials. In fact, there are plenty of reasons not to. Your group should have homeless PWAs in spokesperson roles, as meeting facilitators, as translators, as cooks, as repair people, as security teams, negotiators, planners, sign makers, press release writers, photo copiers, phone bankers, etc. etc. Any task that requires specialized knowledge or skills, such as writing a press release, can be shared by more experienced people. Tasks should be carried out and led by homeless and/or HIV+ homeless people, with accountability measures built in to the task, such as a plumbing or press committee report at each meeting. It is a safe rule of thumb that homeless folks don't want or need to hear everything from the mouths of activist do-gooder types. Large Meetings If you have a very large group, it will be difficult to have daily building meetings that do not stretch on for thousands of hours and waste everyone's time. If there are, say, 75 or 100 people in a building (hopefully your building has a large enough lobby or enclosed courtyard to hold everyone), then you will want to break down in to smaller groups and/or task specific committees. The homeless leaders of the campaign will need to explain to the new people that the only way everyone can get to say their piece and be heard is during a smaller committee meeting. Be sure that there are translators willing to attend each committee and large group meeting, if it is necessary. Each committee should meet at different times, so that people can attend more than one if they desire. These committees can then report back to the large group. Major decisions can be hashed out in committees, but should probably be decided on by the large group. Decisions can be made by vote, or preferably by consensus, or some sort of informal consensus scheme that still allows for unwieldy groups of mostly strangers to quickly decide things. Control Your Turf Your group will probably decide on a few rules for homeless occupants of the building, such as "no weapons", or "no alcohol". Some organizers have struggled with the apparent hypocrisy of a "no alcohol or blatantly obvious inebriation" rule, when the organizers drink plenty in their own lives. This concern is (somewhat) resolved by acknowledging that the building needs to be a safe, sober space for homeless people, who often have alcohol problems. Considering that yours is a very public takeover, and an illegal action, the police can't really be called in to deal with a troublesome or abusive drunk. No matter what the rules are, it is important that they are decided on by the whole group that enters the building, not dictated from some invisible organizing committee. If your group and/or building is large, and problems develop, then your group may decide to have some sort of security committee/team to enforce the rules. One proposal is to have short rotating security shifts, with team members posted at entrances, and a person or two floating around the building. You need people representing all ethnicities who can be called on short notice, in case of trouble. The 'Conflict Resolution' committee requires extremely sensitive people. Since it is difficult at first for a group to know very much about the people who volunteer for the security committee, it is a really good idea to have short shifts, thereby limiting the amount of damage an authoritarian person could cause. Make sure that there is clear training for each person on the conflict resolution team, and that the committee is willing to 're-assign' inappropriate people. It makes sense for the group to have clearly posted policies regarding rules and enforcement, and how to confront a rule breaker. Say, for instance, that a few men from X ethnic group were having a loud drinking party in one of the apartments and have begun to harass the women who pass by their door. A security person would calmly ask the group to leave the building (or whatever your group decided). If they refused, then the security person would go get some of the other people on duty, and maybe some of the on-call people if necessary, being sure that the group that went to confront the rule breakers was made mostly of people from the same ethnic group, hopefully peers and/or community leaders. The group would then simply stand there and restate the necessity for the rule breakers to leave until they complied. While this sounds over-simple, this sort of intervention by groups of peers always works. Even though sometimes it takes a while. It is probably a bad idea to instigate all these security measures at the beginning of an action. If internal problems arise, the residents will want to deal with them. The solutions to problems should be proposed, argued over, and agreed upon together, by the whole group. ideas and modify yours. No one wants to hear about some strict security regimen before there has even been a problem, though. While your group has the building, you should treat it as yours. The initial occupation is the most exiting time, and the time when the power of your group is most obviously displayed. Fix it up, clean it up, invite people in for an open house, have a barbecue, throw signs out of the windows, and take every opportunity to tighten the group's control over the site. Do not meet with officials or bigwigs in some secret office somewhere if you can insist that they meet you in the building first. Fix up a model apartment to show if there is a spare, and an office and a community kitchen and a building material storage room with a tool check-in list. Keep lists of who is in what room and how can they be reached if the building is evicted (where do they hang out, what shelter do they go to, do they have an address they use?). Close off unnecessary entrances as long as you can meet fire safety standards. Let inspectors in if you know you can pass, or will be able to without too much work (they will always find something you missed, though). Shut down the street (if it won't anger the neighbors or set off the cops too much) and have a street fair. Get musicians. Spend every minute in the building talking to people about the goals of the action (yours and theirs) and soliciting ideas and learning names and thinking of the next thing to do with people you've never met before. Groove on the danger and excitement and righteousness of real people taking charge of their lives, in spite of the police outside. Don't sleep. Forget to eat. Be excited. The Eviction If the building gets evicted, the blow is every bit as miserable and devastating to the occupiers as the takeover was exhilarating. The now re-homelessed and their supporters often lash out at the police, as the closest targets of their anger and disappointment. If possible (it probably isn't), the group should always try to keep focused on the target who ordered the eviction of the building, and has the power to give it to your group. No matter what people decide to do, if an eviction appears eminent, then everyone should have a piece of paper that says where and when the next meeting and or action will be, with a contact number. Many of the occupiers will choose to get arrested in an effort to defend their new home. This sort of non-gratuitous civil disobedience can be extremely powerful, both in generating media, and in generating the sort of group cohesion that sustains a group after the exiting action. Some people, on the other hand, experience arrest as very disempowering, finding themselves punished for doing the right thing, and having a very fundamental level of personal control stripped from them by cops. It should be remembered that, while CD can be a useful tactic, it is just a tactic, not a goal, and that sometimes arrests are not the best option. For instance, if the building has only been held for an hour, and the only people willing to face the cops are people who have homes, or most of the people who want to be arrested will be deported or will suffer from the lack of medical "care" in jail, cit is probably not the best time to get arrested. You should not count on people having access to their meds while in jail, either, and any drugs bought through buying clubs or from other less than official sources could be confiscated. Many organizers feel that going to trial on trespass charges is a comparatively weak tactic because of the immense amount of preparation and work the trial will require. Additionally, the experience of homeless people under arrest is extremely different from that of, say, white peace demonstrators who have participated in large symbolic civil disobedience actions. A peace demonstrator may expect the worst case arrest scenario will be to get put in plastic handcuffs, transported away from the action, handed a citation, and be released (and the charges are usually dropped later). Many homeless people have been roughed up by police, taken away, and held for days, for little or no actual infraction. Most homeless people do not choose to get arrested for symbolic reasons, in the sort of "cross the line" sort of arrests typical of large demonstrations. The often repeated cliche about "putting our bodies on the line" can have a significantly literal meaning for homeless folks, especially homeless PWAs. However, when a building has been reclaimed and held for a while, by and for homeless people, the occupiers have such a sense of their own power and the power of collective direct action that many may be willing to get arrested in what has become a defense of their home. If the homeless occupiers clearly feel personally connected to the building and the organizing effort, and know that the organization as a whole will be there to support them, then many will be willing to risk arrest. It is very important that all participants in the takeover action, everyone who even enters the building, know that there is the possibility of being arrested. It should also be stated that, almost invariably, the police will ask everyone to leave the building before they start making arrests. No one should be allowed to get arrested alone. It is also worth noting that, if 50 or 100 people choose to get arrested, there is very little chance of going to jail at all, or even having to go to trial, since the city will likely drop the charges. Of course, if only four people get arrested, with no media, and few supporters, it is likely that they will be held in jail for many hours, overnight at least, and then have to go to trial. A quick bit on the legal support angle of your demo tactics. Get as many sympathetic attorneys for the action itself as possible. The group should plan