>> next, laura gottesdiener looks at how much bush is an's innovations in african-american communities around the world. this is a little over an hour. >> thank you, everyone, for being here. i want to explain some of the music you might've heard when he walked in. it's a mix tape created by oral historians who work for the production house called somatic black future in the oral history interviews into recording. and musical conversation for struggled housing and you can get a free download along with the book outside. now, let's begin with the truce dori. the police were out the door.

they were running footsteps on the stairs and martha biggs, mrs. bates, open up the man shouted. 9-year-old shania biggs remembers founding of pace followed by the deliberate of a battering ram. she and her seven euros mr. justice she serial and the two were playing barbie in the living room of the two fun in chicago where the family lived. it was the weekend and later that afternoon, jemima and her two sisters plan to pick up their progress report cards and salazar elementary school. outside, pounding grew pounding premotor peerage of my rush to the window appeared out only to see seven police cars parked below with their lights flashing. the girl's mother woke to the commotion and rushed to the door. she opened it and saw seven police officers, infighting flashlight in her dreams exploding once again. the year was 2010.

the first year that in the united states history the banks seized more than 1 million homes, is it in approximately 3000 families every single day. things began to happen fast enough house spirit martha yells at the grocer to address. to my injustice flew to the bathroom. martha and shawna grabbed bags of clothes and ran to the family minivan. to my injustice entered mercia bathroom and a female police officer knocked down to remind them to put on coats and shoes and it was winter outside. what the roster 3-year-old son and coaxed him into the car. altogether the five of them.but there was tight. martha and jemima and the front, justice, deviant and jemima smooshed between coats and clothes in the back is martha

drove away from the house that had been their home, she knew of this addiction was not only part of the 2008 has increases, she knew it was part of a much longer story, one that stretched back to her own childhood and even further, one that stretched back to the founding of the united states, a story of housing, recent freedom that leads to the nations history lake to crisscross stitches on the fabric of the quilt. that was the story to be recounted by a fan not 11-year-old shania biggs a summer as a state with the same or we can come in chicago. she was 11 at the time and of his part of the worst heat wave this city was going to have that number. she stood in front of me in the darkened living room, the lights off to keep it coolidge to close her posterized type and concentration and the words poured out. she couldn't forget the founders the battering ram p. she couldn't forget the lights in

the police cars. she told me later for months afterward she asked her mother again and again, remember she was 11 at the time, why have the police come and take her home again quite is that what the police are supposed to do? finally she opened her eyes and said listen, laura, when i was homeless it wasn't like i was dirty because my mom made sure it wasn't. but then i was going to school with everything on my mind of what happened the other night. yesterday i got a house, but what about today? i might have to sleep in the car today. i might get a meal today, but will i? was something go wrong? what will happen? how i get home today? thank you again for coming tonight and there's a number of people want to thank, but make it brief. thank you to busboys and pellets for hosting. thank you to c-span for coming

to film. thank you for everyone who made the event possible. public citizen's compass center for study of responsive law and the institute for policy studies for cohosting. thank you too great for cheryl, my fabulous publisher. thank you declares hussein who wrote the foreword to this book. i remember when i open a word document that was the forward and is only five pages and i said that was everything i was trying to say this to your book, but he said it better. i want to thank rob robin and, two of the cofounders, national housing justice network and one of the most visionary networks that is showing us how we could make housing different in the united states. i want to thank everyone who's not here. all the activists and all the families who trusted me with stories and alpine homes to me. obviously without them, they would be no book can no evening tonight. tonight i will speak about my

first book, "a dream foreclosed: black america and the fight for a place to call home." this book traces for families during the lead up to one are not of the world's worst financial crisis since the great depression. the book follows the stories of martha garrett county grandmother in detroit who worked with her community to stop her eviction. michael hyatt genes in chattanooga, tennessee and other resident of the public housing complex and stop the city from tearing it down. great spindly and stanford, north carolina who fought legally and aggressively what he called the 10 year crime spree in which he dealt with every single major wall street bank and i must every single one of the criminal servicers. and martha biggs in chicago, mother of chermayeff who lived with her family and young children of a homeless single mother for almost a decade of

