As 2022 ends, around the world, mass evictions threaten all that is human

December 31, 2022 by 5 Comments

“Housing should not be a privilege”. After years in shelters and on the streets, 41-year-old Dwayne Seifforth and his nine-year-old daughter D’Kota-Holidae Seifforth live in an apartment in Harlem, in upper Manhattan. Having a stable and decent place to live has made all the difference. Mr. Seifforth moved from working part-time and living on food stamps to a full-time job. His daughter went to school and settled in. Unbeknownst to them and their neighbors, the landlord’s ownership of the building was tenuous, at best, and now they face eviction, through no fault of their own. “Housing should not be a privilege”. It’s a sentiment expressed around the world, and, sadly, with increasing frequency, given the rise this year in mass evictions. Consider just the last month or so, 2022.

In the United Kingdom, November ended with the revelation that, in the depths of the pandemic and its economic and existential hardships, housing associations, home to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable tenants, had secretly lobbied the government to let them charge more rent. At the same time, the typical salary for a housing association executive was around £300,000 a year, close to $400,000. At the same time, Michael Gove, the `levelling up’ secretary, reported that `at least’ tens of thousands of rental properties across the UK were unsafe, due to lack of maintenance. One minister’s “lack of maintenance” is a thousand landlords’ refusal to maintain. Meanwhile, end of the year reports showed that no-fault eviction notices rose 76% in the past year. 48,000 households in England alone were served with no-fault eviction notices.

In Canada, evictions marked the end of the calendar year. Quebec’s non-urban areas saw a marked increase in “renovictions”, forced evictions under the pretense of renovation. Non-urban Quebecois renovictions rose 43% in the past year and look to continue rising. The Coalition of Housing Committees and Tenants Associations of Quebec describes the situation as “alarming”. In metropolitan Quebec, evictions rose from 1,041 in 2021 to 2,256 in 2022, a 154% increase, again in the midst of a pandemic and its hardships.

For the state of Assam, in northeast India, in December, the state went on an eviction spree, and this in a state that has used mass evictions often since May, 2021, when the BJP assumed power. These eviction campaigns have targeted `encroachers’, who are almost Muslim. At the time of the last census, Assam’s population was around 27 million, of whom around 19 million were Hindu and 11 million were Muslim. From May 2021 to September 2022, 4,449 families have been evicted, almost all Muslims of Bengali origin, most of whom have lived in the area for generations. In November, 562 families were evicted from one site, without notice. In the first week of December, 70 families were evicted. On December 19, another 302 families were evicted. On December 26, 40 families were evicted from one site. On December 28, another eviction drive was announced, in Guwahati, Assam’s most populous city. Repeatedly, the government and its supporters have boasted that there was no resistance to the evictions.

Finally, on December 17, a group of people identifying themselves as part of or related to Operation Dudula, an anti-immigrant group in South Africa, invaded a derelict building in the New Doornfontein neighborhood of Johannesburg and evicted over 300 people, almost all migrants. Included among those cast out were more than 60 people living with disabilities, most of whom were blind, and over 200 women and children. As in Assam, the purpose was to remove `encroachers’ who were somehow `foreign’.

That’s the end of 2022, along with mass evictions of slum dwellers in Nigeria, villagers and small shop owners in Cambodia, Afghan refugees in Greece, long term residents in Mexico forced out to `welcome’ the new remote workers from the United States and Europe, Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, and especially Jerusalem, and, in the United States, from Connecticut to Oklahoma to Missouri to California to Oregon, and beyond and between, eviction filings and evictions are surging, often to record heights. When it comes to access to decent, stable, and affordable housing, the world map is one of violence, devastation and existential crisis.

Globally, the common theme is fear. In India, for example, the government assured the world that everything was fine because there was no resistance. According to residents, the reason there was no resistance was years of police violence against those who protested.  Ajooba Khatoon, whose house was demolished, explained, “We did not resist them because there were hundreds of policemen. The police had already instilled a sense of fear among us since their arrival on December 13. We were not allowed to step outside on the eviction day.” Across the United Kingdom, renters live with dangerous conditions because they are fearful of revenge evictions if they speak up. In South Africa, one of the survivors of the eviction in Johannesburg, Lazarus Chinhara, explained, “‘We are not scared of deportation or anything. If we remain quiet, we will become prisoners of conscience.” Tadiwa Dzafunwa added, “I don’t know if we will ever recover from this”.