for at least a couple of attorneys who can be around when the group enters the building, and thereafter be on call and able to be on the scene on short notice at funny hours. There also needs to be at least one attorney who will see people through the whole arrest process, if it comes to that. Ideally, your group will have prearranged for an attorney willing to go to trial with you, and have some trial strategy worked out before people enter the building. You will also need to try to have a few legal observers around during the occupation. They do not need to be attorneys, necessarily, but it helps to look like one. Legal observers should take down the names of anyone arrested, try to document any abuses of police power or brutality, copy down badge numbers, and find out where the police are taking people, and should try not to get arrested. The best three places to look for activist attorneys that are commonly found in most large cities are the local National Lawyers Guild chapter, the Public Defenders office or organization, and the local legal services group. The NLG is a national association of progressive attorneys, many of whom will have values very similar to your group. The public defenders office almost always has a number of excellent radical attorneys who have chosen to work in very difficult and exhausting circumstances on the front lines of the battle against the poor. If your group plans to work with attorneys who are public defenders, be sure to find a couple who can make enough time to adequately meet your groups needs. Finally, the local legal aid group is usually staffed by lots of dedicated, skilled lawyers with a real commitment to working with impoverished communities. However, some legal services attorneys will not have the necessary criminal law experience to support a direct action that includes possible civil disobedience. In any case, legal aid offices can be of great assistance to your group in researching local ordinances relating to properties, abandonment, evictions, and trespass. Get a lot of cameras. The more cameras there are, the better documentation your group will have, and the police will be less likely to seriously bash people. Also, lots of cameras make it less likely that the police will break or confiscate someone's camera or expose someone's' film. Even old super-eights with no film are worth bringing. Jail Strategy Your group may want to decide on a minimum safe threshold of participants (perhaps at least ten) willing to risk jail ahead of time. The more people who decide to risk arrest, the less likely anyone will be held for any length of time. Someone should have a list of these people ahead of time. People who are on probation, or who have outstanding warrants, or whose immigration status is uncertain, or do not have any ID should be advised of the significantly greater risk they are in of being held for more than a few hours, or worse. Hopefully, your group should be able to bail out anyone not released on their own personal recognizance, or after they see a judge. Every homeless person should have a legal contact number that they can call collect from jail, and a home address and number where they have lived for a long time and someone can vouch for them in the middle of the night if necessary. It can be helpful if homeless individuals also have a phone number where someone can attest to long-term gainful employment. If people are held for a long time, your post eviction press conference can be held at the jail, with clear connections being made between your imprisoned comrades and the actions of the owner of the building. After everyone is released from jail, be sure to quickly set up a legal strategy meeting with your attorneys and everyone who was arrested. Providing for Homeless Participants After an Eviction Several longer articles found in the next section go in to greater detail regarding ways to house homeless participants after the action (in case of eviction) so this will be the barest of outlines. It is extremely beneficial to your campaign, however, to have your strategy lined up before the takeover. A real organizational commitment needs to be made by local planning groups to provide for the needs of its homeless activists, instead of using them for "street cred". If a campaign ends after an eviction, with everyone back on the street, it is extremely exploitative to the homeless people who were involved. If the campaign soon finds a way to meet the immediate housing needs of homeless participants in case of an eviction after the takeover action, then the group has grown in power. It is not, however, within the scope of the local or national planning groups to become shelter or service providers, and much care must be taken to ensure that any arrangements set up are primarily organizing tools for action participants. In other words, people should have some place to go if the building gets evicted. But a post-eviction commitment to housing is a means to be real with your homeless participants, and to continue the campaign to win the building, not an end in itself. Q: Why not just house homeless people with small, private squats or donated buildings or whatever in the first place, before taking over a building? A: Because this is a direct action empowerment organizing campaign to make decision makers create more AIDS housing. The campaign aims to improve the lives of more than just the people who participate in it. We are going to win AIDS housing on as large of an scale as possible, and to raise the debate to a level much higher than before. Part of this goal is a commitment to taking action with homeless and/or HIV+ people that meets immediate needs, but this ain't about a social services effort. As previously stated, your group will have lost most of its power if it loses its homeless participants after an occupation. Your group needs to turn a lot of attention to holding on to people who were active and made some commitments to the effort. Meeting the immediate housing needs of your groups homeless members are temporarily the most important focus of your campaign. As always, the homeless people should be involved with finding the solution, as opposed to having some pre-arranged plan handed to (at) them. In Philadelphia, a group that works with homeless queers has been asked to identify a number of reasonably secure squatable houses in good condition. In other cities, groups have had much success in both obtaining the loan of houses from their owners, and in getting space donated for setting up self-managed shelters. In either of these situations, however, the spaces or houses or whatever should be in decent enough condition to meet the health needs of people living with HIV. Squats should be able to have the utilities turned on quickly and with minimal expense. Many squatters who open up new buildings will ask that another nearby house serve as a support house for them so that they can take hot showers and cook food and so on, until they finish repairs and can use their own. In the case of these houses opened up for HIV+ people from the large building occupation, the conditions will necessarily be better than the typical Philadelphia squat. The campaign as a whole should plan work days and some level of material support. Perhaps the least empowering option is for your group to arrange for preferred referrals to existing services. This tactic also does not necessarily build your campaign, since it cannot be as effective in maintaining contact with the formerly homeless people who took over the building. However, for some people in poor health, and in some cities that do not have a large supply of abandoned habitable buildings, this may be the best or only option for some or all of your group. If you are pursuing preferred referrals to services, then your group should try to establish contacts and commitments from sympathetic housing providers, and/or find a way to make housing vouchers or certificates a demand to the city that does not detract from your central demand of a building. Post Eviction Campaign Once your campaigns' homeless members have obtained reasonably secure housing, your group should turn its full energies back to obtaining the building. Presumably, you will have continued negotiations with the owner, or people who have power over them, and continued to make easy press hits. At this point, you should launch a full scale campaign of harassment, discrediting your target in public, endangering the reputation as an upstanding citizen they enjoy with their peers. You can leaflet your target's whole neighborhood and have a picket in front of his or her home. Your group can hand out your target's home and office phone number, picket his or her business or office, have sit ins, take over public hearings or city council sessions and throw bread crumbs and band-aids. You can show up unannounced and block off the door to her or his business or office until the police show up, go away, and come back in an hour to do the same. Step on their toe hard, and don't go away until they give you what you want. You should probably have a large public turnout event every so often, at least every two or three months, as long as your group can produce the numbers. Don't forget to do turn out plans. You can hold big pickets and rallies and short term (not indefinite*) sleepouts, AIDS vigils, and hold clean up days & block parties for the block around the building (be sure to invite the neighbors). Incorporating a street feed into your event is always a good way to ensure numbers, to some extent, and can both add to the sense of community shared by participants, make more room for the schedule of your homeless members (most folks would rather not miss a meal to go to a demonstration), and provide more worthwhile, tangible tasks for people to take on. (* Beware of indefinite actions. They are always recipes for burnout. They are a huge organizational drain, and will end up ultimately as a display of weakness when your sleepout or daily or weekly picket invariably dwindles. Since your target doesn't care about you or your needs on purpose, it makes sense to act as quickly and decisively as possible, all at once, instead of applying smaller pressure. It is better to tie your opponent's shoes together and make them fall down than it is to say, "your shoe's untied" over and over and hope they believe you.) After the occupation, there will be more opportunities to ask people and groups to support your cause in specific ways. You must continually build and nurture your group, and always be on the lookout