chicago until she worked with the chicago anti-eviction campaign to find someplace, a safe place to live. i want to make it clear from the outset i'm not a financial reporter and what's not for closure crisis i will speak about how we choose to organize society and how that could potentially be different. will travel from the inside out rincon homes in chicago deliberated blocks in nature shirt to the maintenance across the country. and now let us begin with a simple question. what is home? is such a small, simple word. only four letters. at the power of the word palm is nearly unrivaled. it is surprised as who could forget the homecoming. mimic its home finally after being battered for almost a decade and makes it to his house

and his wife, penelope testament to let spring up the bad. let's bring out the matrimonial bread yet he says do not do that because he knew he constructed around a living tree and he was the only one that knew that secret. but he said those words, she said i know you are may have been and now you belong in this home and i was when he was home, not when he reached the structure, but when he belonged to this house. it was a decent home. the iconic plan can't remember the rest of their families had been cooped up in this tiny subdivided apartment on the south side of chicago. it is a tiny apartment where there are actually multiple families living in them because the landlord had grown drywall and allowed four, five, six families to live in them only reason african-american families had to tolerate the situation

was the way communities would not allow domain and the federal government would not lead to these families. as a race all, they were forced to the fitness explicative in a situation. she says finally after that they and their trap and a tiny home, she says i will work 20 hours a day and knowledge vacations in chicago. i was strapped a baby on my back if i have to scrub the floors and wash the sheets, but we've got to news. we've got to get out of here. if we stretch all the way back to the dawn of civilization, we will remember was stationary homes rather than local tents used by nomadic communities that were the marker, the heralding of what they consider to be human civilization. fast forward to the united states. a home is nearly synonymous with the idea of equality, upward mobility and freedom.

it is very worth more contested in the english language than the word home? as law professor anita hill race referring to the 2008 housing crisis, at the heart of this crisis is the ideological disconnect between home is a basic element of the american dream and a pathway to a quality and home is a market project. since 2007, an estimated 10 million people have been forced from their homes or banks pursued for closure and eviction. in all reality, that's a conservative estimate. some say 20 million people, others opted out of the crisis under 30 million people. but let's stick with the conservative estimate. 10 million. how much is 10 million? well, it's the population of tunisia. it's not than 16 times the population of washington d.c. it's the amount the wall street

banks the party paid so far this year and campaign contribution to the lawmakers who sit on the house financial services committee, which is the house committee charged with regulating the ranks. did i mention i was $10 million just this year? it's also the population of the state of michigan, the 10 most populous states in the union. in other words, bankers have evicted every single man, woman and child in the great lakes state. are these numbers that we've heard a in the mainstream media? are the numbers we've heard from government agents is that it not been that it detracts this number or the people evicted her what happened to them after? how is it possible that the entire equivalent population of michigan has been forced from their home and we didn't even hear about it? perhaps it's a reflection of how we value this crisis, that we

measured in stock prices rather than missed school days, that we quantified in property values rather than family dinners or that we've spoken about at a shareholder profits rather than shuddered as schools. we haven't in this country since 2007 only suffered an economic crisis. we have suffered a crisis of values, of meaning in the definition of our own minds. later this month is the 50th anniversary of the historic march on washington and martin luther king iconic i have a dream speech. we remembered many aspects of this march. many of us will go down to d.c. to commemorate this event. but there were also words in a speech that have been erased from history and i want to read to you briefly from the speech so we remembered that they are back in historical record. we remember all of the images of

little children holding hands in alabama, but we don't remember that martin luther king jr. was also talking about restructuring of society so we could achieve the economic equality so desperately needed. in a sense, we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. the architects of the republic wrote the magnificent words the constitution and declaration of independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every american was to fall heir. this guy was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. it is obvious today he said that america has defaulted insofar as her citizens of color are comes to instead of honoring the obligation, america has given the people a bad check, paycheck which has has come back marked, insufficient funds.

