Things I like: HOUSING JUSTICE!

Woo victory!

East Harlem Residents and Movement for Justice in El Barrio have managed to fight off Dawnay Day, a London-based real-estate corporation that tried to take over 47 apartment buildings from low-income and immigrant renters.

Dawnay Day’s profit-driven intentions were no secret. Phil Blakeley, Dawnay Day’s director, boasted publicly to The Times in London about his scheme on how he would maneuver through New York City’s real-estate loopholes to eventually lay claim to the rentals:

“A typical two-bedroom flat taking $150 per month in rent can see the rents rise 3 percent to 4 percent each year without doing anything. As soon as you take vacant possession, the rents will typically rise 17 percent when re-let without doing anything. But with renovation, a flat could well take $1,700 a month once re-let on the open market.”

For the full article as I saw it on Racewire read here.

Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB), an East Harlem-based organization of immigrants and low-income people of color, has been fighting gentrification in Manhattan’s “last frontier” for over three years now. Being majority Mexican and sharing an affinity for the zapatistas’ way of organizing, MJB decided less than a year after forming to join the Other Campaign as an essential component of their work for self-determination.