Around the world and around the corner, neighbors are living with histories of State violence, perpetrated by landlords with the assistance of the police. Thinking of the residents’ and the world’s silence at the evictions in Assam, Moumita Alam wrote, “The silence around eviction however can be attributed to the history of violence that has marked the fate of the protestors …. If every protest begets dead bodies to be buried in silence, ‘peace’ of the burial ground shrouds our memory.” If we silently accept the forced disappearances of neighbors, the web of trauma thickens and tightens as the corpses pile up. What threatens all that is human is the cooperative architecture of violence, silence, and trauma of eviction. I don’t know if we will ever recover from this. Housing should not be a privilege.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Image Credit 1: Next City)     (Photo Image Credit 2: LibCom)

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In Mexico, Aurelia García Cruceño left prison. She never should have been there in the first place.

December 26, 2022 by 3 Comments

Last Tuesday, December 20, Aurelia García Cruceño walked out of, or was released from, Centro de Readaptación Social de Iguala, the local jail in Iguala, in Guerrero, in southwestern Mexico. She never should have been in prison in the first place. In 2019, Aurelia García suffered a miscarriage and was arrested for having had an abortion. Today, Aurelia García is 23. She spent the last three years in jail, in a state that decriminalized abortion in May 2022, in a country whose Supreme Court unanimously declared penalizing abortion as unconstitutional. And yet …

In 2019, Aurelia García Cruceño, a 19-year-old Náhua woman, lived in the town of Xochicalco, in the Chilapa de Álvarez Municipality, in the state of Guerrero. A town leader raped Aurelia García, who, because of the man’s stature in the community, felt she couldn’t accuse him, at least not successfully and not without further endangering herself. And so, in June 2019 she fled to her aunt’s house, in Iguala. Aurelia García had no idea that she was pregnant. She also spoke no Spanish.

Four months later, on October 2, 2019, Aurelia García began suffering intense pain and bleeding. Finally, after a week, she endured a miscarriage, an “involuntary abortion”. Her aunt walked in, saw Aurelia García lying, passed out, on the bed, covered in blood, and called the ambulance, who took her to the hospital. When Aurelia García awoke, she was handcuffed to the bed. She was then charged with homicide, tried, convicted, sentenced, imprisoned.

Again, Aurelia García Cruceño was 19 years old at the time and spoke no Spanish. The lawyers assigned to defend her spoke to her in Spanish, without any Náhuatl speaking translator present. The attorneys told her to plead guilty and take a 13-year sentence. Otherwise, they explained, she’d be imprisoned for 50 years. Aurelia García agreed and signed papers. She had no idea what she was agreeing to nor understood the papers she signed.

At no time was a Náhuatl speaking translator provided, not in the hospital, not by the police, not by her attorneys, not by the Court. And yet …

Feminist and human rights attorneys, organizations and activists jumped to Aurelia García’s defense, once they heard of the case. They brought Aurelia García’s case to court for five separate hearings, and finally arrived at something like justice, or at least the beginnings thereof.

When Aurelia García walked out of prison, she was accompanied by her parents, Agustina Cruceño Naranjas and Alberto García Palazin, and her defense attorneys Verónica Garzón Bonetti and Ximena Ugarte Trangay. Aurelia García, who learned to speak Spanish while in prison, smiled and said, “I made myself strong to be able to move forward and beyond … I am going to study hard and hopefully I will achieve my dream of becoming a teacher … And I want to make sure that what happened to me never happens to anyone else. We cannot stay silent; we must talk and tell what is being done to us.”

Aurelia García Cruceño should never have been in prison. Her abuse by the State is an assault on women generally, on young women, on Indigenous women, on working poor women. As Aurelia García and her allies have noted, she was not alone in Iguala’s Center for Social Readaptation, far from it. In fact, the court has yet to hear the case of Maira Onofre Gómez, held in the same prison for exactly the same `crime’. How many more women must suffer this form of injustice, in Mexico and beyond? For now, Aurelia García Cruceño is with her family and supporters, waiting and preparing for the next trial, where she is suing the State for damages, and preparing for her future life, her dream, of becoming a bilingual teacher for Náhuatl-speaking indigenous children. May that kind of justice prevail.

Aurelia García Cruceño

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Amicus / Twitter) (Photo Credit: La Jornada)

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For counties with higher proportions of Black and women renters, eviction is a death sentence

December 23, 2022 by 1 Comment

If you’re a Black woman in the United States, your chance of being evicted is higher than any other demographic.

