Homeowners, Renters and Homeless families Unite For Secure, Affordable Housing For All

Fannie Mae wants Virginia Wooten and her son on the street by October 8.  You hear “Fannie Mae” and think of a kind aunt that will do anything to help you out.  Not this Fannie Mae.  This Fannie Mae does not care that Ms. Wooten has been in her home for 17 years, has raised 9 children there– 7 of them adopted, has paid more than $200,000 on a house worth $120,000 and has just lost her job and is looking for another one.  All Fannie cares about is kicking her out and selling her home to an investor.

Virginia Wooten is one of The Fabulous Five, including Nell Myhand, CJJC’s Oakland Homeowner Clinic Coordinator, who went to jail fighting for her home and for millions of others in the same boat.  The civil disobedience culminated a month of action against the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 

As Nell said at the time, “I am taking an arrest to call attention to my demand for community control of housing. As Ella Baker said about the courageous young people who sat in at lunch counters in the segregated south during the Civil Rights Movement to challenge unjust law, ‘It’s bigger than a hamburger.’ ” 

Impacted residents and supporters totaling over 1,500 protested at their regional headquarters in Chicago, Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles and at the national headquarters in DC.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have significant sway over the housing market by owning over half of all mortgages in this country and hundreds of thousands of vacant foreclosed homes.  Amongst all banks, they rank #1 in kicking people out of their homes.  And despite 80% public ownership, Fannie and Freddie remain loyal servants to Wall Street, not Main Street.

The Fabulous Five and the hundreds of residents with them included homeowners, renters and homeless families and individuals.  They represent a growing movement fighting for housing justice that includes principal reduction for homeowners, renters’ rights and affordable housing for all.  

Go back five years and you would be hard pressed to find a homeowner, a renter and homeless family identifying with each other’s plight much less linking arms in the street and getting carted off to jail together.  

These five women represent a growing movement of people who see the Big Banks and Wall Street as the cause of the economic crisis and their housing and job woes.  They are part of Right to the City’s Take Back the People’s Bank campaign and the fight to hold Wall Street and the government accountable to secure, affordable housing for homeowners, renters and homeless families.  Thousands of residents have joined this campaign as have Occupy Our Homes, Home Defenders League, and Alliance for a Just Society.

The Fabulous Five and hundreds that took to the street in September is the beginning of the resurgence of a housing justice movement in this country.  It represents the convergence of the foreclosure/homeowner movement with the renter, public housing and homeless struggles that long preceded the foreclosure crisis.   

This burgeoning movement spans the entire country. To be successful this movement must keep growing and must include both national pressure on Fannie/Freddie, the administration and Wall Street, as well as robust local and regional campaigns in a critical mass of cities to win secure, affordable housing for all.