Friday, December 26, 2008

stealth of nations


Hey, squattercity denizens. My apologies for having been less than attentive to the blog in recent months. I am continuing to post on squatter issues. But I've also started a blog on the global reach of the informal economy, the subject of the book I am writing now. You can find that blog at http://stealthofnations.blogspot.com/.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Finally, A Good Real Estate Deal: putting the homeless In foreclosed homes

A brilliant program from a Miami group vets homeless families and then moves them into foreclosed housing. The program is, at least technically, illegal. But no arrests have been made, and it seems a clearheaded way to prevent neighborhood deterioration while getting families desperate for housing into high-quality homes. FOXNews (yes, that Fox News) has the details.

"We're matching homeless people with people-less homes," Max Rameau, who heads Take Back the Land, the group organizing the move, told the Associated Press in a recent story. Rameau also has a blog at http://takebacktheland.blogspot.com/.

From an anonymous comment on one of my previous posts, I see that Miami New Times broke the story last month.

(Mea culpa: I was in Lagos, Nigeria when the anonymous poster sent me the New Times story, and I only just got around to following up on this.)