in reading this now today, i can't help but tank of the scandal and hundreds of thousands of foreclosures settlement checks were sent out by the banks after the robust finance scandal and they were required to spend very little money, $500, sometimes a thousand to hundreds of thousands of people thrown out of their homes illegally since 2007 and yet when homeowners received a check, the open air, went to the bank and to everyone's surprise, the checks bounced. this became a bradley today, there's no greater evidence that the united states continued to fall that constitutional promises to african-american in the ongoing and racially slanted foreclosure crisis. because i'm not just talking about the superficial statistics , statistics that african-americans are twice as likely to be foreclosed on the white americans or the fact

african-americans with high credit scores, good credit rating or three times more likely to be so predatory subprime loans that white americans at the same credit score. i'm not talking about the fact that it was virchow loan officer testified in court that wells fargo and to declare all other companies at the same time put bounties on the heads of minority borrowers. how did they do this? they paid cash incentives to testify to aggressively peddled these subprime mortgages and communities of color. i'm not just talking about the fact the morgan stanley is being sued for violating the fair housing act of detroit in detroit you remember him go in the largest municipal bankruptcy in u.s. is three. i'm also talking about the unique impact that the foreclosure crisis has had an african-american communities because they dozens of african american scholars, intellectuals and activists ask thing to me

and their words, their insights come african-americans have always had a unique relationship to home, private property and access to the constitution. as law professor marshaling armstrong writes, african-americans have a store called relationship to property that differs from that of other american. our introduction was contemporary relation between african-americans and property are still impaired she wrote. but it's not simply houses, structures that taken the conversation because holding private property in achieving the full citizenship rights of americans has been directly tied nations founding. what's really at stake in the quest for wholeness read them in full recognition as a strike in memphis sanitation workers who

claimed in 1968, i am a man and as a low-wage workers are claiming right now, again now predominantly people of color that i am a man and i am a woman. in other words, home, land and economic rights and access to to the original american dream. the dream of democracy. it's fitting we're speaking about democracy because the project began a place that just five players. detroit, michigan, which i mention is currently undergoing the municipal bankruptcy. i was going at the time two years ago to see firsthand what i heard only with yours about current masses of people stopping eviction. other bank on building, whole blocks taken over by collect data scummy people setting up communities outside the control of capitalism.

in other words, i was hearing about the grated neighborhoods. at the time it in an active participant and occupy wall street in new york city, so i knew something about liberated from good and the father did to codify a convert to the free kitchen there, people sketching. i knew and liberated we organize for the collect give rather than the individual. i know we organize zone so they can read ms basic need and any work they did, however hard they were working this value enough to ensure their basic needs. i knew it was a place where time grew long, long enough to listen to everyone's story and talk to everybody and learn their names and you're never late. i learned it was a place not of utopia. i'm not foolish enough to think that, but he contested down, is not organized in the nablus to challenge the near absolute truth money and corporations over our daily lives.

but the idea of this movement that i was experiencing in new york, the atf has spread from downtown public spaces into neighborhoods, particularly the neighborhoods most big nice by the bank was something i found almost unbelievable. i landed in the train after unfortunate realizing that no public transportation may, i met finally a woman. the first day of the earth, we were in her living room late on a sunday afternoon. she had just back from church and whispering about the most bang at the same and dignified outfits have ever had. i grew up in suburban columbus oligomeric, so i was amused to the sheer beauty and dignity of his 65-year-old african-american woman raised in alabama and so

very religious and postindustrial detroit. she was wearing a white price you with ruffles and greater shock, cream-colored smocks in a large room with other hot. she looked to me like the absolute opposite person than i could ever imagine to take direct action to protest anything. i was a bit of a collectivist anarchists are rarely showered and we have long hair and drive than i was stunned as the women sat and told me her story over the course of six or seven hours. after 22 years kammerer has been thought to foreclosure is the result of a second predatory mortgage. she tried for years to scrape by. her children pitched in, grandchildren pitched in, but finally she couldn't any longer pay. she tried to fight the foreclosure in court. ultimately the lawyer said nam, there is nothing legally i can do for you. the bank owns their home. it's been repossessed. this home is no longer yours. it was about that time people started talking about or thought

behind your back because she was saying things that sounded dirty unbelievable. she said something to me, for example. it was not that i didn't understand the banks owns a a piece of paper. it was that the banks didn't understand that i owned my home. she said those types of things that one of her friends whispered to her eldest daughter, i think your mother might have to go see a doctor. but she didn't need to see a doctor. she called the newspaper and church group in neighbors and everyone in her community and the day ever scheduled in fixed come in the davis dispatched someone to park a dumpster in front of her house in the city contract are circling to haul that all of her belongings from all the things she'd amassed after the 22 years of living in her home, raising six grandchildren there and many more grandchildren, she called her neighbors and hundreds of people massed on her front lawn and stood in the street and on