News Medical reports, today, “U.S. counties with more evictions have higher mortality rates, study finds”. Earlier in the week, Newswise reported “Mortality rates are higher in U.S. counties with more evictions, UTSW researchers find”. Both reports are based on a study, published in early November, “Association of US County-Level Eviction Rates and All-Cause Mortality”, which looked at 2016 data from 686 U.S. counties “to evaluate the independent association of county-level eviction rates with all-cause mortality in the USA”. The researchers found “county-level eviction rates were significantly associated with all-cause mortality with the strongest effects observed among counties with the highest proportion of Black and women residents.” More Black, more women, more eviction, more death. Again, this is neither tsunami nor wave nor is it particularly surprising, even if horrifying. This is a national pogrom, and, remember, this data is from 2016, in the Before Times, when everything was “normal”

In “normal” times, women were more likely to be evicted than men: “eviction rates were four percent higher for black women than among black men and nine percent higher for Latinx women relative to Latinx men”. That was then, and it still is now, or worse.  In the “normal times”, the times we are told we all want to return to, eviction, pandemic in Black and Brown communities, targeted Black and Brown women. Now we know the fatal consequences of that campaign.

The county-level study found “the relationship between eviction and mortality was strongest in the subgroup of counties with a proportion of women above the median (high), among whom mortality rates were 13.19 deaths (per 100,000 individuals) higher for every 1% higher eviction rate, representing a more than fivefold difference compared to counties with a lower proportion of women.” The same was more or less true for counties with equivalent proportions of Black residents. Again, for every 1% increase in eviction rate, 13 women died.

In August 2021, we noted, “We `learn’ this week that in Virginia, the Virginia that has improved on its shameful history of mass evictions, high eviction rates, and easy eviction procedures, in that Virginia, “Black women … are disproportionately evicted.” We “learn” this week that in New York, the New York that only recently started distributing any rent relief funds, Black women make up nearly two-thirds of those applying for rent relief. Again, that relief has only now started, barely, reaching people.” This week, we `learn’ that Black women being disproportionately evicted is a death sentence. Eviction is an existential crisis, both for those being evicted and for the community. It is a matter of life and death, at the center of which are Black women.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Ariana Torrey / USA Today)

(Infographic Credit: Journal of General Internal Medicine)

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As 2022 ends, where are the women? Increasingly, in prisons and jails and under attack

December 21, 2022 by 8 Comments

In 2022, despite the obvious dangers of Covid transmission, jails and prisons around the world remained overcrowded. Despite decades of evidence-based research that demonstrates the negative health impact of overcrowding carceral institutions, despite volumes upon volumes of harrowing testimony, despite common sense and a sense of humanity, in 2022 jails and prisons around the world remained overcrowded. In Pakistan and India, women’s jails remained overcrowded, largely with women awaiting trial. The same held true in the United States, especially in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. There was much talk this year of “compassionate release” but in fact very little release or compassion. In a year in which the global prison population was at an all-time high, women were the fastest growing prison population, still and again.  That, in a nutshell, is 2022, but wait, there’s more. This week, the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics released two reports, Jail Inmates in 2021 and Prisoners in 2021. Where are the women? Yet again, increasingly in jails and prisons.

From June 2020 to June 2021, the number of people held in jails rose 16%: “The number of males confined in local jails increased 15% from 2020 to 2021, while females increased 22%.” From June 2019 to June 2020, the number of women confined in local jails decreased 37%. The decrease was a response to the Covid pandemic. What is the increase a response to?

From June 2020 to June 2021, the number of people in prisons decreased by 1%: “The overall decline reflected a decrease in prison populations in 32 states that was offset by an increase in 17 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).” Where are the women in this modestly decreasing population? “Twenty-three states and the BOP each had more female prisoners at yearend 2021 than at yearend 2020. The number of females in the BOP prison population increased more than 7% (up almost 800) from yearend 2020 to yearend 2021 … The BOP had approximately 5% more sentenced females and 1% more sentenced males at yearend 2021 than at yearend 2020.”

And who are the incarcerated women? “Among females of all ages at yearend 2021, those who were black (62 per 100,000) or Hispanic (49 per 100,000) were imprisoned at a higher rate than those who were white (38 per 100,000), despite the larger number of white females in the U.S. prison population … Female incarceration rates showed larger proportional differences by race at age 18 to 19 than for any age group. Among females ages 18 to 19, the 2021 imprisonment rates for those who were American Indian or Alaska Native (14 per 100,000) or black (13 per 100,000) were more than 6 times the rate for those who were white (2 per 100,000) … Sixty-four percent (6,300) of females in federal prison on September 30, 2021 were serving time for a drug offense.”

The story these numbers tell is interesting to the extent that we’ve been here before,  so many times. While there was a narrative circulating that the return to normal would hearken to our better angels, in fact, as with housing and eviction, the return to normal for women, especially for women of color, and most especially for young women of color, has been nothing short of catastrophic. That was 2020 to 2021, much of which was with Omicron raging across the country. And yet … And yet, the numbers of incarcerated women rose and rose.

