Weeks after a group of homeless mothers took over a vacant house in Oakland and managed to keep it, another group of moms is trying to do the same in Los Angeles on Saturday morning.
The protesters and their families, who plan to remain in the house indefinitely and potentially take over more, are calling on state and local governments to use all publicly owned vacant homes, libraries, recreation centers and other properties to house people immediately. They say the the region’s extreme lack of affordable housing and the novel coronavirus pandemic pushed them to take over the house.
“I am a mother of two daughters. I need a home,” said Martha Escudero, 42, who has spent the last 18 months living on couches with friends and family members in neighborhoods across East Los Angeles. “There’s these homes that are vacant and they belong to the community.”
Like the Moms 4 Housing group in Oakland, the mothers in L.A. are receiving assistance from the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, an organizing group that’s advocated for state measures to expand rent control and other tenant protections.
Read the full story on LATimes.com.