forever on home and had come you can't part a dumpster here is a dumpster left. later that day she went downtown to meet with a representative of inc. of new york mellon that claimed to own her mortgage after it'd been shuttled down as a result of the securitization process. she spoke to a bank representative than i said i'm sorry, you don't have an appointment today. so she said well, if i can't come in today, then nobody can come out. and so the 65-year-old grandmother dressed in a very similar way price you laid down in front of the office of the bank and refused to move. well, the papers got wind of this naturally in the next it'd been called in to call off the dogs. we will sell you back this house. it is yours. we don't want it. you have to call off the dogs. a few weeks later, just a few

days after i'd gone to visit her in her living room, she sat down with a representative and finally send papers to operate on the home that had already been hers for 22 years. i heard that story and i was hooked. i had to hear more. i had to find out what made these liberated spaces in what inspired some neighborhoods in some communities do not suffer silently and shame as the banks stole millions of homes. i wanted to learn but communities organized while others didn't. i traveled the country and in the communities in suburban north carolina and urban chat at the tennessee. minneapolis, minnesota and very rural western looking at. i heard her being credible stories. i heard a story about a man in toledo who won the day of his eviction got a bunch of bricks and a bunch of cement and sealed

himself into his house and force the surest apartment to stand on transparent to sterling him out. i had a transistor that of woman named monique waite in minneapolis about a week before her scheduled eviction, she too called up a construction company, but this time she wanted hundreds of dollars worth of dirt and mulch so she organized a dump truck to pick up the mulch and when her neighbors said monique, without the dirt for quite she said it's to plant a garden because i'm not moving. she planted the garden and she's still there. when i went there, she was teaching other people how to brocail and cabbage and carrots and all the other good stuff you can grow in minneapolis. i heard people recount stories that they almost didn't believe except they were telling them. this is how one retired

firefighter explained the scene of her eviction blockade to save her home. she said my daughter called and said the sheriff was here. so i called jay art and before you know what, all these people are on my porch shedding fake of a fight, fight and more people on bicycles and everyone saying we are the people, why. my neighbors were yelling with got a, what. the construction construction worker and people were chanting to tell the whole wide world, this is people's territory and eviction blockade was out in full force. it was such a beautiful thing. i felt like i was loading outside myself and i was just watching all these people on my front lawn to send my home. and that organizers and activists in the chicago anti-eviction campaign that occupy home chapters across the country and take it to a

nationally. in moratorium now in detroit and chattanooga organizing so many more but i won't bore you with the list. the more i traveled, the more i've realized african-americans unique relationship to home, the story of struggle and dreams that stretched until the present day had made many communities actually better equipped to respond to the crisis. sure they were being disproportionally attacked by wall street, yet they were also better organized and most importantly to me, more visionary and a proposal that they were imagining for how we could restructure the system. as one of the cofounders of tape at the landsat, we are in a transformative moment. because this crisis is firmly rooted in the housing crisis, i think will have significant changes in the way people think about not only housing, but land itself. in other words, i didn't focus on these neighborhoods because they were hit disproportionately

hard. i focused on communities because they were the most organized and resistant and all of us of all races have some thing to learn from them. it wasn't until my second trip to chicago together and organizing isn't always an act undertaken by sea area or political. i learned that often act as a stout shoes be act to this. they do so out of basic survival. i started with a story of jambalaya and justice and martha and demand and chihuahua and i want to tell the story now or a justice on the contrary. some people ask if that's if that's a stark image of a little girl. i said no, it's not the stock image of a little girl. is a photograph of justice, one of martha big staters. it was taken by an extraordinary young photographer in chicago named ray lewis.

i'll put it back down. that's good. and so the story of justice is that she was born during the trials of martha is decade homeless. the story began in cabrini green, one of the most infamous housing projects in the country, at its peak house 25,000 people. it was never in tenet for that many, that people were in such dire needs they crowded into apartments. the mayor of chicago decided that he had a fasting for transformation to transfer the city of chicago. his plan was to tell the public housing projects down, including the one in which martha lives. yet a plan to build 40,000 new units, but unfortunately that didn't happen. so martha along with 25,000 neighbors and children at good and that begin a cycle of homelessness is stretched throughout much of the two thousands. when justice is born, she named

