LINKING VACANT PROPERTY, RACE, POVERTY AND HOMELESSNESS

From a Vera Institute report published in March of 2005, UNDERSTANDING FAMILY HOMELESSNESS IN NEW YORK CITY: An In-Depth Study of Families’ Experiences Before and After Shelter:

The strongest indicator of the number of families a neighborhood produced was the number of people receiving public assistance in that area. In addition, the number of homeless families a neighborhood produced was also associated with the number of families living below the poverty line, African-American residents, and vacant housing units.

PTH’s housing campaign was learning about vacant property, how m uch there w as e, who owned them and what we could do to end property warehousing. Over the years, PTH slept out, took over, wheatpasted, testified, educated the community, published reports, introduced , and passed legislation , got a lot of media coverage, catalyzed the NYC C ommunity L and T rust and anti - warehousing movement s , researched, and proposed alternative housing models and created popular education materials to educate ourselves and the community .

Nikita Price: It's one thing to say, “Okay, you know we're getting fucked, we’re getting fucked…” But we had to come up with what's the next step? So, we know what the problem is, so what do you do? How do you fix it?

I think that was when we would then introduce the issue of all this abandoned property, and that's when we're also doing our abandoned building count. The City does own some of this property and there are this many people in the fucking shelter, and on the street.