Lessons from the Take Back the Land Movement

Housing is a human right, not a privilege. And, if we’re going to fight for just housing conditions in Buffalo, we should take some lessons from the groups making this demand.  The nationwide Take Back the Land Movement and Boston’s City Life/Vida Urbana provide excellent models for housing rights groups to follow.

The Take Back the Land Movement has called for elevating housing to the level of a human right.  To do this, we need to create a great economic change – the decommodification of housing.  Housing shouldn’t be a commodity that can be bought or sold; it should be a human right that local communities have the power to distribute based on people’s need.

Even more important than Take Back the Land’s idealistic vision for a future world, is their plan to get there.  To arrive at this point where housing is a human right, they understand that we need a large grassroots movement to make it happen.  They also understand that this movement will have to challenge the unjust system of housing for profit that we currently live in.  They will do this through direct action and this is where groups like City Life/Vida Urbana enter the discussion.

For years, City Life/Vida Urbana has been organizing direct action for housing justice in Boston, MA.  When a house has gone into foreclosure, and the bank tries to remove the tenants, City Life/Vida Urbana has organized people throughout the neighborhood to blockade the eviction.  These events will draw dozens of people to hold a sit-in in front of the house being evicted to force the bank that now owns it to renegotiate with the people living there and allow them to stay.

Take Back the Land Movement has action groups in many other cities throughout the country.  In those cities they have encouraged homeless people to take over vacant properties and turn them into adequate housing, defended the attacks on public housing, and taken over plots of unused land for community use.

 

It’s exactly this sort of movement that Buffalo Tenants United should become.  Get involved and begin fighting for housing as a human right!