her justice because it will be justice if i never homeless again. i learned that birthday became an activist for the chicago entire eviction campaign not out of political belief, but out of sheer necessity, sheer survival because she's one of the million economic refugees in this country. finally after living in her car and breaking up her family for years, she called the anti-eviction campaign said what he got? you're talking in a game. you're talking about liberating landfall and homeless of my children and i need a place for us to live. so they said we've got a foreclosed home. we need somebody to rehab and that the net. it's not going to be safe than it not going to be easy. she said okay. in 2010, chicago anti-eviction campaign and martha after she rehab for home and made it and

native beautiful they call that cnn and "the new york times" and in front of all of the cameras in front of the national media, martha got up and told her story and said i declare this bank owned homes liberated because it'd make sense then. the banks on the more house than the number of people and i frankly need a place to put my kids to sleep at night. when i stated not home or she's still as, she knows this precarious, but she also knows as the safest place they've been in a long time. so when i do radio interviews, people sometimes call in for an outraged because doesn't she understand of people stopped paying their mortgage and start liberating income homes, don't they know my interest rate is going to rise? it's a real question, ray? everybody does so much necessary

with an integrated house in the south side of chicago. what i want you emphasize, what is very important is the long-term strategy, the long-term vision of some groups like the chicago anti-eviction campaign and many more. this vision is we need to move towards structuring and restructuring land in this country in a way that will start to remedy the centuries of economic disparities and exploitation and that we need to deal with this not only for people who've been victimized, but for all of last and their proposal and one i put to you tonight is on community land trusts, legal structures that allow for community control of land. i won't bore you with the details because my book is not illegal analysis and looks to exist and i recommend you check them out. but i want to talk about potential of these types of structures. a lot of decisions are made right now not necessarily by our

communities. they're made by people most often far away, the ones that have the capital. imagine if we created a society in which communities have control over not only housing, but also environmental issues like my name and tracking, educational policies and decisions like standardized testing, hospitals, should they be open or close? presents, funderburke community should we arrest and incarcerate so many young people of color. should we be eating food with gm mouse or try to grow more food locally? imagine if they made these types of decisions for example in appalachia were not in top removal is destroyed and evict the stall many broadway communities. do you think they would vote for mountaintop removal? this is not necessarily a socialist policy. send me a policy to begin to

recalibrate the balance between capital and communities in this culture. and it's one that i hope everybody will consider. i want to speak briefly about the role of journalist because essentially a travel the country and are the most inspiring stories of my life and witness and eviction blockade and home liberation and then i went and shuddered myself in my own apartment and room for about a year. so what is the role of the journalists of the storyteller of the social cliques i'll never forget something my mom told me who's here today and it thank you for coming. she said to me, people who feel powerless gravitate to powerful stories because their own stories are so disempowering. right now she said, many of us feel powerless. so our challenge is to make a story that is more powerful than the current narrative. just remember what the current narrative base, it's a belief in

competition between individuals is the driving force in history. i'm not certain lysate individualism is a bad thing. if there's no shared community tying individuals together, we could become no more than distressful, joaquin manichaeans who are still wearing our price tags to intimidate the others. right now there is a grassroots surge of transformative action and communities, home liberation, but they are scorned and ignored by mainstream media. their liberated neighborhoods across the country and nobody knows about it. so history is a compilation of the action and i propose the narrative is the conjunction, the stitching of the men and stories together that tie together these actions allow us to imagine what they really represent, which is a new culture that is more humane. one benefit of being a journalist is i get to hear uncountable story in a received

from last night at like to share with the audience. they came from a man in washington state is facing foreclosure. he said he just finished my book and he said greg wimbley's story, which i apologize i didn't speak about, but greg wimbley story parallels my own because i also have reams of paper in letters sent. one eye-opening thing with this fight against a yet servicing, the ones i'm currently dealing with. sobering. the sense of the lowness i shared from the societal nonclass the underlying issues. i've heard some people say about me behind my back's, why does make it his job and pay my mortgage, but i do work, they teach young people how to live more sustainably and i carry on a working farm apparently somehow doesn't count as work because it doesn't make enough money to pay the banks back with the authority been reimbursed for her. what i appreciated is what he

said next. he sought inspiration more than anything also learning about the stories of the people who thought that. ultimately there were so many moments pride in human experience, a moment of my god, how could that have happened? since we've woven our way back to words and definitions as always seems to happen when you're in a bookstore, it is now at this moment that i'd like to propose a third definition of home. remember we began with communities or with commodities, right? we began with collections of people, the places in which people live or began with a market product. it's a sharp dichotomy, but i think to cut through it and propose my own definition. i'd like to say that home is a form of shelter. it's a basic necessity for human survival and as such, home is a basic human right.

