Calls to House the Homeless Grow Urgent With COVID-19 Danger Looming
In this segment of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Will Merrifield, a former attorney at the Washington Legal Clinic for the homeless who is now a candidate for an open at-large city council seat in Washington, DC, to talk about the news that housing activists in Los Angeles have managed to appropriate 12 vacant publicly-owned houses to secure housing for a number of homeless families, why institutional barriers pose a near-insurmountable hurdle for homeless families trying to access welfare system benefits, why the already-overwhelmed homeless shelters are so poorly prepared to handle the outbreak, why a serious response by local government must go far beyond merely temporarily decriminalizing homelessness and actually secure permanent housing for those currently residing in shelters, and why the many unaffordable units built by wealthy developers which are currently sitting empty are the perfect location to begin such an initiative.