[ In cities where people are desperate for housing, why are there
still empty properties?] [[link removed]]

THE RENT IN THE BAY AREA IS TOO DAMN HIGH. SO THESE MOMS OCCUPIED A
VACANT HOUSE.   [[link removed]]

 

Marisa Endicott
December 23, 2019
Mother Jones
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_ In cities where people are desperate for housing, why are there
still empty properties? _

Moms 4 Housing members and activists including former Oakland mayoral
candidate Kat Brooks held at press conference at the West Oakland
house the moms are occupying. , Marisa Endicott

 

By the time Dominique Walker started squatting in an Oakland home with
her five-year-old daughter and one-year-old son, she’d exhausted all
other options. Walker, who had fled domestic violence in Mississippi,
knew it would be hard to find a place, amidst the housing crisis, in
the city where she’d grown up. But she wasn’t prepared for what
she encountered: Thousands of people, predominantly black and brown,
forced to sleep on the street, in shelters, or on couches, despite the
fact that many had a job—or two or three. 

“When I saw the condition of my home, Oakland, it changed everything
for me,” Walker said.

After moving back in April, Walker and her kids first stayed with
relatives. They’d all been pushed out by high housing costs to
neighboring cities like Antioch and Stockton. Walker spent hours each
day commuting to work in Oakland and her kids’ daycare in Berkeley.
They bounced around from house to house and sometimes hotel rooms
while she tried to find something more permanent, but she found city
support programs were maxed out. The hardest part about being
homeless, she says, was having to explain to her kids why they
didn’t have their own space, why they constantly had to be on the
move. “My children weren’t able to really be free.”

Walker is a lifelong organizer. She was a student co-founder of her
high school in Oakland, the School of Social Justice and Community
Development. In Mississippi, She worked on human rights lawyer Chokwe
Lumumba’s mayoral campaign and then with a radical worker
cooperative
[[link removed]] in
Jackson. 

So, back in Oakland, when she found her family in a tough spot, Walker
started looking into the causes of homelessness in her community. And
that’s when she began to notice the “for rent” signs, vacant
lots, and new, unoccupied high rises everywhere. Then she came across
an empty house on a quiet block on Magnolia street in West Oakland
(the “only eyesore on the block,” she says). She did some research
and found out it was owned by Wedgewood Property Management,
which labels itself [[link removed]] as a “leading
acquirer of distressed residential real estate.” The house had sat
empty for about two years, and some neighbors, who Walker talked
to, worried it would decay or become a trap house for drugs or other
illegal activities. In November, Walker, another mother, and their
kids moved into the vacant home. 

Instead of trying to fly under the radar
[[link removed]],
Walker started Moms 4 Housing,
[[link removed]] using the previously empty house
as a platform to draw attention to lots and homes that sit vacant
while the city struggles with rampant homelessness. There are about
4,000 vacant parcels in Oakland, roughly the same as the reported
number of homeless people
[[link removed]] in
the city. (While less than
[[link removed]] 25
percent of Oakland residents are Black, they account for
[[link removed]] almost 70
percent of the homeless population.) And even when those properties
are eventually put on the market, odds are many won’t be able to
afford them. The median rent
[[link removed]] for
a one-bedroom is now $2,470, and it’s $2,990 for a two-bedroom, a 5
percent increase from last year.

Moms 4 Housing considers Wedgewood a “displacement
machine”—buying up properties in areas on the cusp of
gentrification and sitting on them until their values surge. The moms
want Wedgewood to turn the house over to them under the principal that
housing is a human right, and argue that other investor-owned
properties should be given back to communities who have been displaced
by soaring rents. The group’s bold organizing tactics—they send
text message alerts to rally supporters around press conferences,
canvassing, and phone zaps—have also put City Hall on notice,
demanding Mayor Libby Schaaf take more aggressive action. The’ve
called her out for the city’s failure to collect
[[link removed]] fees
from housing developers who don’t build affordable units as required
by an Oakland mandate.