for new sources of energy and bodies. It is inevitable, to some extent, that fewer people will come to meetings after a while, since the post eviction campaign just isn't usually as exiting as taking the thing over in the first place. Keep track of people who drop out; they may become interested again when the campaign heats up later. You must always be developing new leaders and finding new pools of people whose self interest is served by becoming involved in your effort. Don't forget the urgency and desperation. Spend times in meetings (and with yourself) just being angry. Nail your opponent at every opportunity. Remember that they made decisions that hurt you and your friends and comrades, and that they make them every day, and that they make them on purpose. Dying is not an abstraction, it is real and desperate, and people who have the power to do something about AIDS are choosing not to save people's lives. Your target is in some ways choosing to be responsible for all the friends who have died, and who may die in the future. Set up meetings with the peers of your target, even if they will not (publicly) agree with you. They will complain to your target, and the relationship that they enjoy with them will be damaged. If certain public officials or figures are particularly disgusting in the way they support the wrong side of the issue, then they are the friends of your opponent. As such, they have earned a public savaging also, if it makes strategic sense for your campaign to try to damage and discredit the whole pack of them. Try to develop or find connections that have some power over your target, such as board members, or major campaign donors, and hit them up to make demands on your target. Get a sympathetic legislator to connect the sale of the building or the necessary funds or whatever to a larger piece of legislation that your target supports, or to hold your opponents bill hostage in a committee until you have a building. If it is election season, hold your own candidates forums, or crash someone else's, and make the building an election issue. Some candidates for office are always looking for ways to set themselves apart from their (nearly identical) opponent. Try to get press for every action. Go to the target's house and office a lot. They really hate it. You won't get anything by being nice to them. It should never, ever be forgotten that your target has the power to house your group and extend people's lives, but instead deliberately decided to arrest and evict you. If you have repeatedly tried everything you can think of, exercised power in every way that you know how, and have not won the building yet, and, if your group is ready for another go at it (it can take time to recharge), then first be sure that it is not time to change or shift targets. If you are still convinced that you have the best target, and will ultimately win the building, then get out your old turnout plans and endorsers list and resources sheets and put together another takeover. Squat the damn thing again and again until they have to give it to you. ----------------------------------------------------------------- SECTION 3 Articles DIRECT ACTION SAVES AFFORDABLE HOUSING: Operation Homestead's Campaign To Save The Pacific Hotel By Jon Gould, Operation Homestead, Seattle, WA Operation Homestead (OH) is a group of Seattle residents dedicated to reopening abandoned housing. I am a member of OH. Since the group's inception in 1987, we've occupied 4 abandoned apartment buildings and 3 houses and reclaimed over 300 units of affordable housing. Our activities include organizing homeless people, negotiations with property owners, coalition building, publicity and direct action takeovers of buildings. We are motivated by the tragedy of homelessness and one bitterly ironic fact: Seattle has between 3,000 and 5,000 homeless people, yet the city that prides itself on recycling harbors over 3,000 abandoned apartment units. Part One: The Occupation Of The Building Planning the Takeover In early August 1992, OH began to research sites for the next takeover. A takeover uses direct action to reopen an abandoned building for immediate use by people who do not have homes. We wanted a highly visible, large apartment building in sound condition. After obtaining a list of abandoned buildings from the Seattle Department of Construction and Land Use, we made several site visits to check the condition of selected buildings. Most visits occurred at night, with flashlight inspections of the major systems. We looked up ownership information, tax records, sales histories and all other public information found at the county tax assessor's office. After a month, we chose the Pacific Hotel, a 106-unit residential apartment building in the heart of downtown Seattle's business district. It's owner at the time, Martin Selig, has been called the "Donald Trump of Seattle." Where others saw housing, Selig saw opportunity. Housing activists in Seattle had known that it would only be a matter of time before the hotel closed and was marketed for redevelopment. Due to the City of Seattle's poor record on housing preservation, we knew that our city government would do little to prevent the loss of affordable housing at the Pacific. The Pacific had closed in December 1991. Soon after, a "For Sale" sign appeared on building. The Pacific Hotel was built in two phases, 1906 and 1943, and provided affordable housing to Seattle's low-income people. Residents paid rent by the day, week or month. Rent receipts revealed many long term residents had lived in the building. We never found out exactly how Selig closed the building, but he certainly violated the Seattle Housing Code. In Seattle, it is illegal to evict tenants without good cause. It is also illegal to abandon good quality, affordable housing in downtown. Selig broke both those laws and there is no record of intervention by city code enforcement officials. The Housing Code file we obtained from the Seattle Department of Construction and Land Use was unusually thin and contained no information about the evictions. The file showed that the building was in excellent condition, with functional plumbing, electricity and heat. Tax records showed that Selig owed over $100,000 in property taxes on the Pacific. Our goals for the occupation were 1) to provide the opportunity for immediate shelter for homeless people and 2) to draw public attention to show that a perfectly functional building is being wasted due to a wealthy developer's greed. We wanted to embarrass Selig and pressure him to sell to a non-profit housing developer. The marketing portfolio we obtained for the Pacific Hotel listed a sale price that would make purchase by a non- profit impossible. The portfolio suggested converting the Pacific to a luxury hotel, serving the clientele of Seattle's financial district. By making the Pacific a local cause celebre, we felt we could save the building as housing. We chose September 22, 1992 as the date to occupy the building and began weekly planning meetings. We planned a pre-takeover rally at Occidental Park, a gathering spot for Seattle's homeless. We organized a free breakfast to begin at 7:30am, to be followed by a march to the building. Our poster advertised the event as a "Non-Violent Direct Action," but did not reveal the site. We mailed announcements of the action to over 1,500 people and posted notices all over town, in community newspapers and at homeless shelters. A few days before the action, we sent out press releases. Three days before the takeover date, we hit our first snag: Martin Selig deeded the Pacific Hotel to his mortgager, Seafirst Bank. Apparently, Selig was deeply in debt to Seafirst. To prevent foreclosure, Selig gave Seafirst the building. With our flyer already mailed and dozens of planning meetings under our belt, we were stunned by the news. We held an emergency meeting to decide if we should change our strategy. Two viewpoints emerged. Some people favored giving Seafirst a chance to sell before proceeding with the takeover. Others thought that we should go ahead as planned because Seafirst had already been driving up the sale price on the building and was no more likely to negotiate in good faith than Selig. After much discussion, we decided to go forward with the takeover as planned. We spent the next few days scrambling to research Seafirst Bank. We learned that Seafirst is a subsidiary of BankAmerica Corp., the United States's sixth largest multinational corporation. In early 1992, Seafirst had completed a merger with another local bank, making Seafirst Washington State's largest bank. In response to pressure from Community Reinvestment advocates, Seafirst had committed a percentage of their loans to benefit low income persons. The bank's commitments to affordable housing, however, were minimal. We obtained a management flow chart identifying CEO Luke Helms and the decision makers in the bank's real estate holdings. The entry and first moments of a building occupation are critical to its success. We spent hours planning the entry into the Pacific. We did everything short of a dress rehearsal. Given our goals for the takeover, we needed our entry to be sudden, dramatic, non-violent and involving as many people as possible. If at least 50 people entered the building, and at least 25 refused to leave, the police would have difficulty evicting us. After scouting the building and studying floor plans, we created an early entry team. An early entry team avoids people cutting locks or breaking windows in public view. Three people, equipped with walkie-talkies, crowbars and flyers, would enter the building before dawn on the morning of the takeover. This group would prepare the building by unlocking windows and doors so that when the march arrived at the building, people would have many easy entry points. Day One: Tuesday September 22, 1992 Early Entry Fails The early entry team spent the night before the takeover spying on the building and waiting for a (recently installed) security guard to leave. When the guard finally left, they found that their preferred entrance, the door in a chain link fence in the alley, was blocked by a bolted 2 X 4. The windows in the courtyard, the second option, were unexpectedly covered by metal grates. Shortly before dawn, they gave up. On their way back downtown before the rally, the early entry team drove by the Pacific and noticed a hole in the upper pane of a second floor window. The hole was the size of a fist and three inches away from the sash lock. Rally and Breakfast Meanwhile, over 