Moms4Housing Podcast Breakdown

Script, Photos and attributions for YouTube Podcast

Moms 4 Housing is a group of homeless moms who organized to take over a vacant home in West Oakland.

Podcast breakdown for Moms 4 Housing timeline and explanation. I am in the works of starting a new YouTube podcast that will break down politics and subjects like this one using all the research and educational work I am involved in.

They first entered the property illegally (they were later charged with a misdemeanor and released from jail within a day) on November 18, 2019. When news hit of them refusing to leave, a lot of people thought they were advocating to take over regular homeownership and squatting. But that’s not the case.

The moms along with the organizations that worked with them did a lot of research, targeted a home that had been left vacant for almost 2 years and was recently purchased by a shell corporation LLC named Wedgwood which is based in southern California. 

They did this act of defiance to highlight many issues with access to housing showing that houses are kept vacant to fluctuate the housing market, keeping housing demand for housing high and only selling or renting when the market has hit the desired peak.

It was also done because they could not find a place to live despite having jobs, leaving them with a choice of doing something drastic or living in the streets with their children.

The first point made by Moms 4 Housing that caught media interest, their statement that there are 4 vacant homes for every 1 homeless person. Many politicians have said “we just need to keep building more housing that would solve the problem.” The 4-1 empty homes to homeless statistic they found from a Mother Jones article that cited statistics from SFcurbed does state there is close to 4 units of vacant housing (3.7 so the number was rounded up) per every homeless person in Alameda county, and many other counties and cities have the same rate.

Here’s the articles used to back these statements up;

MotherJones.com

SFcurbed.com

Article: just how many houses are fliped in the bay area: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Moms-4-Housing-eviction-Just-how-many-flips-14986950.php

Reference article from when they first took over the home: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/11/18/homeless-mothers-activists-take-over-vacant-oakland-house/?fbclid=IwAR2wcQaxrBrjlqDV5eJSRgHZ72FXY00ewGxyeObIMKZgjsC1kgYy2OjbKng

On Nov. 23 at Mosswood Park in Oakland, CA a mixed collective of activist groups gathered united to do a March on housing. The march was organized and led by Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action,  and included Moms 4 Housing, and other well-known organizations like Sunrise movement, Poor People’s Campaign, Youth vs Apocalypse and Anti-Police Terror Project (APTP.)

That part is huge, because if different organizations start to organize together for each other their causes using research and powerful tactics, they may be unstoppable.

As Moms 4 Housing refused to leave the home and started to garner more media attention, Wedgwood with their corporate office hired a PR firm.

They hired Sam Singer, president of Singer Associates Public Relations San Francisco to deal with their messaging in media.

On Dec 17, they petitioned the courts to take their case attempting a “right to claim possession.” 

On December 23, Wedgwood claimed they were going to use a Southern California based nonprofit called Shelter 37 claimed if the moms left to be homeless on the streets with their children immediately then Wedgwood would use the home for at-risk Oakland youth, despite this plan never being announced before and the non-profit having no record of working with the City of Oakland before.

The moms found this idea ridiculous since this is asking for their children are at risk of being on the streets just before Christmas. The moms had also contacted the company from the start asking that they sell them the home at a reasonable price through an Oakland Land Trust.

So the moms stayed in the home through Christmas and took their case to stay in the home to court in hopes that their argument that housing is a human right and has been withheld from the public on purpose the fluctuate the market so only those with large amounts of cash can afford it would work in their favor.

An article that goes into the full timeline: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/15/us/moms-4-housing-homeless-evicted-oakland-trnd/index.html

Wedgwood also covered the mom’s shelter at a Catholic Charity for 2 months. But it turned out the Catholic Charity said it isn’t that easy to get out of homelessness and they could not promise to help the moms within two months.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/Update-Moms-Call-Offer-For-Temporary-Housing-An-14968732.php?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=socialflow&fbclid=IwAR0aDysDA1c7XEQQzj0i7nXiTOC-hQSZ7vjkS-f_5MCeYmwDHReungiQCTQ#

Tweet:

Article backing research on Wedgwood: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/examining-wedgewood-a-look-at-the-home-flipping-giant-in-battle-with-homeless-mothers/2208119/

The judge in charge of the case ruled in favor of Wedgwood on January 10. The moms said they were not mad though, it was a win to stay as long as they did and receive the media coverage they received. They galvanized a movement that would continue.

I include footage of Dominique Walker speaking at a press conference after the ruling:

“The system is designed to protect the wealthy. It wasn’t designed for us so we never thought we would win in the unjust system. Yet we are here and we’re not leaving,” Walker said in a press conference after a judge ruled in favor of the corporate house flipping owner Wedgwood on Jan. 10.

“We are bringing awareness to this national and global housing crisis. And we don’t intend to stop. Housing is a human right,” said Walker. “We’re working to change not only the loss here but all over the world around housing. We want to create a housing registry. We want to outlaw short term rentals. We want to be able to use eminent domain to get housing from these corporate speculators out of our communities.”

Director of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action Carroll Fife spoke first at the press conference calling attention to a narrative she said she saw often in media that blamed the moms for being homeless.

”I really want to highlight how this particular situation has called into the forefront of how people are not valued,” Fife said. “I hear that they should work harder. That they shouldn’t have children.”

“They work two or three jobs,” Fife said of Moms 4 Housing advocates. “Some of them lost their partners through car accidents, or bad health because they didn’t have access to health care. So we want people to understand that this could be anyone.”

Fife continued to say the housing problems Moms 4 Housing face affects everyone. “The people who can save up enough for a down payment on homes have to compete with corporations like Wedgewood who have hundreds of shell organizations and limited liability corporations that buy houses in bulk,” Fife said.

On Jan 14 within the early 5 a.m. morning hours, the Alameda County Sheriff’s department evicted two of the moms using Bearcat armored vehicle and militarized officers. Dominique Walker was live on DemocracyNow! At the time with Carroll Fife, so she was not arrested and the children had been removed from the home the night before when the community had gathered prepared to stop the eviction.

So would you think that’s the end? Well not. Because on MLK day it was announced that Wedgwood would sell the home at appraisal price to the moms through the Oakland Land Trust. In case you don’t know, appraisal price just means someone will come and appraise the value of the home, and whatever is determined the value of the home is that is what it will be sold for. California Governor Gavin Newson had met with Wedgwood to negotiate the selling of the home along with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. But the moms wanted to make a  few things clear that day so they had a press conference to thank all of their supporters. They mention there were two public officials who supported them from the start, Oakland city councilmembers Nikki Fortunato Bas and Rebecca Kaplan. They also wanted everyone to know the fight for housing was not going to stop, not until every person who wants to be housed is housed.

In closing, this is probably one of the best modern-day examples of using tactics and research to get a message across, educate the public, use social media to organize and use media to do follow up research to get a little closer to solving a major public problem like the housing crisis we have here in California. It’s a blueprint that can be used around the world.

I’ll be getting more of these videos together in a few more weeks, I plan on doing these breakdowns regularly, so stay tuned and check the links and information in the description section below. 

I do all the research so you don’t have to.

Moms or housing “Red Light” by KQED: https://www.kqed.org/arts/13873317/red-light

News announcing the purchase the home: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/moms-4-housing-reaches-deal-with-city-of-oakland/

PantherTimes article I wrote to break down the subject from a social media perspective: https://panthertimes.com/2020/01/20/moms-4-housing-create-blueprint-for-effective-housing-advocacy/

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