we know that as frederick douglas said, power concedes nothing without demand. and never has and it never will. so my demand today is that housing be recognized as human right in this country. when i say this on the radio or television, i'm often told this is not reasonable demand. what i personally think is unreasonable is in the richest nation in the world, under a government that has figured out how to collect all of my e-mail and all of my phone logs, under an e-mail this figured out how to wage war with remote controls and construct the largest prison system in u.s. history and in world history, we can't figure out how to structure society such that everybody has a basic place to put their children to sleep at night? housing must be recognized as a human right and it's the powers

that we won't or can't figure out how to ensure this right. we should figure out how to have the right to that break the homes and the lands ourselves. it is this type of color and liberation that people across the country, people like bertha garriott, people like martha biggs are already doing. and now, i propose it is our turn to join them. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> thank you, laura for that amazing, amazing summarization. we will have the authors signed some and books after the event

is concluded. books are available at the bookstore and then we will invite them onstage to sign your copy. so what not, i will open a period will open up the floor now to laura. [inaudible] >> -- and the rest of the investors to boycott them, not of the cities. what do you think is the strategy and what do you think is going to happen? >> that's a great que >> that's a great question. thank you for bringing that up. boycott is an interesting word because i caught that line when

you refuse to lend the neighborhood. in my book, that was made illegal in 1968 in 1977 with the passage of the fair housing act. to summarize the case and it was not aware, richmond, california and a dozen other cities have been really hard hit by foreclosure are investigating and perhaps implement the richmond may be the first implee richmond may be the first to do it, a policy in which to use eminent domain to seize marketers break down the principal commas to reduce the amount owed by families and then sell it back to the homeowner, who then makes a regular mortgage payment. first off, let's back off for a second. by the cities be in the business of doing this? in cities like richmond, california and others, particularly communities of color, the communities of all races and sister economic statuses, many people, more than 50% are underwater on their

mortgage. what it means is you owe more on the principle of your mortgage. you have to pay more than your home is worth. i spoke to someone in detroit, michigan that was 20 times underwater, which meant their house is worth dumping vary though because the housing crisis plummeted in the owed 20 times more on their house then their house is currently worth. it's been well-documented by number of economic agencies, including the imf, international monetary fund, one of the most conservative neoliberal capitalist organizations in the world that when you are underwater on your mortgage come you're more likely to go into default and widespread principal reduction, reducing the amount owed would help us get out of the house increases. so the banks have been incredibly opposed to doing this of course because you're cutting into their cake. the cities like richmond, california say if you want ake. the cities like richmond, california say if you want to it in the federal government is not making any move to doing it, we are just going to do it.

we are going to seize these mortgages to eminent domain. through my democrat pulled sele to the homeowner would make regular payments, bush got to do something about the foreclosure spider in our neighborhood. the banks are obviously very opposed to it. i'm excited about the proposal if you can't tell from my attitude. what's particularly interesting to me is the federal government is also very opposed to this policy, is also taken a hard line in saying we will take the court, and a city that implements this plan of the most vehement opponent of this policy has been at demarco, acting director of the fhma on its way out, but he's essentially been overseeing now government entities that fannie mae and freddie mac. they were bailed out to the town of trillions of dollars. they are now government entities that guarantee more than 80% of

mortgages that issued. yet even though they are owned by the government, they have been the most aggressive opponent of principal reduction, of any foreclosure prevention program and particularly this policy being proposed in richmond california. today, it is unsurprising that banks would oppose this because it was certainly be taken into their paychecks. what is particularly disappointing to me is the federal government has once again taken the side of the banks and once again using his legal power and its pulling power of the federal government to effectively say they will boycott a red line for sue and a local government that is trying to take care of his own ends. once again when they talk about control from faraway versus localized control, collective control, community control, you can see that there is a tension

in right at the mayor of richmond and other mayors a richer state and try to move towards a policy that will help their community. any other questions? sure, in the back. [inaudible] ..