100 people and several media reporters attended the breakfast and pre-takeover rally. During the breakfast, the early entry crew and other OHers gathered to share information and talk strategy. We discussed the hole in the second floor window. In order to reach it, we needed a ladder. Another option was hack sawing the chain wrapped around the inside of the front door. By now it was light outside, so we no longer had the opportunity for a clandestine entry. We would have to try to enter the building when the march arrived at the site. After someone volunteered me to climb up the ladder, two OHers went to get a ladder and a hacksaw. March and Entry Sporting a suit and tie and shaking a crowbar recklessly above his head, Jim, an OHer since the May 1991 occupation of the Arion Court Apartments, started the march to the Pacific with a stirring speech about reclaiming property for community benefit. Before long, we were marching in the street, blocking traffic and chanting, "Housing Now" and "Tear Down The Boards." Several people carried the "It's Alive" banner from the Arion Court occupation as well as the black "Operation Homestead" banner. A few bicycle cops followed the march but did not interfere. When the march reached the Pacific, a group of people formed a human wall around the front doors while others went to work with the hacksaw. Because the chain was on the inside of the double doors, they had to pry the doors open enough to slip the saw inside. Another group followed the ladder to the highest corner of the building, near Fourth Ave. Two people set up the ladder beneath the second story window with the hole. I arrived there just as they put the ladder in position and went up. At the top of the ladder, I grabbed the metal grate around the window and pulled myself up and sat on a horizontal metal bar. I reached through the hole and unlocked the sash lock. I expected a cop to yank me down at any minute and I feared being the only person arrested. I pried open the bottom sash, and, with both palms on the lower glass pane, I pushed upward and the window flew open. I hopped in and looked down to encourage someone to join me. Harold, already on the top rung of the ladder, jumped in. Then came a man named Chris, whom I had never seen before. As more and more people came in through the window, Harold and I scrambled around the building armed with bolt cutters and searching for the front door. We were so excited about getting in the building, neither of us could remember the layout well enough to go directly to the front lobby. At one point, we separated, only to run into each other at the end of a dark hallway. We laughed at ourselves. Eventually Harold found the doors and cut the chain to the sound of cheers from the people outside. With the double doors open and the fire alarm screaming, the march entered the Pacific. At first, people entered cautiously. As time passed, however, curiosity prevailed and more and more people crossed the threshold. Explorers opened doors, windows and brought light, air and life into the Pacific. Chris and I tied a banner to a second floor window grate. Many people leaned out of windows and looked at the crowd below as if to say, "Hey, look I'm on private property!" The more adventurous media entered the building. The cautious stayed on Marion St., which the police closed to traffic due to the crowd in the street. Almost everybody raved about the building's nearly perfect condition, as if the walls had ears and the more we praised the building the closer we would come to saving it. Within 10 minutes, we had accomplished our first goal: there were enough people in the building to give us power to prevent an immediate eviction. First Meeting Thirty minutes into the occupation, we held a general meeting in the front lobby. Sixty people attended. Seafirst sent security guards to wander in and out and when we asked them to leave for the meeting, they complied. We formed an agenda by suggestions from the group. Someone gave background information on OH and explained why we targeted the Pacific. The group established a set of demands to Seafirst concerning selling the building to a non-profit who would provide housing for the homeless. We decided to create a committee structure and established committees to work on Media, Negotiations, Clean-up, and Food. The group adopted a set of basic house rules, borrowed from the occupation of the Arion Court Apartments: No Alcohol, No Drugs, No Violence, No Weapons, No Harassment and No Rent. A lawyer gave a summary of the laws we were breaking and the consequences. A non-violence training was set for 6pm that night and another general meeting for 8pm. Negotiations Begin Prior to the takeover, we had organized a group of community representatives to support the occupation. The purpose of this group was to give the occupation legitimacy. While we entered the Pacific, this group delivered a letter to Seafirst CEO Luke Helms demanding that the Pacific be reopened or sold to an affordable housing provider. They also delivered a formal complaint to the Seattle Department of Construction and Land Use and Mayor's Office demanding that Seafirst be cited for a violation of the Downtown Housing Maintenance Ordinance (DHMO). The DHMO is the Seattle law that requires owners of affordable housing downtown to keep the units open. After the first meeting, the community representatives suggested that the new Negotiating Committee, composed of six occupants, assume responsibility for the inevitable talks with Seafirst officials. We agreed and set a 2pm meeting with Seafirst executives. On the sixteenth floor of the Columbia Tower, owned by Seafirst Bank and Seattle's biggest skyscraper, the Negotiating Committee presented the group's demands to Seafirst representatives Hal Greene and Brian Friend. Before the conversation focused on our demands, we listened to the Seafirst representatives trumpet their commitment to affordable housing. It was as if they were saying, "Why are you picking on us?" As for the issue we cared about, the bank agreed to bring us a written response the next day at 11am regarding our demand of a sale to a non-profit housing provider. Room to Breath Knowing that eviction was at least a day away, the residents of the building began working in committees to manage the day to day operations in Seattle's newest self-managed homeless shelter. One group planned a meal and served it in the lobby at 6pm. Another group made flyers: some listed rules for within the building and others targeted the public, asking for telephone calls to Seafirst CEO Luke Helms and Mayor Rice. An architect inspected the building and certified that it was safe and sanitary. That afternoon, we passed a Fire Code inspection by fire marshals. A group of residents compiled a list of who was in what room and distributed keys. Chris, wearing a blue "Pacific Hotel" apron, became the keeper of the unclaimed and duplicate keys. Self management was underway. Big, Bilingual Meeting By 8pm, there were over 200 people in the Pacific Hotel. About 90% of the occupants were homeless and 50% were Latino. We held the first night's general meeting in the courtyard. With Tico, a bilingual man from Argentina, translating, residents reported on negotiations, food, flyers, media and legal information. We announced that Seafirst's Hal Greene would come to the building at 11am the next day to respond to our demands. Department of Construction and Land Use Director Rick Krochalis agreed to come to the building at 1:30pm to respond to our complaint that the building was in violation of the DHMO. Before the meeting ended, we formed a Security Committee. That night 10 residents worked on a press release and made telephone calls to our supporters asking for donations and calls to Luke Helms. Leaders Tico and Chris were the first leaders from the homeless community in the Pacific Hotel. They both joined the Negotiating Committee on the occupation's first day. I became acquainted with Tico when we worked on a press release the first night. He had been homeless in Seattle for about two months. Chris, the key keeper, had entered the Pacific through the second floor window in the first few minutes of the occupation. When I learned that Chris and his wife Elissa had been recently barred (for "fooling around" in a storage room) from the Downtown Emergency Service Center, Seattle's largest shelter, I understood Chris's enthusiasm. He and Elissa had nowhere else to go. Day Two: Wednesday September 23, 1992 Seafirst Responds In the morning, many residents went to jobs, other activities or in search of a hot shower. The building's daytime population was usually about a third of the night crowd. Attendance at the 11am meeting with Seafirst, however, was fabulous. At least 150 people crowded into a freshly cleaned lobby to hear Hal Greene and Brian Friend respond to our demands. Hal Greene read the bank's response from a one page letter. The bank gave us no concrete commitments, only a promise to "negotiate in good faith with a non profit" who is interested in buying the Pacific. Although Greene wanted us to agree to leave the building, we told him that we needed to discuss his letter with all of the residents and we could not do that until evening. With some reluctance, but easily outnumbered if the question were put to a vote, he agreed to wait until the next morning at 9am for our response. Counter Offer All the occupants met at 8pm to discuss the bank's offer. The Negotiating Committee prepared for the meeting by making bilingual posters listing our demands on one side and the bank's responses on the other. At the meeting, the residents decided to make a counter offer to Seafirst: We would peacefully vacate if Seafirst agreed to reopen the Pacific in two weeks and allowed OH to enter into a partnership with a non-profit to co-manage the building as a shelter. We felt reasonably secure that we could convince a local non-profit to join us. After the meeting, residents telephoned OH supporters and asked them to come to the building in the morning to defend the occupation. Another group made flyers announcing the impending eviction and spent the night and early morning distributing them at homeless shelters and regular hangouts for street people. We also sent out a press release announcing our offer to Seafirst. In case of eviction, we made flyers in English and Spanish announcing the time and location of the next OH meeting. We circulated around the Pacific a hand written version of our offer to Seafirst and it received 200 signatures. Although Seafirst