Neal Marquez studies health care and infection in prisons and jails. Most recently he has published co-authored articles on racial and ethnic Inequalities n COVID-19 mortality in Texas prisons and life expectancy and COVID-19 in Florida state prisons. In Florida, Covid contributed to a 4-year reduction in life span of incarcerated people, and this happened in a single year. In Texas, Covid deaths were twice as high among Black and Latinx incarcerated people as among White. As Marquez noted this week, “It’s well-known that jails and prisons are at high risk of infectious disease spread, Marquez said, listing influenza, H1N1, and tuberculosis as examples of diseases that have spread quickly in prisons, with higher mortality compared with the general population.” Why do infectious diseases spread so quickly and with so much more deadly force? Overcrowding, limited access to health care, lack of appropriate equipment and staff figure prominently, prohibitively steep medical copays, and the fact that “people in prisons tend to have worse prevalence of long-standing health conditions than the general population”.

This week, it was reported that women lack basics in crisis-hit Lebanon’s crowded prisons; the `overcrowded’ Gorakhpur district jail, in northern India, is at 325% capacity; the United Kingdom’s “overflowing prisons put safety at risk”; and,  “due to overcrowding”, the Fulton County Jail, in Georgia, transferred incarcerated to women to the Atlanta City Jail, a move that has been “long talked about”. That’s the news this week … and it’s only Wednesday. Where are the women? In prisons, jails, immigrant detention centers and under attack. It may only be Wednesday for some, but for incarcerated women across the United States and around the world, it’s December.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Lauren Stumblingbear / Krannert Art Museum) (Infographic Credit: Penal Reform International)

 

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This weekend’s election demonstrated, again, that women are Tunisia’s revolutionary guard

December 19, 2022 by 6 Comments

Twelve years ago, December 17, 2010, something happened in Tunisia: the Jasmine Revolution. Remember? On December 17, Mohammed Bouazizi, a street vendor, set himself on fire. It was a desperate act that lit the sky and the world. His act reflected a general sense of despair, and in that reflected despair, people saw transformative change as their only hope. Within 28 days, on January 11, 2011, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali resigned. From its first flicker, the Jasmine Revolution was more than the ouster of a dictator. It was an assault on patriarchy that emerged from decades of women and youth organizing. Twelve years later, it still is, as this weekend’s parliamentary elections demonstrated.

Much happened immediately after Ben Ali’s resignation, including the formation of Ennadha, itself an outgrowth of the Movement of Islamic Tendency, formed in 1981. In the first post-Ben Ali elections, the Constituent Assembly election, Ennadha won a plurality of seats and so formed the new government. In 2019, jurist and law professor Kaïs Saïed ran for President, with Ennadha’s endorsement, and won. In 2021, demonstrations, led by youth and women, broke out across Tunisia, protesting police violence, corruption, economic conditions, and stringent COVID mandates. On July 25, 2021, Saïed suspended parliament and dismissed the Prime Minister, in what some have termed a “self-coup”. Then he engineered the removal of women from government and, largely, from the electoral process.

This was somewhat predicted by the years following the ouster of Ben Ali. For women, the first three years were “interesting”. The government seesawed repeatedly on its position vis-à-vis women’s rights, equality, and roles. The State and parts of Civil Society colluded in trying to diminish the significance of women’s work and contributions. Once the unity of the first phase of the Jasmine Revolution dissipated, fractures emerged. In the first three years, women reported increased attacks on women ostensibly for their attire. In some instances, women were attacked for not wearing a veil or for wearing jeans; in other instances, women were attacked for wearing veils. The policing of women’s bodies intensified until 2012, when a young woman was raped by police officers. When she took the officers to court, she was charged with public indecency. Across much of Tunisia, women and men shouted, “We are not going back!”

In January 2018, women led protests against the IMF imposed austerity budget that went into effect January 1, 2018. Their rallying cry was: “Fech Nestannew?” “What are we waiting for?” “Qu’attendons-nous?” “فاش نستناو ؟”. The IMF budget consisted, once again, of increased taxes, sliced subsidies, subjecting the civil service to “efficiencies”, raising food prices, ending recruiting and hiring for public sector jobs. Women responded: “When do we get the jobs we struggled for and were promised? When will food become generally affordable? Where is our housing? What are we waiting for? Travail, pain, liberté et dignité! Employment, bread, liberty, and dignity!”. The women invoked the memory of the 1984 Intifada al-Khubez, the Bread Uprising.

