HOA Instructors + Sojourner Hardeman + Zena Murphy
Picture the Homeless 2427 Morris Avenue Bronx NY 10468 Phone:(646) 314-6423
Direct Action for Housing!
Building on our March 2009 building takeover, our July 2009 tent city lot occupation, and the long history and global movement of squatting around the city and world, PTH is stepping up our direct action for housing in 2011!
pending city legislation for Vacant Properties Count
Intro 48, introduced on February 11, would mandate that the City conduct and publicize an annual census of vacant properties. This follows from years of pushing for such a count, including the research & report our members published in 2007. Picture the Homeless's Housing campaign members see identifying all vacant buildings and lots as a huge step towards creating housing with these properties for the lowest-income New Yorkers.
Following from PTH's July 2009 occupation of a Chase-owned vacant property in Harlem... We are calling on the financial services firm -- which received $25 billion in taxpayers' bailout -- to participate in the creation of housing on the many un-utilized vacant properties Chase owns, through creating a Community Land Trust for the poorest New Yorkers, who received no bailout.
Campaign Against NYPD Abuse of the Disorderly Conduct Statute
"The New York City Police Department needs to be restrained... There were more than a half-million stops in New York City in 2008, and when the final tally is in, we'll find the number only increased in 2009... Rather than a legitimate crime-fighting tool, these stops are a despicable, racially oriented tool of harassment... People who object to the harassment are often threatened with arrest for disorderly conduct."
PTH's Civil Rights Campaign is focused on reducing the harms of police harassment of homeless people and others, by taking on the Disorderly Conduct statute. We seek an end to Dis Con tickets without one's alleged violation specified, and a stop to Dis Con arrests.