was not offering much as far as our demands, we had exploited the negotiations enough to win another day. That security was a victory in itself. Day Three: Thursday September 24, 1992 "It's Past 9am" At 8am Thursday the Negotiating Committee met in the Columbia Tower lobby. Brian Friend of Seafirst met us at 9am. We presented our offer with two spaces for signatures, one for Seafirst and one for OH. It was apparent that Friend had been instructed to refuse any offer we presented. He squirmed uncomfortably in his seat as he claimed the bank had already given us commitments. Seafirst needed the building vacant, he argued. Refusing to explain why, he then looked at his watch and said, "It's past 9am." We left the meeting and went back to the Pacific to report the unfortunate news to the larger group. "Stay, Stay, Stay!" As we rushed through the rain to the Pacific, I thought that the police might already be there in light of Friend's closing words. At the building there were no police, but lots of people and lots of media. The outreach of the night before and early morning brought large numbers of people to help defend the occupation. The news of Seafirst's refusal to negotiate prompted anger among the residents. Since Seafirst had only offered us a promise, chants of "Stay, Stay, Stay!" rose from the crowd when asked how they wanted to respond to Seafirst's demand that we vacate. In front of the biggest media turnout of the occupation thus far, we denounced Seafirst for refusing an offer that would have sheltered hundreds of homeless people in a safe, functional building. In just two days, a sense of pride had formed among the participants in the action. We had given life, value and spirit to a building that others had neglected. Pride, combined with the desperation of many of the homeless in the building, made the group unwilling to settle for anything short of their demands. Targeting the City Government For the next few hours, our eviction seemed imminent. A sign posted above the front door that said, "Stick around, we're about to be evicted" captured the feelings of many residents. Later that morning, the Negotiating Committee met and decided to focus more of our pressure on the Mayor's Office. If we could not persuade Seafirst to negotiate, maybe we could convince the Mayor that a negotiated solution was better than police dragging scores of people from an abandoned building. Furthermore, the Mayor could hold back the police which would give us more time to organize greater support. A delegation of residents went to see Bob Watt, the Deputy Mayor, and asked him to delay eviction while we looked for shelter space. They asked Watt to use the city's power to help us locate such a space. General Meeting Thursday evening, Andy Lofton from the Mayor's Office came to the Pacific to talk to the residents. Appearing uncomfortable, Lofton reported that the Mayor's Office's had no real options for immediate shelter space. He gave no concrete commitments and his politician's double speak earned him a barrage of questions (many of which he could not answer) from an increasingly angry group of nearly 200. We eventually asked him to leave so we could discuss our next steps. He was booed and hissed as he left the room. It was clear that neither Seafirst nor the Mayor had met our demands. We took a break and then got back together to decide what to do. After much debate, the group decided that we had nothing to lose by remaining in the building. If the police came (many wondered why they had not come already), some people would get arrested and the rest of the group would sleep in front of City Hall. Day Four: Friday September 25, 1992 Demands Change On Friday morning, Chris told me that some homeless people felt as though they were being used to lower the sale price of the building. They feared that when the occupation ended they would see no real improvement in their situation. Chris said that most people in the building cared more about immediate shelter space than about the long term future of the Pacific. Thus, our demands shifted to reflect the immediate concerns of the homeless in the building. This change was the result of more and more homeless people asserting themselves and their opinions in the different aspects of the occupation. Tico and Chris now facilitated general meetings, replacing myself and other OHers who had planned the occupation. In order for the Negotiating Committee to have the confidence of the growing group of residents, the committee needed to contain more leaders who represented the different ethnic communities of homeless people in the building. As our demands changed, the Negotiating Committee grew, as new members were appointed and approved at general meetings. With growth came change. The Negotiating Committee began to consider our responsibility for providing shelter for the many occupants who would be out in the cold as soon as we were evicted. As we brainstormed about sources of shelter space, we came up with the city, shelter providers and churches. To test the new proposition that we would vacate if another building or site were given to us, members of the Negotiating Committee spent the day talking to residents of the building. Most people agreed with the idea. Later in the day, the Negotiating Committee went to the Mayor's office with a letter saying that we would promise to vacate the Pacific if the Mayor found another location to house us. Andy Lofton met us in the conference room and said the city was not willing to use any of its vacant property to shelter the occupants of the Pacific. As we walked out, Lofton threw us our bone: He had asked shelters to lift the bans on former shelter users who were now at the Pacific. Internal Problems By Friday, at least 300 people were sleeping in the Pacific. During the week of the takeover, the covered entrances to the Public Library and municipal buildings, usually crowded with sleeping bodies at night, were empty. Self management was at once beautiful and trying. People of different races, languages, abilities and backgrounds worked together to manage their own shelter under the constant threat of eviction. By cooperating with one another, the homeless in the building were proving that homeless people are not helpless. They were running the city's largest and most economical (i.e. no public funding) shelter. However, nights at the Pacific tested the ability of self management to maintain order. While the excitement and challenge of political action may have empowered many desperate and oppressed people, it did not cure the many problems of life on the streets. Alcoholism, violence, prejudice and mental health needs existed in the Pacific just as these problems exist nightly in the shelters, alleys, doorways (not to mention office buildings) of Seattle. Despite rules posted everywhere, a certain number of the residents did not respect the guidelines. The constant growth of the group meant that newcomers were not always involved in the process of making rules, a vital element of successful self management. The challenge of keeping order was so great that at times it seemed as if we might break down internally before the police evicted us. Many of the OHers who planned the occupation were exhausted. Some of us suspected that the Seafirst security guards, who maintained an office in the basement of the Pacific, were communicating our internal problems to their superiors. We imagined Hal Greene waiting for a disaster that would justify evicting us. Despite our internal problems, our public image did not suffer. The longer we held the building the more positive press, donations and public support we received. Committees Find Solutions Various committees of residents rose to the many challenges of the occupation and made changes to rectify the problems at the Pacific. The front desk was moved to the main lobby and was staffed around the clock by residents on the Security Committee. The original entrance, east of the lobby, was sealed. Everyone who entered or exited was required to sign in and out. One centrally located entrance enabled us to have more control over who came in the hotel. An important reason for this change was that by Friday several people had been permanently barred from the Pacific for rule violations. The Security Committee needed some way of ensuring that these people would not find their way back into the building. Someone made a large poster board for the lobby showing the names of the occupants of each of the 106 rooms. Many rooms had three to five names. To address the issue of whose space the office was (a silly, but taxing debate), the Office Committee changed the office into a storage room and made a schedule for residents to staff the room on four hour shifts. To eliminate arguments over food, Scott, the food server, posted notices announcing two meals a day: 6am and 6pm. The Renovation Committee gathered enough tools to tackle the building's plumbing problems. The Latino residents began to hold meetings to discuss issues important to them. They formed their own Security Team to evict other Latinos who were not following the rules. Enforcement If there is any consistent measure of the effectiveness of self management, it might be the ability of a group to enforce the rules the members of the group create. Most of the rules in the Pacific were created by a group of people that did not even know each other before the occupation. Agreement in words is easier than agreement in action. At the Pacific, enforcement alone did not mean that self management was effective, but enforcement initiated and led by homeless residents themselves was a step in the right direction. It signified that the homeless were taking responsibility for and ownership of the occupation. One sign of progress in this direction occurred on Friday night when Tico and a group of Latinos asked a group of 15 Latinos who were drinking to leave the building. The rule breakers left peacefully. At this time, the security committee implemented new guidelines to more effectively deal with problems in the building. The residents both increased the number of people "on duty" and scheduled regular, round-the-clock three hour shifts to avoid burn out. The occupiers successfully recruited others to fill out the schedule and have an "on-call" team. The schedule also limited the potential of a few of the more domineering individuals on the committee for overzealous rule enforcement. The security group also decided that, if some one would not stop breaking one of the rules after being asked by someone on