Housing Our Future:Now

10/25

It was a beautiful day for a march. Though it felt a bit more like Thanksgiving than Halloween. Crisp fall air. And sun. We gathered at 86th Street and Second Avenue to march to Gracie Mansion, Mayor Di Blasio's home. The march was in support of the "House Our Future" campaign...a call for 30,000 new homes. The point was obvious, I think. The mayor  has his home. A lot of New Yorkers don't.

A crowd that would grow to 250-300 or so is gathering. Marc Greenberg, Director of the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing (which I chair), asks me to help hold our banner.

Bob Brashear and Marc Greenberg with the banner

"Looks like a good crowd," he says. His broad smile reminds me that this is what Marc lives for. The gathering  of people, the marching, the chanting, the never ending struggle for housing justice that he has remained faithful to for decades.

The housing crisis which blossomed under Bloomberg has only worsened under Di Blasio. We now have record numbers of homeless, approaching 61,000. One third of those are working poor. Ten percent of city school children are homeless. It is scandalous. More so because Di Blasio campaigned as a progressive, promising 30,000 units, a promise yet to be delivered. (In more ways than one, Mayor Di Blasio, not unlike President Obama, came into office with a strong progressive base. And instead of using that base for truly progressive change has instead fallen into more traditional liberalism. Sad because the base is there...)

The march winds down 86th to East End. What do we want?Housing. When do we want it? Now. If we don't get it...shut it down..Hey, hey, 30K...and more chants. The crowd gathers.

In the crowd

A bombastic heckler is barely heard. There are homeless people working people, faith community people. People sharing their own stories. What will it take to be heard?

The Interfaith Assembly has been faithful to this witness since the "Kochville" occupation of City Hall Park thirty years ago in 1988. (See John Jiler's Sleeping With the Mayor ....https://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Mayor-Story-John-Jiler/dp/1886913145.) Founded by a faith community trio of steadfast witnesses Marshall Meyer, Dan Berrigan and my predecessor, Bob Davidson, Marc has led the IAHH through these many years. There would be no better way to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Kochville than action on the 30000 badly needed homes.

That was then

5/30

Ft. Scott Presbyterian Church

The youth group from Ft. Scott and their pastor Jared Witt are here waiting for me when I arrive. Jared was a colleague trying to build a start up church a few years ago. Along with a vision of a contemporary urban monastery and craft micro-brewery, like the medieval monks. I thought our basement would have made the perfect location.

I start by asking them about where they live. A small town an hour south of Kansas City. Pretty rural. Stagnant economy. Meth wars. Church small, building about the same age as ours. But larger. And not many youth.

Then I take them for an interpretive walk around the block. Showing them how to read an urban neighborhood, our neighborhood. About changes you can see and not see. What your eyes can tell you about who lives there. Income levels. Religions. What’s it meant to see exotic avian hospitals, wild bird rescue centers and check cashing places, Greek diners and yuppie restaurants, public housing and doorman buildings all around the same block?

Then we return to the church and I share our social and religious history. They’re happy to learn about how God’s Love We Deliver, began at West-Park since they’re going there to volunteer tomorrow.

I talk to them about a holistic video of ministry where there is no division between evangelism and social justice, where they are seamlessly connected. Of the connections between beauty and justice, ethics and aesthetics.

I get them set up  to do sweeping and cleaning  of the steps and outdoor policing the area before I have to run to make a noontime rally in front of the governor's office  the shameful inadequacy of his minimum wage proposal.

On my way back, I’m reflecting on my interview with the WBAI reporter. (to hear the interview on this story, go to http://www.wbai.org/articles.php?article=1209 ) Long story short: she lives across the  street in the Belnord. One of those throwbacks to the days when the city joked about the Peoples' Republic of the Upper West Side. Or that when the  Berlin wall fell, there were more communists on the Upper West side than in East Berlin. The Belnord continues to house the publisher of a long term leftist journal and the last of a generation  of activists, planners of the 1983 march against nuclear proliferation  mostly  octogenarians now. The former labor leaders who moved uptown to establish a more middle class life are increasingly replaced by young families and new wealth celebrities like Matt Damon. The nearby streets on weekends experience stroller gridlock. Such is gentrification on the Upper West Side. 

When I come back, there’s only  a short time before I need to head to 475 Riverside for  meeting and ultimately down to St. PAul’s Chapel where we’ll elevate the 25th anniversary of the 200 day occupation of City Hall Park but homeless, the so-called Kochville. The founding of the Interfaith Assembly in Housing and Homelessness by my predecessor Bob Davidson, the heroic priest and activist Daniel Berrigan and the prophet of Argentina’s dirty war, Rabbi Marshall Meyer.

Karen comes in to offer us maintenance products like those she supplies to other nearby buildings . And to play the piano and fill the walls with  her music. 

A long night is ahead.

To lean more about Kochville and the homeless occupation, see John Jiler's Sleeping with the Mayor (http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/reviews/970928.28purnict.html