An upsurge of abandoned, foreclosed homes in Chicago’s poor neighborhoods has inspired an activist group called the Anti-Eviction Campaign to fix up the properties and provide them to homeless families:
“The idea for the Anti-Eviction Campaign actually came from South Africa. Toussaint Losier had traveled there to study the direct-action tactics of an organization called the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign. Its members had been putting their bodies in front of homes to block evictions, building their own squatter settlements on unused land. So J. R. and Toussaint (who got to know each other when the chairman of the South African group visited Cabrini-Green) started a Chicago chapter together. J. R. realized they didn’t need to build lean-tos in Chicago’s black community. They had all the empty homes they required. ‘We want to do what Roosevelt did,’ he said of the home takeovers. ‘If the government won’t provide public housing for the people, the people must provide it for themselves.’”
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