their shift, the security team would then confront the rule breaker as a group. The group that approached the 'offender' would be made up of his or her peers. This new procedure significantly reduced problems faced by the security committee. Day Five: Saturday September 26, 1992 Advocates Perhaps sensing an opportunity, several local non-profit developers began to actively support the occupation. On Saturday morning, a group of advocates/developers met with leaders of the occupation and proposed offering Seafirst a lease agreement that would keep us in the building under the sponsorship of a non- profit agency. Under the plan, OH would co-manage the building and we would have to decrease our size to 100 occupants. Meanwhile, a message from the Mayor's Office said that the Mayor wanted us to make a public statement by Sunday at 3pm promising to vacate on Monday. From the message, we figured that we were safe until Monday. We set a meeting for Sunday night to discuss the proposal. Public Involvement and Reaction to the Takeover The general public participated in the occupation by making phone calls, writing letters and providing food and material donations. The Flyer Committee made flyers asking Seafirst customers to tell the bank executives to keep the Pacific open for the homeless. "Write a note on your deposit slip, keep the Pacific open!" read the posters. Groups of residents went to Seafirst branches and leafleted customers. Whether it was food, clothing, or other goods, donations were a constant source of material and emotional sustenance for the occupation. A woman from distant West Seattle who arrived in a taxi and unloaded bag after bag of groceries provided a boost to our morale after a tough night of internal problems. The television crew loved her, too. One day, a woman with two kids holding lunch bags walked unto the building. She asked me if she could donate some food. I said yes and directed her to the storage room. She said the kids wanted to give the bags personally to the homeless people. With a nod of approval from their mother, the kids, looking at once frightened and excited, entered the lobby and disappeared from view as they looked for someone to give the bags to. One afternoon, a church group served a hot meal in the lobby and sang hymns. As donations of food and clothing increased, managing the goods we received became a challenge in itself. Arguments broke out over who controlled the distribution of these goods and, at times, the goods were more of a burden than an asset. Someone suggested we put up a sign on the building saying, "No more food or clothes, thanks. Got any abandoned buildings?" Day Six: Sunday September 27, 1992 Football and Haircuts Knowing that we were not going to be evicted on Sunday, people relaxed. Rather than bounce from crisis to crisis, we experienced leisure, as every community should. A few people tossing a football in the courtyard turned into a full blown football game, with men and women and boys and girls. A Latina woman set up two chairs in the courtyard and gave haircuts while a radio perched in a windowsill above provided music. My fondest memories of the occupation come from Sunday, for on this day I got to know many of the people whose work made the action possible. Jimmy became more than just the man who always made press calls. I got to know Jack of "Jack in the Box," the man who stood for hours in front of the Pacific wearing a box with four sides of our propaganda for passerby to see. Tico told me stories from his life in Argentina. I talked about music with Dante, who became homeless during the occupation because he got evicted from his apartment. I spoke Spanish with Sixto and Eulogio, and talked with Steve and Dee Dee while they staffed the front desk. Last Offer to Seafirst At our Sunday evening meeting, the advocates/developers proposed to us that they meet with Seafirst and City officials on our behalf on Monday morning. Their written proposal stated what they had proposed to us previously: they would ask Seafirst to keep the building open and ask the City to cooperate with funds. The residents approved the proposal and the meeting ended, giving way to a quiet night. That night, the floor of the lobby was covered with sleeping people. Only a handful of homeless people slept in the alleys, doorways, and sidewalks of downtown Seattle that night. Day Seven: Monday September 28, 1992 Power Everything was riding on Monday morning. We had exercised almost all of the power that we had over Seafirst and the Mayor. Without more time to research, plan and implement a strategy, we were running out of ways to influence those who controlled our fate. We had the support of some of the most respected and capable people in Seattle's non-profit housing sector. Community support was still with us and seemed to be growing, as we targeted Seafirst through the bank's customers. Internally, we were only getting stronger after resolution of previous difficulties. On Monday morning, the best thing we had going for us was our control over the Pacific. We decided who came in and who went out. We decided our rules. We decided times and agendas of meetings. We controlled the Pacific Hotel and only the police could take that away from us. Negotiations When the advocates/developers met with Seafirst on Monday morning, Seafirst refused to discuss the issue of interim occupancy until the building was vacant. We learned later that Mayor Rice made a telephone call to Luke Helms. Apparently Rice and Helms closed ranks and decided to reject our offer. At 1pm, rumors that the police were coming started to spread. Although Seafirst had lost credibility with false eviction threats, this time the likelihood of eviction was greater. At 3pm, the Negotiating Committee (now composed of about 14 residents) met with the advocates/developers in room #39. While we were discussing our next step, John, a longtime member of OH, entered the room to urge us to hurry up because he had heard that the police were on their way to the Pacific. We talked for about three more minutes before John again came upstairs and said that the police had surrounded the building. With that, the meeting ended. The Pacific occupation was coming to a close. Eviction Just as in the eviction of occupants of the Arion Court Apartments, the police arrived in force, sealed the building, allowing people to exit, but not to enter. There were about 50 officers, shoulder to shoulder in riot gear. Most of the residents of the Pacific vacated the building within 15 minutes of the police's arrival. The presence of Immigration and Naturalization Services agents wearing bright yellow jackets marked INS created a panic among many of the Latinos. Cops in the building stationed themselves at doorways and shuffled people outside. We, too, stationed people at the exits in order to observe the police. We told the Police Captain we wanted until 6pm to get belongings out of the building. He agreed to this demand. The people remaining in the building spent the next two hours collecting belongings and passing them out the front door. As we leaned out of windows, people on the street called out their room numbers and tossed us their keys. One of the rooms I went into contained a neatly made bed, family pictures on the walls, clothes hanging in the closet and curtains in the window. Final Meeting By 5pm, only thirty people remained in the building. We gathered in the courtyard. Fourteen refused to leave the Pacific and prepared for the inevitable arrest by writing down our names for our lawyer, Scott. We did not know that Scott had just been arrested on Fourth Ave. in front of the Pacific for blocking the police van that was to take us to jail. What a lawyer! The police took their time arresting us. They had more trouble than they could handle on the outside, where a confrontation was taking place. The crowd had swelled to several hundred, with a comparable increase in the numbers of riot police. Hidden from the view of the street, we had no idea of the violence outside until several cops brought a bloody-faced man upstairs. They placed him next to us in the third floor hallway. He had resisted arrest and was beaten by the police. We remained in the hallway for a few hours and when the cops were ready, they sneaked us out the alley to the West of the building. Outside the Building On the street, the end of the occupation brought the cruel injustice and wastefulness of homelessness into sharp focus. A long line of persons sat on the sidewalk (now an illegal act in present day Seattle). Exhausted from working around the clock to demonstrate that they could manage themselves, many people slumped against their sleeping rolls. Soon after dark, the group marched to City Hall with the OH banner. Once there, the police dispersed the crowd and threatened to arrest the leaders. Twenty-six people were arrested that night: thirteen in the building and thirteen outside. By late the next day, all were out of jail. The eviction was portrayed in the media as a riot, a "clash" between homeless and police. Such descriptions distracted attention from the fact that 300 people were unnecessarily out in the cold. The confrontation with police that took place on the street was a natural outcome of the anger and frustration of the former occupants. The police were the most visible, immediate target for people's anger. At the time of eviction, however, our most important need was to remain a group and channel our energy to the appropriate target to fulfill the group's goals. We would have served ourselves and our cause better by making the Mayor or Luke Helms the target of our rage. They were the real offenders and, for their callousness, deserved all of our wrath. A Beginning, Not an Ending Although the eviction from the Pacific was a bitter reminder of the power we were up against, it was by no means the end of our campaign to save the Pacific Hotel. In fact, the eviction birthed another campaign: Finding a self-managed shelter space, the desire of the residents of the Pacific. Thus, while the eviction may have been an end in the minds of Seafirst executives, the Mayor and the Seattle Police, for us it was a beginning. Even though we no longer controlled the Pacific, seven days of common struggle had left a deep imprint on those who participated. We had unity, identity and sense of direction. The next eight months would prove that people can be handcuffed, but a cause cannot. End of Part One Part Two (which does not exist yet) discusses the establishment of a self managed nightly shelter at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Worker Local 46 auditorium. This is believed to be the first homeless shelter in the U.S. provided by a labor union. Part Two also discusses the campaign to pressure Seafirst Bank to sell the Pacific, which concluded in May 1993 when the bank sold the building to a non profit affordable housing provider. