Occupy Homes

[8] The Occupy Homes movement[9] has its roots in the early 1970s, when declining working-class incomes and a lack of bank financing for low-rent properties left thousands of New York City buildings abandoned and hundreds of former tenants squatted vacant buildings on Manhattan's Upper West Side, East Harlem, Chelsea, Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

[10] A similar group based in Miami, Florida, Take Back the Land, has been working to block evictions,[11] and rehousing homeless people in foreclosed houses since 2007.

[12][13] Early successful actions included the delay of an eviction of a woman in Ohio when protesters camped out in her yard, [5] convincing Fannie Mae to hold off on an eviction by holding a vigil outside a home in California,[14] delaying a foreclosure in Minnesota so that an occupant could first move out of a home,[14] and convincing a New York landlord to provide adequate heating to tenants by occupying a boiler room.

On December 6, about 50 people began occupying the home of an unemployed man who faces eviction after several heart attacks and shoulder surgery that prevented him from working at his former job as an independent contractor.

[15] On December 6, 2011, members of Occupy Atlanta began an occupation of the home of Brigitte Walker, a former Army Staff Sergeant who was medically discharged in 2007.

At a press conference on December 20, it was announced by members of Occupy Atlanta and State Senator Vincent Fort, who Walker had contacted for aid, that they had successfully renegotiated her loan to a monthly payment she could afford that would allow her to stay in her home.

[22] Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart said the movement's new focus is "fomenting civil unrest, fomenting class warfare" and that this action shows that Occupy Wall Street is not "an authentic grass-roots movement but a political maneuver backed by organized labor and remnants of the ACORN community-organizing group aimed at boosting President Obama's re-election campaign".

[19][23] Speaking on CNN, law professors Sonia Katyal and Eduardo Peñalver compared the occupation of foreclosed homes to earlier social protests that brought about positive legal change.