On March 11, 2018, women in Tunisia marched in an historic first, a march for women’s equality in inheritance rights, a first-ever demand not only for Tunisia but for the Arab world. In Tunisia, equality is a right, not a favor. They  chanted, “Moitié, moitié ; c’est la pleine citoyenneté!”; “Pour garantir nos droits, il faut changer la loi!”; “L’égalité est un droit, pas une faveur!”. “50-50 equals full citizenship!” “To guarantee our rights, we have to change the law!” “Equality is a right, not a favor!”

And that brings us to this weekend’s parliamentary election. In the months leading up to the election, Saïed and his allies engineered a new electoral law which effectively removed women from running for office, this in a country that had decades of gender parity legislation and practice. Of the 1427 candidates, 214 were women, 14.99%. That’s gender parity under the new regime. Many, rightly, predicted the result would be either a male-dominated or all male parliament. This in a country in which “a supermajority (84.5%) thought that women should be allowed to participate in politics.”

Everything seemed ready for Kaïs Saïed’s ascendancy to complete autocratic control. With the elimination of women, the elections seemed a foregone conclusion. But those who bought that line hadn’t considered the histories of women and youth organizing in Tunisia, what one writer called “L’éloquence des chiffres: Le pouvoir lâché par les jeunes et les femmes” The eloquence of numbers: the power unleashed by youth and women. “Unleashed” as in erupting, exploding. Fewer than 9% of the electorate showed up to vote. Don’t want us at your party? Fine. We’ll go somewhere else. 9 million people are registered voters. 800,000 voted. Of the 800,000, 34% were identified as women, 66% as men. More importantly, 8,200,000 said “What are we waiting for? Not this!” Now many are calling for Kaïs Saïed’s resignation. Whether that happens or not, this weekend’s election was another chapter in the long revolutionary history of Tunisian women and youth organizing, pushing back, pushing forward.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Tunisie Numérique)

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In Pakistan, women’s jails are overcrowded, mostly with women awaiting trial

December 12, 2022 by 4 Comments

According to today’s Express Tribune, in Sindh, one of Pakistan’s four provinces, jails are “bursting at the seams with twice the population”. Some jails are at six times their prescribed capacity. In another piece, still in today’s Express Tribune, in Punjab, the most populous province in Pakistan, 927 women are currently incarcerated. Of those women, 91 are mothers currently living, in prison, with their children. What do these numbers mean, and, even more, where are the women?

Sindh’s three women’s jails are located in Karachi, Hyderabad, and Sukkur. Together, they house 486 women. Their official capacity is 420, and so they’re 18% over capacity. To put that in perspective, Sindh’s jails’ official capacity is 13,500, and they currently house 23,500. The jails for men and women are 74% over capacity. Here’s the thing about the incarcerated women’s `rosy’ picture. Of the 486 incarcerated women, 421 are under trial, or remand, prisoners. That is, they are awaiting trial. 87% of the women have not been convicted of any crime. For the general prison population in Sindh, 77% are awaiting trial. If the State were to release people, and especially women, before trial, not only would there be no `prison overcrowding’ … there would be almost no prison. Further, if the State were to release women who are awaiting trial, the impact on their children would be beneficial.

Which brings us to Punjab, where 927 women are incarcerated. 91 of them are mothers raising their children in prison. Of the 91 mothers, 67 are awaiting trial. 74% of the women are officially not guilty of anything, but they and their children must suffer incarceration. As is so often the case around the world, the women explain they are charged with having assaulted abusive partners. In other cases, the partners can’t take the children, for any of a number of reasons, including divorce. And so, in one province alone, 105 children under the age of six live and grow, or not, in prisons, where the schools are mostly missing in action and where the environment is cruel and inappropriate.

Meanwhile, Punjab jails are 38% beyond their prescribed capacity. The jails experience regular food shortages, as well as staffing shortages. Punjab has 42 prisons; 21 have no doctors. The whole system has a grand total of 40 doctors, for a population of close to 51,000 and growing … and getting sick and dying.

At the end of last year, Pakistan’s prison and jails housed 85,670 individuals, of whom 60,000 – 70% — were awaiting trial. At that time, 1399 women were incarcerated. It’s not clear how long people wait in overcrowded, toxic, life-threatening conditions for `justice to be served’, but it is clear that the situation is untenable. None of this is new: “Pakistan inherited an outdated prison system from the British colonial regime in India and it has not changed much in over 200 years. Even today, the Prisons Act 1894 and the Prisoners Act 1900 are the main laws which govern prisons and prisoners in Pakistan.” The Prisons Act 1894 emerged from recommendations of the 1838 Prison Discipline Committee.

