from Instagram
We heard about another totally outrageous eviction looming, so we showed up with a number of other people from like minded groups and stopped the city from booting out two individuals currently residing the grounds of the old Philadelphia Housing Authority headquarters in center city. In case you haven’t been following their scheme, the PHA was in theory created to keep lower economic status Philadelphians in decent houses and in their own neighborhoods. Instead, the PHA uses eminent domain to seize poor people homes, demolish them and either build luxury condos or sell them to developers who do the same thing. Casting poor people out of their homes and destroying communities to let affluent outsiders live tax free in these devastated areas that were once vibrant blocks. The PHA is some other level of vile. So l, some folks that needed a roof over their heads started squatting the old PHA headquarters in rather ironic fashion. There is a big habitable building that is not in use when so many are on the streets, and people desperately need housing. In our version of a “Service Day”, we showed to actually support the people that need it by standing up to the cops, gentrifying cop callers, and city workers who were about to forcibly evict our neighbors. They backed down for now but we will keep calling them out and challenging them-until they open up the thousands and thousands of empty properties that are not even in private hands; the houses owned by the PHA that could be housing our neighbors this very minute. #endtheabatement #stoptheevictions https://whyy.org/articles/housing-activists-stop-rittenhouse-encampment-cleanup-likening-it-to-eviction/
