The police shot a 63 year old man while trying to evict him from his home. The elderly man had been taken in by "sovereign citizen" conspiracy theories much to his son's frustration.
These theories made him more vulnerable to police violence. He also may not have been mentally well.
The house he was evicted from used to belong to his brother, but a corporation recently bought it for $25,000, then evicted him.
@futurebird The whole fuckin neighborhood turned into a damn warzone for the whole damn day. Then the cops kill this emotionally unstable man. For what? Who fucking benefited? I lived in that exact neighborhood for years and constantly spend time in it and I was terrified the whole day the cops were going to end up getting someone I know hurt with their fucking ghost squad police state wild west shit
@futurebird There is maybe some additional local context you may benefit from: That area/neighborhood of Bloomfield/Garfield is very much in the targets of “developers” and gentrifiers recently. It is rapidly being considered one of the most desirable areas in the city to live and there is a massive slate of huge “development” projects on Penn and Liberty.
So, my feeling is that the police staging a siege on a squatter is as much a threat to other poor people in the neighborhood.
@VoxofGod@futurebird so if someone stops paying their rent. Nothing should be done unless they find a new place for them to move to that they are willing to go?
Why would anyone pay rent then? You could not be kicked out unless someone found a place you were willing to move to that day for what you were paying, nothing.
My whole point being there are so many empty houses right now that are being kept empty in order to keep prices high, that there is obviously no real justification for rent at all
And you just proved my point
There is no reason for anyone to pay rent
Unless you are looking to control people, and that's not what housing is about
You pay rent if you only need a place to live for a few years and don't want to be tied to owning property. You pay more for better locations and nicer homes or apartments.
A person might opt to pay rent if they want to live in a place with a low rent for a long time and have someone else be responsible to basic repairs to the home.
Yeah I would agree with that if we lived in a more equitable system
But because the way that landlords are creating an artificially inflated price situation at the moment, it is clear that no one is a landlord for those reasons anymore it's all rentier extraction
@TopWKone@VoxofGod@futurebird you're so close to the truth here. The only reason anyone pays rent is because the police will hurt or kill them if they don't pay and the police will hurt or kill them if they live on unused property. People only pay rent because of the threat of pain or death.
This is how thugs and robbers and landlords make money, but only the last do it legally, because landlords control the state, which is the instrument of the violence their business requires.
Why are you defending this business model? How can you even think it's defensible?
@HeavenlyPossum@futurebird so anyone could take over your property, refuse to leave, and you could do nothing to regain it?
One of my worries when I was mobilized was someone would break into my home while I was gone and live there and destroy the place.
That has happened. It takes police to get them out.
@TopWKone@HeavenlyPossum@futurebird yes, this is true. Without police anyone could take over your property. But why would they? Without police anyone could take over any unused property, and here in the US there is already enough vacant residential property to house everyone who needs a home probably twice over, not to mention all the unused public lands on which people could build in the absence of police to stop them. In the presence of such abundance, without the police to keep us off, it'd be not only antisocial but completely inefficient to take over your house.
No! A social worker. Determine why the conflict has started. If the person is too poor is it more or less expensive to cover a portion of the rent rather than pay for homeless services or public housing. Is the person is unwell? Can family help?
It's fascinating how the police will show up to evict this guy over a few thousand dollars, but no such action is possible when independent contractors are stiffed by wealthy developers or clients.
@futurebird@TopWKone several communities across the US have started including social workers into their polices calls — including my hometown Ann Arbor. We can do better if we want to.
@futurebird@TopWKone It's so alien to think like this sometimes after being beaten over the head with a lifetime of capitalist propaganda, but it's 100% the right approach.
@futurebird@theheck@TopWKone don’t buyers have to honor existing leases? If the lease doesn’t exist they shouldn’t be able to buy until the brothers formalize their informal arrangement; if he had a rent-free perpetual lease, the buyer should have to honor that
@futurebird ok a social worker might be an option. I don’t think this guy would have been receptive to anything but you don’t know.
Still for an eviction I would want a sheriff there to enforce the process. I couldn’t make a 30 yo person who refused to leave I’m no mma fighter.
Having a sherif or cop do this isn't a great use of their expensive man hours. And given the danger of things going south it shouldn't be the standard procedure.
But if there's no other support or options that's what it becomes.
The cost of police killing like this is decades of mistrust from the whole community. It's not worth a fraction of the 23k that that house cost.
We should not send police with guns unless "they get shot" is an acceptable proportionate outcome.
Lastly, I want to humbly submit that anyone who buys a place with people living in it who aren't paying rent is taking a huge risk. The price will be lower for this reason.
A building with tenants in good standing will be more expensive.
Which is kinda mid-evil but I didn't make this up.
So this big corporation bought this place for cheap then leans on the government to do the eviction (making the whole community mad even if it goes well)
@CStamp@futurebird yes people want a return on the money they invest.
Unless you are advocating the government own all property, business, and end paying of salaries a return is what motivates people to invest or work.
They could get a return by buying an empty home and fixing it up.
They could get a return by learning more about the existing tenants before buying.
They could even get possibly a return by getting to know the guy, being transparent about what is needed to keep the property up and setting a rent he could pay.
They just filled out forms and faxed letters. I would be shocked if they set foot on the premises.
There is no "inalienable right to a return on investments"
@futurebird@TopWKone@CStamp I would go even further and say there's an opposite societal right: if your investment doesn't have prosocial benefits, society has an inalienable right to deny you any returns on it.
@futurebird@TopWKone@CStamp I don't even see this alone as a radically anti-capitalist idea. As stated, it doesn't apply to investing capital to make [a business making] things that are in any way useful to people. Only to "investments" that are purely enclosing and destroying value of something somebody else already made.