From 1838 to 2022, and beyond, from Pakistan, and India, to England and beyond, women and children suffer indignity, violence, cruelty, disease and death because State policy has created the circumstances in which prisons are crowded `beyond capacity’. You know what is within our capacity? Justice. Shut the prisons and jails. Decolonize justice systems today.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Infographic credit: The Express Tribune)

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Strip-searches at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women: “It’s akin to rape”

December 6, 2022 by 1 Comment

Virginia operates four `correctional facilities’ for women: Deerfield Work Center for Women; the Central Virginia Correctional Unit #13; the Virginia Correctional Center for Women; and Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women. In the October 2022 monthly census report, the Deerfield Center reported no `residents’ and the Central Virginia Correctional Unit doesn’t disaggregate male and female incarcerated persons in its census. That leaves Fluvanna and Virginia Correctional. Together they reportedly housed 1202 women, 768 women in Fluvanna and 434 in Virginia Correctional Center. For years, Fluvanna has been known as a place that routinely violates women’s rights, bodies, lives, hopes and dreams, and does so without compunction, all in the name of “correction”. In 2016, Fluvanna settled a lawsuit claiming its medical care was so bad that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In 2019, Fluvanna continued to have “life-threatening medication failures.” And now, six years later, the court-appointed monitor’s most recent report shows that the medical care at Fluvanna is still failing the residents. So is general treatment of the incarcerated women, and that’s the reason Shebri Dillon is suing the facility, for its practice of routine strip searches.

Shebri Dillon was sentenced to Fluvanna for having engaged in a fraudulent real estate deal. Since she’s been at Fluvanna, she’s been a model prisoner, but that doesn’t matter when it comes to strip searches: “I live in the prison’s honor wing. I’ve never had a drug history, and I don’t have a violent history …. It’s akin to rape, because you have to leave your mind to be able to perform this – like leaving your reality, pretending you’re somewhere else. I mean you’re getting naked and showing the inside of your body orifices to a complete stranger … You don’t want to tell people when something abusive happens to you that is embarrassing and humiliating. I don’t want to tell you that somebody has looked at my tailgate, some of which may have been looking at me sexually, some of whom may be looking at me like I was the scum of the earth.”

For years, Shebri Dillon subjected herself to the sexual violence of strip searches, kept her silence, as did those around her. Then something changed. Covid and the long lockdowns: “When we had no visitation due to COVID, all of our movements were incredibly restricted, drugs exploded in here, because the corrections officers don’t make enough money, and half of them don’t stay here very long. They bring it to people who are locked in cages, can’t do anything, can’t go anywhere.” In 2021, there were 19 incidents involving drugs being smuggled into Fluvanna. Three of those involved visitors, the other 16 involved staff. But the routine strip searches continued, and not only did they continue, but with staff shortages, counselors, librarians, secretaries were asked to observe. All in the name of security, all in the name of corrections.

And so Shebri Dillon sued: “I understand we’re in prison. I understand there are security issues, but they also have to understand that we are human beings, and that a lot of the practices are degrading. They’re dehumanizing, and if they serve no security purpose they need to be revisited.”

Eight years ago, almost to the day, writing of the conditions in Fluvanna, we asked, “What exactly is the State “correcting” when it violates women’s rights, bodies, lives, hopes and dreams, and does so without compunction? What is the public policy here that condemns women on the basis of their gender? Want to end violence against women? End the epidemic of mass incarceration of women. Do it now!”

Strip searches are intrinsic to incarceration. Children in custody in the United Kingdom are routinely traumatized. Some respond by self-harming and attempting suicide. Aboriginal women and girls in Australia are disproportionately strip searched, and many of them respond by self-harming and attempting suicide. Ending strip searches in Fluvanna would be an important step. Ending mass trauma and violence against women and girls would be an important step, on the way to ending the epidemic altogether. Shut down Fluvanna and all its `sister institutions’. Do it now!

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo credit: The Appeal / Rob Poggenklass)

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Los Angeles faces a “flood of evictions”

December 3, 2022 by 1 Comment

With over 10 million residents, and counting, Los Angeles County is far and away the most populous county in the United States. Next in line is Cook County, Illinois, with just over 5 million inhabitants. Los Angeles County will end its pandemic-era tenant protections December 31. With just over 4 million residents, the City of Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States. The City of Los Angeles eviction moratorium will expire January 31, 2023. This morning’s NPR headline read: “‘Flood of evictions’ looms in Los Angeles as pandemic tenant protections expire”. While the situation is dire, sometimes a metaphor hides as much as it reveals, and that is the case with the flood of evictions image. The same is true of the phrase “mass eviction.”