“It was an answer to a desperate need,” Walker says of their
decision to occupy the Magnolia street house. “It should be illegal
to have vacant houses and have people sleeping on the streets. I feel
like there’s a moral crisis. There’s a profiteering crisis…I
think that’s where the crime lies.” 

Traditionally, we think of vacant houses as an issue in weak housing
markets and struggling economies suffering the lingering effects of
the foreclosure crisis. But places with hot real estate markets have
been wrestling with the problem, too. That’s especially true when
changes to the housing market happen rapidly, like in the Bay Area,
where gentrification in previously shunned neighborhoods like West and
North Oakland has pushed out long-time residents, who are then unable
to benefit from new investment in the communities. 

There isn’t one single factor that causes homes to turn vacant in
booming markets, but speculative investors like Wedgewood are a
common target
[[link removed]]. In
2016, Wedgewood’s CEO boasted
[[link removed]] that
the company purchased over 200 foreclosed or soon-to-be foreclosed
homes nationwide a month, calling the distressed housing market “hot
and sexy.”

“We feel like we have a right to this space and this home,” Walker
says. “This home belongs back in the hands of the community from
which it was taken.”

According to Walker, Wedgewood never responded to a request to
negotiate a takeover of the property. But in December, she found an
eviction notice on the door. The women are promising to fight back if
and when the sheriff shows up to kick them out, and supporters plan to
show up en masse. In the meantime, Moms 4 Housing has been fixing up
the house with the help of volunteers and donations: getting utilities
running, power-washing the exterior, making it their home. 

For their part, Wedgewood says they haven’t heard from the mothers.
The heavy-hitting PR firm the company is working with told
the _Mercury News
[[link removed]]_ that
Wedgewood “would be willing to discuss the opportunity to purchase
the home, like it would with any other potential buyer,” but that
the women would have to leave first. Wedgewood bought the home in a
foreclosure sale in July with plans to flip it and put it back on the
market.

Public outcry over vacancies in cities desperate for more housing has
spurred policy makers to try and tackle the issue. Vacancy taxes have
become a popular solution. In February, New York Mayor Bill
DeBlasio called on
[[link removed]] state
legislators to tax languishing commercial properties. San Francisco
residents will vote on
[[link removed]] a
retail vacancy tax in March meant to discourage landlords who hold out
on renting their storefronts in search of tenants willing to pay
excessive rates. San Diego officials are looking into
[[link removed]] the
possibility of putting a vacant home tax on the ballot next year,
and Honolulu
[[link removed]] and Los
Angeles
[[link removed]] are
toying with the idea as well. In an attempt to discourage corporate
speculators, Oakland recently started implementing a tax, approved by
voters in 2018, on property owners who keep lots vacant and apartment
rental units open. But the rollout has been
[[link removed]] complicated
and confusing, a sign of what experts caution is a very complex issue.

One of those complexities is that vacancy is extremely difficult to
track
[[link removed]].
Because of that, says Shane Phillips, a housing policy expert based at
the University of California, Los Angeles, people often overestimate
[[link removed]] vacancy
rates in thriving cities. It’s typical for new buildings with
hundreds of units to take up to a year to fill up, for instance, he
says, which can give the impression of exaggerated vacancy. And it’s
especially hard to track vacancy in rental units. Asking why a rental
is vacant is “kind of the same as asking why we don’t have zero
percent unemployment,” Phillips says. “It’s an issue of
friction: people leave, people come, you have to do a bunch of
repairs, find the new tenants.”

The reason a property is sitting empty has big implications for
diagnosing the root cause of the problem, and figuring out the right
antidote. A vacancy tax will work differently
[[link removed]] on
homes in stagnant markets, abandoned after owners default on payments,
as opposed to empty lots owned by speculative investors in up and
coming areas. If a city’s vacancies are linked to vacation rentals
like Airbnb, or second homes, that might require a slightly different
approach.