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The IBEW Local 46 Self-Managed Homeless Shelter By Jon Gould, Operation Homestead, Seattle, WA The homeless shelter in the IBEW Local 46 auditorium is one of several self-managed shelters in Seattle. Every aspect of this 50 person shelter, from ticket distribution to blanket washing, is run by the homeless people who stay here. The history of the IBEW Local 46 shelter goes back to the occupation of the Pacific Hotel, a 106-unit abandoned building, in September 1992. During the last week of that month, over 300 homeless men and women took part in Operation Homestead's occupation of the Pacific. During the occupation, the homeless at the Pacific managed the building themselves, forming committees for security, cleaning, negotiations and room assignments. After a week, the police evicted the homeless from the building and arrested those who refused to leave. The eviction, however, could not erase the positive example set by the homeless at the Pacific nor could it destroy the sense of community that had formed among participants in the occupation. Many of the men and women who participated in the occupation stayed together and, with the support of Operation Homestead, started a campaign to locate a secure location for a self-managed shelter. Operation Homestead and SHARE, an organization that assists other self-managed shelters in Seattle, formed a partnership to look for a shelter space. The campaign for shelter reached a breakthrough with a phone call to the IBEW Local 46. In November of 1992, members of Operation Homestead and SHARE presented to union's membership a proposal to use the auditorium as a nightly shelter space. The homeless, many of whom were workers, explained that a shelter space would enable the group to remain together and continue the campaign to get the Pacific Hotel open as affordable housing. Following the presentation, the union membership voted unanimously to approve the shelter proposal. The shelter opened on Thanksgiving eve, November 25, 1992. At first, the shelter was temporary and served only homeless men and women who participated in the occupation of the Pacific. After several months, the shelter opened to the public. In March of 1993, the IBEW membership again showed support for the shelter by voting to keep the shelter open until the Pacific Hotel is reopen. With participation from the homeless at the shelter, Operation Homestead waged a campaign to pressure the Pacific Hotel owner, Seafirst Bank, to sell the Pacific for housing. Rallies, pickets, coalition building, petitioning, leafleting and hours of activism were applied to save the Pacific from abandonment or a future as a health club. The hard work paid off on May 19, 1993 when Seafirst announced that the Pacific would be sold and reopened as low cost housing. Early estimates say the Pacific will reopen in 1995, under the ownership of Plymouth Housing Group. Until then, and perhaps beyond, the IBEW Local 46 shelter is a shining example of a community organization providing the opportunity for homeless people to help themselves. The members of Local 46 have given invaluable support to the shelter and scores of shelter residents have used the shelter, and the experience in self management and democratic decision making, as a stepping stone to jobs and more stable housing. Jon Gould 162 22nd Ave. Seattle, WA 98122 (206) 328-8326 (night), (206) 722-6848 (day) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Self-Managed Short-Term Shelters and Housing. By Ginger Segel, Operation Homestead, Seattle, WA In 1988, housing activists in Seattle had exhausted all legal or 'proper' channels for change and turned to building takeovers. Anti-abandonment, replacement housing, anti-displacement legislation had all failed to stop the loss of low-income housing and the corresponding rise of homelessness. The first takeovers lasted only hours. The more recent takeovers have lasted days. In all cases activists have won the housing targeted or replacement housing. However, the takeovers have never fulfilled the immediate needs of the homeless people involved. The two main homeless empowerment groups in Seattle, Seattle Homeless Resources Effort (SHARE) and Operation Homestead have increasingly shifted their efforts to self-managed shelters and housing. SHARE opened its first self-managed shelter in 1990, after they agreed to disband their tent city in exchange for permanent space indoors. The space, however, could never accommodate the 200 people that lived in the tent city. A church came forward with a hall and SHARE and the church negotiated an agreement to use the space for shelter. A few months later in early 1991, Operation Homestead was evicted after a five day occupation of the Arion Court Apartments. During the five days the building had become home to nearly 40 people. For two and half months, about 20 people slept on a loading dock across the street from the building. The sleepout was self-managed, but difficult to maintain. Increasing internal pressures created by the harsh circumstances and pressures from the neighborhood led Homestead to seek indoor space. Operation Homestead negotiated a rent free two year lease for two abandoned duplexes owned by Providence Hospital. Currently, 12 previously homeless people live in those duplexes. We discovered the option of short-term agreements with property owners, in our desperate search to ensure the homeless members of our groups had a place to stay. Seattle now has seven self- managed shelters and 3 self-managed single family homes for homeless men and women. Each night several hundred people stay in these facilities. The property owners of the self-managed spaces are churches, non- profit housing developers, a Union hall, and a hospital. Currently Operation Homestead is turning its efforts to private owners, with much consciousness of the needed increase in power to be successful. The housing movement in Seattle has always had good ties to the church community and service providers. This certainly is not true everywhere. However, these ties have been invaluable assets. In other words we have used our church connections to facilitate negotiations with apolitical or in general socially inactive congregations. Some hints and potential stumbling blocks: 1. Isolate one or a few sites and approach the owners directly (Operation Homestead always ensures that there are no existing squatters that could be displaced prior to approaching property owners). Because property owners have, at least in theory, a certain degree of social responsibility, the tact has been to emphasize their self-interest in fulfilling this responsibility. In cases of abandoned property, the benefit to the owner includes better relations with their community by removing an eye-sore and a potential haven for illegal activity. 2. If the owner responds, set up an initial meeting with the sole goal of establishing legitimacy. Include people that the pastor or property owner will respect. An Associate Director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle has been very helpful, along with community leaders, attorneys, and even a few local policy makers. Letters of support can be useful as are examples of successful similar arrangements with other owners. 3. If the owner does not respond, try to find somebody who the owner respects to contact them to facilitate negotiations. 4. Address the two main concerns of owners: A. The project will be run responsibly and B. They won't lose any money. Operation Homestead agreed to pay the taxes on our last house. Be careful that if you do agree to pay some money, you can indeed cover the cost for the period of the lease. It may not be legally relevant to groups that do not have a 501 (c) 3, but flaking out on bills not only destroys the groups' credibility but hurts the areas' housing movement tremendously. 5. Never have negotiations gone smoothly. Persistence has yielded victories. Providence Hospital tried to back out of negotiations because of neighborhood opposition. Operation Homestead organized supportive members of the community to vote in new board members of the local community council and vocally support the project. Another way to ease neighbors' concerns is for the potential residents of the self-managed site to approach the opponents directly. Offer to have an introductory meeting, show the opponents that the residents are real people. 6. Give the owner a sample lease agreement, drawn up professionally and oozing with accountability and credibility. Make sure to include a few initial rules from residents (Operation Homestead has 4 basic rules: 1. No drugs, 2. No alcohol on the premises, 3. No violence against people, and 4. No harassment of other residents, their guests, or members of the wider community). 7. Renovations. Obviously any group should not enter into a lease agreement on a building that can not be made habitable. Operation Homestead has acquired some grant foundation money to renovate the houses (this money has been much easier to obtain than organizing money). The vast majority of the work has been done with volunteer labor and donated supplies. Because the work is reliant on volunteers it often takes a fair amount of time to coordinate. Operation Homestead maintains a resource list for renovation - this list includes everything from people who may loan out trucks or vans to certified electricians. 