Take Back the Land Rochester Liberates a Home on CNN

December 8, 2010

Rochester, NY – On Monday December 6, 2010 Take Back the Land Rochester was featured on CNNMoney.com liberating a home with a couple on the brink of homelessness in Rochester, NY (see http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2010/12/06/n_squatters_foreclosed_home.c...). On Tuesday the piece aired on the CNN broadcast channel. This couple's story is just an example of the hundreds families in Rochester who are homeless or facing homelessness. This action—liberating a vacant bank-owned foreclosed home—is an example an emerging economic human rights movement that is taking root in Rochester. The current system is failing at all levels to provide for people's basic human right to housing. Take Back the Land Rochester is picking up where our current institutions leave off and will continue to work until housing is elevated to a human right in Rochester.

Take Back the Land Rochester is a local grassroots movement founded in mid-2010 which is part of the larger Take Back the Land Movement which spans across the country from Miami to Portland. Take Back the Land Rochester believes that housing should be a human right, not a commodity. We believe that land and housing should be controlled by the community, not the banks. In order to elevate housing to a human right and gain community control over land we defend people from foreclosure-related evictions and assist homeless people to move into vacant, bank-owned homes. In this process we are wresting land from the control of the banks and turning it back to our community in the form of community land trusts—where housing can be taken off the speculative market. As long as housing occurs at the whim of the banks and the market homelessness and poverty will plague our community forever. In short, housing should be for people not for profit.