it's something of a false promise for two reasons. one, if they ever gotten any serious financial trouble we have learned from the bailout round of 2017 does night we got

their backs. but also that he would likely have a government guaranteed of any of the mortgage-backed securities, mortgage-backed securities are the bundles that these mortgages were placed into so that they could go through the securitization change where they were sold off from one bank to the next bank to the next bank and ultimately to investors , and the processes used that the banks don't actually have any risk in any state, frankly, and whether or not we pay back our mortgages because they have already been paid out. so some are speculating, i think completely unconfirmed, that if we were to draw down fannie mae and freddie mac, it is possible that the 30-year fixed mortgage could be in their attack. we don't know yet. we don't even know if obama really does want to draw down fannie and freddie. we don't know if that is possible at this point where they're so immersed in the housing market, the most aboard part of this debate is that the

30-year fixed mortgage used to be the actual backbone of our housing market. now we have increasingly moved to the sub prime a variable rate ballooning mortgage contract. we saw the results of them when the housing market exploded into does a 7-8. we saw that many people could not pay, that these were, in many places, unpayable debts. and more than anything else, back to that different ways that we have experience throughout the history of the united states housing in the united states committees to be that everyone in america always received a 30- year fixed mortgage. you would have to have ruined, ruined credit to get anything else. in redlined communities, you actually receive -- african-americans actually received loans from lenders that were then called loan sharks because there were so predatory. lows that mirror pretty closely

the loans that we experienced as the rise of the sub prime mortgage market started to kind of balloon in the late 90's and throughout the 2000's. so what we saw, and many scholars have referred to it, the muslim physician, the predatory actions that at one point in history really can only happen in the secondary market chemical company mainstream. affect people of all races and we did not need this discriminatory to cut discriminatory lending practice to make a mainstream market product. what we're really seeing is the increasing radicalization of the financial products that wall street is selling to los and defending things like that 30-year fixed mortgage or the right of local cities to reduce the principal preeminent domain or this creation of legal structures my community land trusts, ways to fight back against the increasingly radical and parts or products of wall street.

>> you were talking about a woman who was homeless for ten years. i was wondering what strategies she came up with two kind of raise the standard. >> thanks for that question. that was something that really impressed me. i remember speaking to gemayel. she'd just finished sixth grade. the one that the skipper to 83 because her grades were so good. it is well-documented, obviously, that if you are homeless as a child your grades usually suffer, test scores usually suffer. is very difficult for you to function in society and grow up to be a thriving adults. but morrison, became a very fierce and protective mother in a situation where it was very hard to protect her children.

she told me that there was always home more time at the back of the car. the back seat of the car was a hallmark section and a living in there car. if you're not doing your homework and you were doing anything else, you were in trouble. she remembers going to school early sometimes, she and her sisters and it would do their homework there. it was because my than it getting out of the cycle of poverty was the goal, not just for her children, but also for herself and in this generation. but it also was incredibly difficult. she told me stories of having to break apart children. all had to go to different relatives' houses. the children tell me stories. we used to hear the adults gossip about our mother, hear them say things like why doesn't she just come and pick up her kids. and they wanted to say, hey, you don't know what my mother is going through, but did not want to jeopardize the ability to stay at that house, so there would old silent. my the knew that there were saying those things, but she had nowhere to take them. she worked and numerous

minimum-wage jobs to route these ten years. she held the jobs. if they did not pay enough to rent an apartment. she said, that i know where to take them so i would just let the phone rang and laid down in the back of the minivan. thanks for that question. [inaudible conversations] >> i just go back required. really interesting things mentioned earlier. just maybe speak to your experience, part of the -- how effective is it really for people to just. [inaudible question] >> thank you for that question. it is challenging. it is easy to idealize these types of actions and to turn them into a utopias. these things are full challenging, and that's why

wanted to talk about the fact that sometimes people are not taking these actions out of, you know, devotion but out of basic survival. but to refer to your question about collective -- i saw very interesting things got a way that people organize communities in these collectives. i remember, for example, being inside a 24-hour home occupation in minneapolis. and it was ultimately about one month. there were 24 hours, people staying in his home because fannie mae was trying to evict the family from the home. they said, no, we are protecting his family. people were taking shifts. i stayed there for three or four nights and when there were actually no incidents while i was there, but later the result of a series of very intense police raids. the walk-in. everything is structured. there are rules on the walls.

