Squatters say foreclosed homes beat homeless shelters (New York)

LA Times ^ | 12-21-11 | Tina Susman

[dynachrome]

Reporting from New York— Slips of paper are pasted to the broken door of the corner row house, violations for the garbage piled near the front steps. The stench of trash wafts up the dark interior stairway, where an ashtray filled with cigarette butts sits like an abandoned potted plant on the second-floor landing.

Nobody lives here, at least not officially.

But as you climb the narrow stairs to the top floor, a door opens into an airy apartment that is home to Tasha Glasgow, who is part of a largely invisible population of squatters occupying vacant homes across America. Given their clandestine lives, it's impossible to say how many people are squatting in this country, but with more than 1.3 million homes in foreclosure and hundreds of thousands of people homeless, advocates say it's safe to assume the number is growing.

"You have these abandoned dwellings that are sitting there vacant, sometimes for many months," said Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York, where shelters are reporting record numbers of residents. "It's not an issue of whether squatting is right or wrong. The fact is that people are desperate for places to live, and they're going to do what they need to do."

[basil]

Sounds good, doesn’t it? The problem is, no one is going to let people, including children, starve. And, if they have to live on the streets, especially if children are involved, some agency somewhere is going to provide for them.

We don’t have masses of people dying in the streets from hunger in this country.

I’ve been involved with people in this situation during the years.

[gimme1ibertee]

Sounds good, doesn’t it? The problem is, no one is going to let people, including children, starve. And, if they have to live on the streets, especially if children are involved, some agency somewhere is going to provide for them.

That's true,and,no,children should not be allowed to starve. The parents can go to a charity,a church or a shelter.After they've exercised every option,and refuse to take care of their children,then there can be no other choice but to take the children away from them and place them with foster parents.It's still going to be cheaper than welfare for years and years on end. Besides, it may be doing the kids a favor by placing them with a family that is stable,with two parents that can instill some type of family framework values in them,keeping them from being moved around from pillar to post,with people that obviously don't care enough about them to do anything about their situation.