Don Ryan - AP
Homeowners and demonstrators gather in front of a home where the owner was given an eviction notice in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday. "We'll treat them all as trespassers," Portland police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said of anyone squatting in a home.
SEATTLE -- The Occupy Wall Street protests are moving into the neighborhood.
Finding it increasingly difficult to camp in public spaces, Occupy protesters across the country are reclaiming foreclosed homes and boarded-up properties, signaling a tactical shift for the movement against income inequality. Groups in more than 25 cities held protests Tuesday on behalf of homeowners facing evictions.
In Atlanta, protesters held a boisterous rally at a county courthouse and used whistles and sirens to disrupt an auction of seized houses. In New York, they marched through a residential neighborhood in Brooklyn carrying signs that read, "Foreclose on banks, not people." Los Angeles protesters rallied around a family of five who plans to reclaim the home they lost six months ago in foreclosure.
"It's pretty clear that the fight is against the banks, and the Occupy movement is about occupying spaces. So occupying a space that should belong to homeowners but belongs to the banks seems like the logical next step for the Occupy movement," said Jeff Ordower, one of the organizers of Occupy Homes.
The events reflect the protesters' lingering frustration over the housing crisis that has sent millions of homes into foreclosure after the burst of the housing bubble that helped cripple the country's economy. Nearly a quarter of all U.S. homeowners with mortgages are now underwater, representing nearly 11 million homes, according to CoreLogic, a real estate research firm.
Protesters say that banks and financial firms own abandoned foreclosed houses that could be housing people.
Seattle has become a leader in the anti-foreclosure movement as protesters took over a formerly boarded-up duplex last month. They painted the bare wood sidings with green, black and red paint, and strung up a banner that says, "Occupy Everything - No Banks, No Landlords."
While arrests have already been made in a couple of squatting cases in Seattle and Portland, it remains to be seen how authorities will react to this latest tactic.
In Portland, police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said he's aware that the movement called for people to occupy foreclosed homes, but he said it's difficult to distinguish between the people who would squat in homes as a political statement and those that do it for shelter.
"The vacant property issue is of concern in cities nationwide," Simpson said. "We'll treat them all as trespassers."
Seattle police spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said his department sees squatting in private properties as the same violation of trespassing Occupy Seattle made when it camped in a downtown park.
"We relied on education and outreach, rather than enforcing the law to the letter," he said.
