A rising coalition, comprising Brooklyn householders, tenants, spiritual leaders, and authorized consultants, is forming to combat the deed theft epidemic that Black communities have been going through within the borough.
Evangeline Byars and members of the Folks’s Coalition to Cease Deed Theft are taking the lead in forming a brand new group that wishes to create a process drive that can have the ability to level to authorized actions and supply consumption varieties for householders who have to report a case of deed theft.
Process forces are a standard means for neighborhood members to create efficient change. Governments might create their official frameworks, however grassroots neighborhood teams play a vital function in forming and efficiently working process forces. They will deliver collectively numerous views from survivors, authorized consultants, psychological well being professionals, and neighborhood leaders.
Members of the householders group emphasize that relying solely on native authorities, together with the district lawyer’s workplace, has up to now confirmed ineffective, so they’re pushing for direct neighborhood motion: “If we don’t take cost,” one group member mentioned throughout a current digital organizing assembly, “nothing will get executed.”
“Attributable to what occurred at 168-70 Patchen Avenue, sure, the politicians are actually transferring on this,” Byars instructed the AmNews.
A near-eviction with police safety
On Nov. 12, a development crew arrived on the residence of Florence Lichmore-Smith at 168-170 Patchen Avenue in Brooklyn. In an incident that was recorded and broadly shared on social media, NYPD officers from the 81st Precinct are seen standing guard exterior the home. Officers are proven retaining Lichmore-Smith and her supporters on the sidewalk exterior the home whereas a person named Shai Ohana and his employees are inside.
“This isn’t the proprietor! He’s not the proprietor!” the gang shouts on the officers. “You understand higher, your captain instructed you not to do that!” Lichmore-Smith’s near-eviction occurred regardless of precinct orders that officers shouldn’t intervene in disputes at this location as a result of the home was being contested in court docket.
Within the recording, the actual property developer Shai Ohana is seen leaving the home.
Lichmore-Smith’s supporters say Ohana had proven faux Division of Buildings permits to the police and claimed that he now owned the property. Whereas he and his crew had been inside the home, they used sledgehammers and crowbars to tear out all of the doorways, and broke each bathroom in the home. In addition they eliminated all {the electrical} meters and apparently broken the water pipes. Lichmore-Smith was out entrance making an attempt to show to the police that she was the present proprietor and needs to be allowed again in.
After convincing the law enforcement officials that the development crew had no proper to be there, the police ordered the employees to depart. Lichmore-Smith regained entry to her home and confirmed the extent of the injury inside. She plans to go to court docket to have the development crew restore the damages they’ve prompted, however within the meantime, the Folks’s Coalition to Cease Deed Theft is in search of donations at www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/stop-deed-theft to assist Lichmore-Smith cowl prices till she will be able to rebuild her residence.
Law enforcement officials don’t participate in evictions
As a result of the police performed a key function in retaining Lichmore-Smith out of her residence, native politicians and advocates had been outraged. Assemblymember Stefani L. Zinerman got here by the home and toured the injury with Lichmore-Smith. “There isn’t any DoB –– Division of Buildings from New York Metropolis –– signal on this door,” the assemblywoman famous as she walked to the home’s entrance entrance, “Which means there’s no development, there’s no demolition, there isn’t a reconstruction allowed on this property as a result of it has not been sanctioned by the workplace of or the Division of Buildings.”
The Assemblymember voiced concern in regards to the injury executed to the home and for Lichmore-Smith’s security, since she has been getting harassed by builders for fairly a while now. She identified that police shouldn’t be collaborating in serving to to evict anybody, on this case or every other. Law enforcement officials don’t participate in evictions; marshals are known as in for that process.
Zinerman has even written a letter to the United Nations concerning the continuing spate of deed thefts focusing on Black elders. She is asking to have the U.N. Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights doc how total neighborhoods are being destabilized. In a press release to the AmNews, the assemblymember mentioned, “Petitioning the United Nations was by no means about symbolism — it was about naming the systematic focusing on of Black aged householders in Central Brooklyn for what it’s: a human-rights disaster. …
“Whereas the U.N. can not intervene instantly, its framing strengthens the actions we’re taking right here at residence. I’ve formally referred these circumstances to the New York Metropolis and New York State Commissions on Human Rights to pursue accountability and protections for our householders. And in Albany, I’m advancing new laws to make sure that deed-theft victims obtain compensation and restitution — simply as victims of every other crime do.”
