How You Can Help Residents Take on Displacement and Lack of Food in South Atlanta

Pittsburgh Residents Hold Their Signs

American Friends Service Committee, working through Occupy Our Homes Atlanta, has been engaging in some amazing work around the Turner Field Area communities. As some of you may know last year we worked with dozens of Peoplestown residents to facilitate a listening project. Our findings were that affordable housing was at a crisis level, low income housing units were approacing unliveable conditions, and there was a major lack of access to fresh food that stretch well beyond Peoplestown.

With the Beltline project moving in and the Atlanta Braves moving out the communities around Turner Field have caught the eye of developers in a big way. We've already seen a huge spike in rental prices. Development isn't a bad thing, in fact folks want to see their communities developed; folks want development that benefits those that have lived in the community for decades. This get to a core belief of AFSC's Atlanta Economic Justice Program; that communities should be controled by those that live in them.  We are working with residents in Poeplestown, Mechanicsville, Summerhill, and Pittsburgh to launch housing justice/anti displacement campaigns, support community gardens, and insure that real affordable hosuign and community contro, of land is part of any benefits package that comes out of the Turner Field Agreements.

 We have some quick needs for resources to cover specific costs. I hope you will consider taking a look and investing what you can into the efforts of these amazing residents standing up against tremendous odds.

One of the Many Signs Already in the Community

We have these new yard signs that read, “Stand Together, Stop Displacement, We Matter”. They look great and they provide a visible housing justice presence in the community. We have a lot of ground to cover and we’re about out of our initial order. These signs aren't cheap! In fact they cost $8 a piece! So we hope, with your help, to raise at least enough to order 100 more ASAP! Can you help us raise $880? Your dollars will help us build the door to door housing justice visibility we need in the community!

http://www.gofundme.com/qmx4qg 

Tommy Moore Prepares to Plant

Tommy Moore has been growing food all over the struggling Pittsburgh community, located just south of downtown Atlanta. Pittsburgh lost 86% of its wealth during the financial crash. Half of the homes are still vacant and gunshots can be heard every night. It's a virtual food desert. Tommy needs $200. To buy new seeds and replace tools. Will you help me have his back?

http://www.gofundme.com/qnk2cc4   

Lastly, WE NEED CANVASSERS! We are doing three canvasses a week and need more volunteers to knock on doors.

Tuesday and Thursday: 5-7

Saturday 12-2pp

We always meet AT 1101 Hank Aaron Drive, SW (Brick Building)30 minutes early to do a brief canvassing training and go over talking points. Please come if you can!

Getting in Front of Wall Street's New Scam

Today Members of the community organization, Occupy Our Homes Atlanta, struggling homeowners, and American Friends Service Committee rallied outside the local office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to call for a halt to a controversial program that auctions off delinquent loans to investors. To highlight and dramatize the role HUD is playing in allowing Wall Street unfettered access to our communities Occupy Our Homes Atlanta set up a giant craps table outside the HUD office and invited folks on their lunch break to roll the dice.

 As part of a national day of action taking place in more than a dozen cities, community groups released a new report criticizing the agency’s Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP). In recent weeks, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) released numbers on these delinquent loan sales and has been the subject of increasing scrutiny.

The report “Vulture Capital Hits Home: How HUD is Helping Wall Street and Hurting Our Communities” argues that the DASP program as it is currently structured moves mortgages into the hands of parts of the financial industry have harmed communities, despite the existence of better alternatives. Corporate winners of the auctioned loans include Lone Star Funds, Bayview Asset Management, and LVS I SPE (which was charged with fraud by the SEC in 2012).

Download the report here: http://homesforall.org/campaign/action/tell-hud-stop-selling-our-neighborhoods-to-wall-street/

          “HUD must stop selling off the mortgages of struggling homeowners to private equity firms and hedge funds seeking to further profit off of the devastating housing crisis they caused,” said resident Nancy Daniells, “It is an outrage that the federal agency charged with creating affordable housing and stable neighborhoods is, instead, contributing to the sale of our neighborhoods to Wall Street.”

Occupy Our Homes Atlanta and allies gathered at the HUD office on Marietta Street today to deliver a demand letter and play an interactive dice game in front of the office to tell HUD to stop rolling the dice with Atlanta neighborhoods.

The DASP is administered by the FHA and is meant to have the dual purpose of providing funding for the Mutual Mortgage Insurance (MMI) fund while also aiding in the stabilization of distressed American communities. The report, which was researched and authored by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Right To The City Alliance, shows that while the program is successfully providing the capital necessary to keep MMI afloat, it is failing in achieving its second goal.

The report highlights three key problems with the DASP program:

1.      The current structure of DASP auctions hampers community stabilization by considering only the highest bid without weighting the bidders’ track record of good outcomes for homeowners and communities.

2.      The current outcome requirements and reporting structure fails to hold purchases accountable to neighborhood-stabilization goals and provides insufficient transparency and prevents community oversight.

3.      The current pre-sale certification phase does not ensure that the FHA mortgage modification process has been followed before loans are included in DASP auction pools.

“As homeowners face the perils of an economy crashed by financiers, the same financiers flip the mortgages, drive homeowners to foreclosure and become distant corporate landlords with poor track records,” the report’s introduction states. “Investors are trading distressed residential assets…and are building a spectrum of business plans that undermine neighborhood and economic stability. Distressed residential mortgages…disproportionately impact communities of color, which have been systematically steered toward more expensive loans.”

To read the report, click here: http://homesforall.org/campaign/action/tell-hud-stop-selling-our-neighborhoods-to-wall-street/

Similar events were planned today in a number of cities throughout the country, where community leaders delivered a letter and thousands of petitions calling on the FHA and HUD to halt further sales under the DASP program until it is improved.