As today’s article accurately reports, according to Tim Thomas, director of UC Berkeley’s Eviction Research Network, Los Angeles “going to see the highest flood of evictions and, potentially, exacerbated homelessness on top of the conditions that they already had. As these moratoria and rental assistance end, we’re seeing across the country a lot of cities have reached historical averages of eviction by August of this year — and are actually surpassing the historical average.” And it’s not only cities. According to the Oklahoma Policy Institute, eviction rates in Oklahoma are at an all-time high. That’s not eviction filings but evictions. Eviction filings are also at an all-time high. Return to normal has meant skyrocketing rents, eviction filings, eviction, instability, disruption, menace.

The problem with `floods’ and `mass’ is that they suggest an immediately perceptible phenomenon. What is a flood, after all? “An overflowing or irruption of a great body of water over land not usually submerged; an inundation, a deluge.” You can see the flood, immediately. You can hear the flood, and often you can even the smell the flood. The immediate impact is plainly visible. And that is precisely what does not happen in the kind of mass eviction engineered by corporate and hedge fund landlords. They don’t come in with bulldozers and remove whole blocks of residences. They work more or less privately and individually. You don’t see the harm to the neighborhood, to the community. Half the time, people leave before the sheriffs come, and so you don’t have the tragedy of family possessions thrown out into the streets.

In Baltimore, Maryland, there’s a new sheriff in town, literally: Sheriff Sam Cogen. On Thursday, Sheriff Cogen ended the policy of posting eviction notices in apartment complex common areas. As Sheriff Cogen explained, the posting of eviction notices in plain sight for everyone to read “was raised as an issue a while ago and the attorney general weighed in on an opinion and said that, barring any extraordinary circumstances, that the deputies should be posting on the individual doors, not on the common door, not on a mailbox, out in the lobby, not by an elevator. And to me, that’s a more difficult thing to do, but it’s also the more correct thing to do and the more humane thing to do, and we’re talking about trying to humanize this process as best as we can because what we need to do is we need to let the tenant know, absolutely and with certainty, give them notice that there’s an eviction proceeding.”

Delivering the eviction notice to the actual intended recipient is a reasonable first step. A greater step would be to extend, renew or initiate eviction moratoria and eviction diversion programs. The Scarlet E stigma and condemnation of eviction begins from the moment of filing and, currently, continues for a lifetime. While that was always the case, with corporate and hedge fund landlords and their propensity to file at the drop of a hat, this issue has itself become an invisible flood of sorts. So, publish not the name of those threatened with eviction, but rather the name of the landlords. Every jurisdiction in this country has a small group of `enterprises’ that comprise the overwhelming majority of those filing eviction. In Richmond, Virginia, for example, 15 large corporations are responsible for over half of the eviction filings.

There’s no flood looming. The flood is here, everywhere, every day. Every eviction is a flood of Biblical proportions. Every eviction filing is already part of that flood. We must do better than sink or swim, where swimming only occurs at someone else’s expense. The only way to control a flood is to contain it. Housing is a human right. Protect it.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit 1: William H. Johnson, Folk Scene–Eviction / Smithsonian American Art Museum)

(Image Credit 2: Hilda Katza, The Flood / Smithsonian American Art Museum)

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Rent control would be good, controlling corporate and hedge fund landlords would be better

November 27, 2022 by 8 Comments

Despite much ballyhoo around Thanksgiving Day in the United States, and other celebrations around the world, the eviction and housing news of the past week has been relentless. In Oklahoma, where “it’s easy to be evicted,” evictions and rent are skyrocketing, thousands are being or recently have been pushed out of their homes into an environment where affordable housing is either unavailable or dangerous to your health. In Quebec, those hoping to flee domestic violence find, again, no available affordable housing. Faced with home-based violence or the violence being unhoused, many are forced to remain in perilous situations. In Florida, residents, often long-standing residents, of mobile home parks are being evicted by new landlords who, upon possession, jack up the rents. In Virginia, mobile home park residents are suffering the same fate. In Charlotte, North Carolina, new landlords are doing the same, taking possession, raising the rents precipitously with the intent of forcing the current residents out into, again, a hostile and even impossible local and regional housing environment. And then there’s the United Kingdom.