“Every vacant property has a story story behind it,” says Joseph
Schilling, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute who has
devoted the majority of his career to studying how communities reclaim
vacant properties. “What is the owner’s story? What is the
neighborhood story? What are the market factors that have caused it to
become vacant? It’s critical to unlock that in order to figure out
how best to stabilize the property or neighborhood.” This summer,
New York City passed legislation
[[link removed]] to
establish a first-of-its-kind database to gather better data on
storefront vacancies. “I can’t stress enough the importance of
having a current database of all vacant and abandoned properties,
because then you will know where they are, what condition they’re
in, what the ownership is,” Schilling says. “Then, based on that,
you want to have a range of strategies, a portfolio of policies and
programs, in order to adjust and respond to all these different
characteristics and circumstances.”

Despite the recent interest in vacancy taxes, there is little research
on their impact so far. And the taxes are only as good as their
enforcement. A 2017 report by the DC city auditor found that
[[link removed]] the
city had failed to execute its vacant and blighted property tax
program in every way, from identifying and inspecting properties to
issuing infractions and meeting deadlines. And such taxes can be
ineffective or even have unintended consequences if there aren’t
thoughtful exemptions for groups like community-based organizations or
lower income people, Schilling says. “I would caution all public
officials to do their homework before immediately using that
solution.”

That’s not to say that vacancy taxes can’t work. They can bring in
much needed tax revenue. Estimates by officials in 2018, before
Oakland’s measure passed, predicted
[[link removed]] the
city could see as much as $20 million a year for homeless solutions.
(Oakland’s tax also has exemptions
[[link removed]] for
low-income households and unbuildable land.) Vancouver, which
implemented a tax on non-principal homes in 2017, brought in
[[link removed]] $29
million mostly for affordable housing projects in its first year
(though it didn’t improve
[[link removed]] the
vacancy rate much). But Schilling emphasizes the importance of other
tools, like housing code enforcement and tenant protections, as
essential pieces of the puzzle that can also help keep properties from
declining and tenants from being evicted in the first place.

Despite the complicated nature and conflicting opinions on vacancies,
in a city like Oakland, where tent encampments fill underpasses and
the homeless population jumped
[[link removed]] by
almost 50 percent in two years, empty lots and houses stand as a
symbol of deep injustice. Because of that, Moms 4 Housing has seen a
groundswell of support. Community members and local organizations have
shown up at the home on Magnolia street to show solidarity. Neighbors
have invited them to their houses and joined the text alert system,
Walker says. An online petition calling on Wedgewood to turn over the
house has garnered
[[link removed]] over
5,400 signatures, and some groups are calling
[[link removed]] for the property to be
turned into a community land trust
[[link removed]]. On
Monday, dozens accompanied Moms 4 Housing to the courthouse to file a
right for possession claim on the house, pointing out
[[link removed]] the
“home has been vacant for over two years during the worst housing
crisis in California history.” Any tenant—legal or not—can
challenge an eviction, and in the meantime they can stay, so the
mothers bought themselves at least a little more time in the house.
They have a court date on December 30. 

“We’re about the ideal of imagining that we can take these
powerful resources that are changing our world and this economy and
put them to use of servicing humanity,” shouted Ethel Long-Scott, an
activist with the Poor People’s Campaign
[[link removed]], from the steps of the West
Oakland home at a press conference earlier this month. “We’ve got
to have an image of what kind of new world we want to see. We applaud
[Moms 4 Housing] for doing what our damn city government won’t
do—getting our children and families off the damn streets and into
houses.”

In the meantime, Walker’s son has taken his first steps since moving
into the house. Her daughter wants to decorate and finally stopped
asking where they’d be going next.

“It’s a lot less stressful for me on my day-to-day, and I’m
happy that my kids are comfortable, but I’m fighting for all
unhoused mothers and children,” Walker says. She’s not afraid of
speaking out and risking eviction. “It was a bigger risk sleeping in
my car with my children than taking a stand on hoping that this brings
awareness to the crisis here.”

_Marisa Endicott is a Ben Bagdikian editorial fellow in San Francisco.
Email her at [email protected], and find her on Twitter
@mje415._

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