Being evicted (legally not physically) ruins your credit history, makes it nearly impossible to secure another rental in many places. Most people want nothing to do with it.
If the person still isn't moving there is a reason probably a serious one. Like they are sick.
In these cases if alternative housing were offered that would make the need for "force" even less common. But that would mean really addressing homelessness generally.
The police defending their actions. After all William Hardison was armed and firing.
The company is defending their actions he had not paid the rent they requested after buying the house he'd lived in for years out from under him.
Calling the police to do an eviction can be a death sentence.
"sovereign citizen" conspiracy theories are about as bad as Q-annon but more popular with Black people and other minorities. It's a "legal theory" (though calling it that gives it too much legitimacy)
The way this house was sold with such long occupation is messed up. Just let the guy live out his damned life you literal ghouls.
We really need interventions for people taken in by conspiracies. I would have been more critical of the son, but the "sovereign citizen" nonsense explains why he wasn't doing more.
@futurebird That story makes my heart hurt. It also makes me think of my dad. For this reason alone I'm trying to figure out whether/how to buy my dad's house so the effing ghouls don't get it.
Pittsburgh is full of empty houses. That's why they cost $23,000 (or less!) -- it would not surprise me if the company was going for the occupied ones in hopes of getting rent. You'd only need like $700 in rent for it to be a good deal.
But this guy never paid rent. His brother let him live there and it sounds like he wasn't in any mental state to do paperwork.
@futurebird i know about sovereign citizen stuff but not that they were more popular with BIPOC than one might think from a "entitled divorced white guy thing"... though, come to think of what i have seen, maybe i'm mentally automatically discounting some more clearly non-white varieties of it
It's a very appealing magic trick and the idea of not really being part of America but instead this other secret better thing is appealing to people who might feel alienated.
That and the notion that if you just knew the magic words police would "have to" leave you alone.
This story will be called fake in sovcit discussion groups. "A fake story to keep people scared of the truth that we know"
UGH
Social media rabbit-holes people into this stuff. So add that to the list.
@futurebird@apophis I hate how people let themselves get encouraged down this rabbit hole.
Some of my relatives aren't good at abstract logic and would fall into it if they weren't periodically counterinfluenced by people saying "No, that doesn't work." with the required firmness.
If they ever end up isolated, they would fall into it within ten seconds, I think.
It used to be for someone to get on to a crazy conspiracy theory that might even get them killed they'd need to at least go to some meetings, or buy some mail order books and bizarre newsletters.
@futurebird@apophis The magic of the internet is that no matter how weird and niche your interests/lifestyle/kinks are, you can find a community of people who share and understand them.
The downside of the internet is basically the same, but for conspiracies and bigotry.
@futurebird My point of reference for Black people getting into sovereign citizen circles was when Wesley Snipes tried some sovereign tax protestor maneuvers and got in a lot of trouble with the IRS. Stuck in my mind only because I always liked him on film.
@futurebird@staidwinnow This is truly tragic. I think it's clear he wasn't mentally well if taken in by these theories. And it's infuriating a corporation could buy the house for $25k. The govt should be able to buy houses like this for $25K, communities should be able to for low cost housing, and in this case, let him stay there til other options are figured out if he needs help. This is horrific. Why should a corporation get a deal like that? Why are police called in for mental health issues?
@futurebird I am no fan of the sovereign citizen movement (they are right-wing fools), but this is exactly why evictions should never be allowed to begin with in this country. The police should not be used by any company or bank as armed guards of capitalism to make people homeless. This man was ultimately killed for no good or justifiable reason.
@futurebird it seems like a large group of mostly men that lose social standing as capable of caring for themselves financially members of society have this tantrum reaction of rather doubting the existence of state and society then accepting their own incapability of being economically viable members of it.
They would even get enough welfare to live very meagrely, but the welfare experience is a bit degrading (to scare the workforce) and requires a certain degree of submission.
Interesting. Here they tend to be naturally curious, more well read than average, but not formally educated people, pretty even split on gender. Have often had bad experiences with police. (it's not hard in the USA) The pridefulness is there though "no you see I figured it out"
The "philosophy" has cult-like features "trust no one but us" "they will try to stop you" etc. that makes it hard to get them turned around.
@futurebird I also have the strong suspicion that the esoteric healing and health stuff serves a similar function for many women who aren’t taking seriously and being respected by society and men in particular.
Most esoteric healing stuff comes from Germany and was invented in a time when France (the traditional archenemy) was hopelessly advanced, in many ways but also in science and in particular health science (think Pasteur) where it was hard to deny their superiority.
A lot could be done if facebook and tiktock shut down this content aggressively. Of course those already in it would take that as a sign of it being more true... but maybe fewer would get in.
There are two reasons this house was so inexpensive.
It's in Pittsburgh which has much more housing than people who want to buy it
There was a person living in it when they bought it. (A person who was not paying rent to the owner)
What this should mean is you could buy it, but if the guy won't pay rent you have a legal squatter. You don't need to fix the place up, but can't really move him out.
But they may have seen this as a plus, hoping they could force him to pay.
@futurebird I greatly appreciate your in-depth answer. Many of these things I had no idea about.
Thank you for taking the time even though the topic of your thread is police violence/using law enforcement as eviction muscle. (which I agree with, a human life could and should have been spared here)
It's a very hands off, remote management way of doing things. They probably have 100s of properties.
There are a bunch of big companies buying up tons of homes all over the country. They try to squeeze rent out of them when they can-- but land is almost always a good long-term "investment" -- and that's the real game.
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