According to new government data, between January and March, the United Kingdom saw a record high number of no-fault eviction filings. From end of March last year to end of March this year, the United Kingdom saw a 76% rise in no-fault eviction filings. At least 20% of those receiving evictions ended up being forced out, often onto the streets. In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis and the approach of winter, the situation is expected to worsen. In June 2019, the United Kingdom government promised to end no-fault evictions. In the intervening three years, they have done nothing, actually less than nothing, given the rise in housing costs. Meanwhile, on Thursday, Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, announced that tens of thousands of homes across the United Kingdom are unsafe because “they have not been looked after properly”, not by the landlords and not by the State, that has consistently looked the other way. Tens of thousands of homes do not mysteriously, suddenly become unsafe. So much for levelling up.

Across the United States, and beyond, the fact that the rent is too damned high and even worse, that it’s rising faster than ever before is perhaps finally becoming `newsworthy’. Yesterday, NPR reported, “After gutting local newspapers, hedge fund Alden Global is going after mobile home parks.” Today, The Roanoke Times editorial headline says it all, “Wealthy corporate investors prey on vulnerable mobile home park residents”. What is that preys on the vulnerable? A predator. This weekend, the news focused on Alden Global, a hedge fund that has bought a slew of mobile home parks across the country, including Massie’s Mobile Home Park in Christiansburg, Virginia. Alden comes in, does nothing about repairs, raising the rents impossibly, evicts residents, or just comes in and evicts residents, depending on the local laws. But the thing is, Alden is typical of hedge funds and corporate investors. This is what they do. And they are doing this, as never before, across the United States rental housing market. Rent control is good, essential even, but it won’t stop hedge funds. What is also needed is renter controls. There are tests for real estate agents, why not for landlords? How much is too much? Remember the housing market collapse of 2008, engineered by corporate interests in collusion with banks? Remember “too big to fail”? For some, the lesson was if you get big enough, you’re untouchable. It’s not too late to control the corporates from seizing the housing market altogether. Housing is a human right. Protect it.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit 1: Bill Bragg / The Guardian) (Image Credit 2: Elizabeth Olds / Smithsonian American Art Museum)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , ,

“They’re not evicting me. It’s just that, you know, on a fixed income, I can’t do it.”

November 17, 2022 by 4 Comments

Across the country this week, eviction filings are skyrocketing, evictions are spiking. In over 500 counties, evictions are now over their historical pre-pandemic averages. Evictions in Oklahoma County are 40% above pre-pandemic levels. Eviction filings and evictions are rising to and often exceeding pre-pandemic levels in Detroit, Michigan; Richmond, Virginia; Akron, Ohio; Nashville, Tennessee. From Virginia to Illinois to Californiaand all points between and beyond, mobile home park residents face rapidly rising rents and, again spiking eviction filings and evictions. Much of this is due to a `new breed’ of investors in the rental market, corporate investors and hedge funds, for whom, as one Richmond, Virginia, resident put it, “I’m not looked at as a human being. I’m looked at as a dollar sign”. Along with all the eviction filings and eviction proceedings, there is another multitude of people who, faced with steeply rising rents, move out. They don’t `decide to move’, they are forced to move, but because nothing was filed and no sheriffs were called, they don’t even figure in the accounting. These are the so-called `informal evictions’. They are the signature of low- and fixed-income people in the throes of the free market. According to one report today, “homeless shelters are seeing more senior citizens with no place to live.” It’s winter in America. Nowhere to go.

In Columbia Falls, Montana, Lisa Beaty, 64 years old, and her partner, Kim Hilton, 69 years old, report their landlord just doubled their rent. The two live on disability payments. They can’t find anywhere to go, and so Ms. Beaty will move into her daughter’s one-bedroom apartment and Mr. Hilton will move into his … truck. As Ms. Beaty explained, “They’re not evicting me. It’s just that, you know, on a fixed income, I can’t do it.” “That light at the end of the tunnel seems like it’s going out,” added Mr. Hilton.

In some places, people 60 and older are becoming the largest demographic living in shelters. What happens when elders move into homeless shelters, spaces not designed for seniors? As Lisa Sirois, a staffer at the Poverello Center in Missoula, Montana, explains, “As soon as someone is unable to make it to the restroom on their own, regularly transfer on their own, really operate independently, we do have to ask them to leave.” In Bozeman, Montana, an elder was asked “to find an alternative place to stay”. He was later found outside a department store, frozen to death. It’s winter in America.

With nursing homes closing, rents rising, and assistance – such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – nowhere near adequate to the cost of aging in America, the much-touted return to normal means an attack on the most vulnerable. Today, it’s the seniors, tomorrow … “They’re not evicting me. It’s just that, you know, on a fixed income, I can’t do it.” “That light at the end of the tunnel seems like it’s going out”.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: City Limits)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , , ,
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