8. Insurance is a big problem. Most owners will want the lessee to acquire basic liability insurance. A sound management plan is essential to obtaining insurance. The group needs to either acquire its own insurance which is difficult and expensive, or affiliate with a group that will extend their coverage to the group. This sort of affiliation can be a campaign in and of itself. Community supporters are great. But how many will extend their support to including themselves in the risks? Once a lease is signed, the group needs to iron out what self- management actually means and how it works. SET UP AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE WITH THE INITIAL RESIDENTS PRIOR TO OCCUPANCY! If people have fought and won self-managed housing, they are apt to put strict requirements on themselves to ensure the housing is maintained. New people may not have this sense of ownership and bad habits are hard to break. In Operation Homestead houses, the residents develop all the rules, enforcement procedures, and policies except the four basic rules included in the lease agreement with the property owner. Each resident is required to follow the rules, attend weekly house meetings, and contribute a certain number of hours a week to the household. These hours can be spent on doing repairs, lawn and garden work, or participating in larger Operation Homestead goals. Each house has a paid facilitator who attends most of the meetings and responds to emergencies. Sometimes paid staff is a requirement for insurance. The facilitator is paid for only about 8 hours a month per house, and is prohibited from making any decisions. She only helps facilitate meetings, and informs the house when an issue threatens the program. The residents enforce rules by votes at regular meetings or emergency meetings. Selection of new residents is very important. Self-managed housing is not for everyone. Poor screening means more problems to solve later. Orientation for new residents is also important. It is unlikely a new resident will have been involved in a similar situation before. Operation Homestead houses have an Oversight Committee that can overturn a decision of the residents if it was seen to be unfair, discriminatory, or threatening to the future of the house. The Oversight Committee has never overturned a house decision. Originally the Oversight Committee was entirely non-resident. Its primary function seemed to be establishing legitimacy with the police when that unfortunately was needed. Now we are going through a process of revamping the Committee to include one member from each house and two standing members from Operation Homestead. All residents sign a 'social contract' with Operation Homestead which details their responsibilities of living in the house. The relationship established in these contracts is not defined as a landlord-tenant relationship in the State of Washington. We could have chosen to be covered by the landlord-tenant laws. We felt that the program would not work under that condition. The primary reason for our decision was to enable residents to respond quickly to problems. There is a 48 hour chill out policy for residents who have not broken a basic rule but are out of control (the person must leave the premises for 48 hours). There is a policy of immediate eviction for breaking any of the basic rules. The residents do pay to live in the houses. The cost depends on the costs involved with the house. These costs include utilities and insurance. When the group of homeless people agreed to pay taxes to secure a house, they were basically agreeing to increase their monthly payments by about $20 each. The cheapest monthly payment is $45, the most expensive is $125, still very inexpensive by Seattle standards. If there is a vacancy each individual's share increases. This has led to a policy of deposits. When there were no deposits, residents just had to increase their portion to make up for someone not paying. Groups like Operation Homestead could not afford to legally provide housing if not for self-management. Self-managed housing is cheaper than traditional non-profit sponsored housing for previously homeless people and the self-accountability removes the need for a hierarchical system of accountability. Self-managed housing has always been a goal of Operation Homestead. Sometimes I think it is a silly goal. People want decent affordable well managed housing. Does anybody really care if it is self-managed? Working with the Cherry Street residents has taught me the benefits of self-managed housing. The residents assert themselves strongly. They make decisions for themselves. They listen to suggestions, weigh the options, and decide what to do. People are empowered when they learn to use the tools of the opposition from fax machines to computers to speaking the language of modern American professionalism. Most empowerment is not as simple as mastering a mechanical skill. Most empowerment does not happen quickly. It is a slow process of regaining self-confidence and pride. A community can be created that is more than just cohabitation. It is fine not to like your neighbor. Whether you like them or not you must sit with them to solve problems. You must work to ensure your community (which may be the source of needed strength for other areas of your life) survives. There is lots of abandoned property out there. Our society is sick to let it lie unused. We must at this time bow to the reality that we cannot wrestle most of it from its constitutionally protected owners. But some of it we can get control over. Good luck, if you and your group decides to take a similar tact as Operation Homestead. Please call Operation Homestead at (206) 443-1342, we are eager to share what we have learned. Tear down the boards! ----------------------------------------------------------------- Setting Up Activist Non-Profits to Hold Buildings Obtained Through Direct Action By Ginger Segel, Operation Homestead, Seattle, WA We live in a society based on private property. Housing activism is not about changing that - at least not on a large scale. Housing activism is about 1. improving the balance between the rights of property owners and the community needs for that property, and 2. giving control of small pieces of property to those who need it. In 1990 the Seattle Housing Resources Effort (SHARE), a group of homeless people, was successful in securing a building to house themselves. A few months later Operation Homestead, a group of homeless and non-homeless people dedicated to reopening abandoned housing, took over the Arion Court Apartments and successfully forced the owner to sell. The two activist groups had buildings but no buyers. Perhaps because of the perceived radical nature of these direct action groups, no established local non-profit with the capacity to own the real estate was willing be the owner. The Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), made up of individuals representing three local non-profits including SHARE, was created to hold title to the buildings and allow the grassroots groups to maintain control of the housing. LIHI has since been growing into a different beast - developing, managing, and owning 196 units of housing. LIHI's mission statement is true to its original vision. This mission statement and the good will of individual Board and staff members are the only protections against the organization metamorphosing into a tradition top-down non-profit housing provider. If the goal is resident-controlled property, the LIHI model is dangerous. The creation of LIHI was a tremendous risk for the individuals and organizations involved. I hope you have such potential partners in your community that will stand by activist groups. But we are learning as we go and Seattle's experience suggest that some modifications of the model would give greater assurance that the housing stays permanently in the control of its inhabitants. Perhaps one of the following adaptations would guarantee long-term tenant control. 1. Transfer of ownership over a specific period of time to the residents, a land trust, or an activist group. Operation Homestead and SHARE could not develop the capacity to own the building quickly enough to take advantage of their opportunities. A 'holding company' arrangement could be established to develop, manage and own projects with, say, a five year transition to a different form of ownership. The transition time would be used to develop a new organization with the skills and accountability necessary to responsibly take full control of the buildings. 2. Board Representation of each grassroots group that has been a partner to developing and/or obtaining a building. Two groups of tenants and a homeless empowerment group in a nearby city have brought projects to LIHI since 1991. None of these groups have Board representation. Decisions regarding ownership and development are made by the LIHI Board, sometimes with and sometimes without input from the groups. Board representation would close that communication gap and give the groups real power in the decisions regarding their projects. One seat on a Board of many would not fully solve the problem. Project Boards, with responsibilities and authority clearly outlined in the 'holding company's' by-laws, could make the majority of decisions regarding specific projects. The majority of the members of a Project Board could be tenants and/or representatives from the activist group. 3. Setting up new non-profits for ownership of each project. This option is potentially cumbersome and creates redundant efforts. The advantage is more direct control from the beginning. But who has time to sit on many Boards? The need for a 'holding company' arises because grassroots groups do not have the capacity. It is unlikely that other communities will have so many individuals and organizations to lend time, effort, and expertise to the creation of multiple new non-profits. A very sad thing is happening in Seattle this week. Two hundred people, mostly undocumented Latinos, are being evicted from a five year old encampment. The encampment is hidden in a wooded area near the highway. People have built three room houses for themselves and prefer little contact with others. They did what all people have done forever. They chose a piece of land and made a home. That is not allowed in our country. We can support them, but they will not win. Perhaps the City will open another shelter. Perhaps the City will provide slightly better accommodations than mats on the floor. Private property is a right. Housing and shelter are public gifts. LIHI cannot help them. LIHI cannot buy tracts of land for people to live on, building their own structures with materials that they can afford. LIHI did help other groups of people to create or maintain housing for themselves. I hope our experience is helpful in your efforts. Please call me at (206) 727-0357 if you want more information. Ginger Segel Active member of Operation Homestead Former Lead Organizer, The Seattle Tenants Union Self-Management Coordinator, the Low Income Housing Institute ----------------------------------------------------------------- How to Squat in Philadelphia Prepared by a local squatter for The Open Door Society not delivered SECTION 4 AIDS Housing Service Providers by City Research By Richard Jackman, ACT UP New York & The AIDS Housing Research Project