lists. there are rules about the dishes. it is sort of like being in a house with an overprotective mother and you just have to do everything right. was not authoritarian in any way. it was that the communities were trying to come together and on learn the type of selfish and greedy behavior that is inscribed inside us as a result of living in such an individualistic and capitalistic society. so it was almost kind of structured to talk about how good we organize the community better. so every night there were community meetings. usually pretty short. renter the protocol of what would happen if the police showed up, we would call, what will you take, then we watched movies. movies about the liberation movement, excess representative. i remember just feeling that, okay, lot of process, lot of process and anarchist collectives. but the point of those processes

to ensure that things are fair. maybe it makes sense to go through on a process to ensure things are fair. >> are there any examples of other countries that have fair waste of making housing available to people, whether it is privately owned or collectively owned so that we have models, like we have models in national health care that did not work in our current system. >> that is a great question. that is a great question. will mention a few countries and a few models. of course all of this, if you are interested can investigate further. i was recently down for a conference, lots of different latin-american countries and social movements. i was talking to a representative, a lawyer in the ecuadorian government, and i was saying, well, what happened?

we had this massive housing crisis which is what i am researching. what did you guys do as a lawyer in the current government? no, we looked north. we saw what was going on with you guys in immediately created a national bank. the national bank gives out most of the of loans, most of the mortgages. they only do fixed-rate mortgages. date on any have -- have any of the toxic and predatory loans that we have here in the essentially mainstream and accessible products and also have lots and lots of government programs intended for people who are maybe in default or foreclosure, try to get out of it. the goal is to have all loan foreclosure rate. one of the stated government policies. that is the difference, not that it is a perfect model, that their priorities are, in my opinion, better. one of the priorities as we would prefer not for people of other home run the central people of the homeland will generally establish a governmental agency in lending agency just by and large trying

to do the same thing. we have not seen that obviously. we obviously have not seen that with all street banks. most of europe also are most of western europe has better models and we do. one historical tidbit was in -- and i did not get into the history. the rise in public housing happened after the great depression. because millions of people would turn out of there home. actually, we like to think that millions and millions of people were thrown out then and not now. 2010 and pretty much the same eviction rate once you recount for population changes as the 1933, 1934. roughly the same rate, but they have this massive tragedy, lots of evictions commanding of the rise in public housing. but really the theory public housing rose in the to these in academic circles and then people were looking at models, just like you are today, they were saying, what has done it better?

what country has done it better? and you look to lots of countries in western europe. after world war one and decided that they would reconstruct their countries by building millions and millions of units of public housing. the idea that we had to build these countries back up, of wars, bombings. we need to construct public housing. and so there rose modern housing, and it was of study of all the social vitality in western europe which ultimately became the proposal became public housing in the estates. thank you for that question. i have one in the corner. >> a question. 192. at that time. and with the closing is there a

plan? there are many other cities that have different models. closing of a lot of public housing. i mean for example. >> i have to apologize. i am not an expert, but i can certainly speak to chicago. i appreciate that question because it is logical. they're going to agree, 25,000 residents, robert taylor, approximately 20,000, many of the public housing projects. where these people going to go tonight one of them is that

there would get section eight, these vouchers given out by the federal government, and you can always require subsidized housing by using your section a voucher. the other plan was a chicago was going to rebuild 40,000 units of public housing. the latter plan first. much simpler. in economic collapse. we never built in the back. that may be an example for the future. you don't know what the economic situation is going to be. maybe you might want to be skeptical about that. but to talk about section eight for a moment because that is something that comes up a lot in the book in his early contested. section eight is a federal plan run by hud demanded essentially a way to subsidize people who need help living in the private housing market. you get a voucher and go around. they do not have to take you,

but a landlord can take you. and then the federal government pays a lot of your housing problems. there is also location based section a, but let's focus on the individual section eight. that was a plan that was used in chicago. there are a number of problems with section eight, although there are also some benefits. they want to be fair to the benefit. not necessarily always a beautiful place to live. it might not be as nice to live in public housing. i serve unrecognized and from having been side many public housing units will be -- well writing this book. the idea is that you have the freedom and the buzz word is freedom to choose where you want to live. now i think it is a program that really should be scrutinized more fully than we do in the country. there's a difference between freedom and access.