CALIFORNIA: subtitle referencing slice
Paragraph framing our approach to this site. Links to OER resources on the context of land and housing in this place, as well as OER resources on other movements / squatting that are not annotated.
Moms of Magnolia Street (4-part documentary)
A four-part documentary on the Moms4Housing occupation of a vacant, investor-owned property in West Oakland features the voices and perspectives of the many Oaklanders at the forefront of the 2020 struggle. The documentary briefly situates this struggle within the history of racial exclusion from property ownership and housing access in Oakland and insurgent demands for housing as a human right rooted in the Black radical tradition. [ep. 1]
“Oakland doesn’t have a housing crisis. It’s a moral crisis, it’s a profiteering crisis, it’s a speculators-in-my-hood crisis” (Walker, 6:21-:31)
DeCaprio, Steven (2015) My Squat Law Journey. Foundation for Intentional Community.
Taking inspiration from direct observation of squatter movements in Europe, Land Action founder Steven DeCaprio narrates the origins and challenges of his work to expand the knowledge and practice of housing occupation for use in Oakland, California. Spurred by a massive wave of evictions during the Bay Area’s first dot-com boom, DeCaprio began developing expertise in the legal landscape of property and possession alongside practice in housing occupation, rehabilitation, and eviction defense. The development of DeCaprio’s work emphasizes the relationality of property law, wherein the law serves both as a code outlining the terrain of struggle over land, and as a subjective space and itself an arena of ideological struggle.
“We learned that there was a legal concept called adverse possession. In California adverse possession allows a squatter to acquire title to land if they occupy the land for five years openly and exclusively and pay the taxes. As I continued my research I was surprised to find out just how many rights I had. I began to believe that it could be possible to build a movement here in California similar to what I had seen in Europe.”
Kogan, Millay, and Marcus Owens. 2016. “Toward a Genealogy of Occupied Space: Land Action on the Urban Frontier.” Avery Review 17.
Reclaiming Our Homes
Occupying publicly-owned land. Covid - A lot of the rhetoric from news outlets highlighted that we were in a public health emergency which validated their actions. Building of a freeway. Part of a larger effort to look into vacancy in Los Angeles
Time Period: 2020-present
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq6WqPB9224&t=1s
“No one should be homeless when homes are sitting empty, but Reclaiming Our Homes is taking action. Together we can defend and rebuild our community!”
“It's been really exciting creating these networks of relationships. Not just mutual aid organizations or charity, but actual relationships with people that create some safety and support.”
Others:
documentation from ACCE, Moms4Housing, interviews with them. Look at Magie’s piece for citations
Christine + Land Action (traces CLT connection, Mother Jones)
EBX on DeCaprio + tax-defaulted properties, city policy
Park, Julian Francis. 2019. “Abolish Rent! » Radical Housing Journal.” Radical Housing Journal. doi: 10.54825/PADD7071.