POWR names and shames the top holiday evictors in Providence

"Our three demands are rent stabilization in the long run, an immediate halt to rent increases in the short run, and the long-term provision of adequate public housing."

“We came out here tonight to name and shame the biggest evictors in the City of Providence, both private and public landlords,” said Mike King, a member of POWR (Providence Organization of Workers and Renters) speaking outside the Garrahy Judicial Complex on Dorrance Street in Providence Wednesday evening. “This courthouse behind us evicts dozens of families, including dozens of families this month. We're trying to highlight how the rent increases have been impacting families and leading to a lot of these evictions.”

Around a dozen people participated in the protest, under the watchful eye of three Providence Police Officers nestled in their patrol cars. The event was of course entirely peaceful. The protest was led by Ebz, a POWR member. Speakers included housing advocates Terri Wright and Tiara Graham. Here’s the video:

So who are the biggest evictors in Rhode Island this holiday season? Having combed through court records, POWR developed some slides and broadcast them of the signage outside the courthouse:

“The biggest reason why folks have been evicted this December has been an inability to pay the rent,” said POWR member Mike King to reporters after the protest. “The rent has gone up 15% on average this year across the city and there were rent increases in the years before that, so this crisis has hit the boiling point for working-class families.

“This is not something that the city has had any meaningful plan to address - that's what we're here to draw attention to - people being put out on the street because of the inability of the city to figure out a way to deal with the housing situation.

“Today we're calling for an end to rent increases immediately - for the city to take emergency action and put a moratorium on rent increases until a plan can be developed to deal with the crisis. We demand the creation of some form of rent control on rental properties throughout the city to stabilize the rents and to make it so that people can continue to stay in their homes, not get forced out onto the street. Third, we demand that the city create more public housing that's built by a public developer and union labor by city and state workers and provide adequate housing to deal with that situation, as well as provide employment. This creates not just safer and more stable communities, but a set of policies that better reflect the politics of the people who live in the city. People don't want to see people out on the street, people don't want to have to pay more for housing.

“Our three demands are rent stabilization in the long run, an immediate halt to rent increases in the short run, and the long-term provision of adequate public housing.”

Char, a member of POWR, sent me the following statement after the protest:

“We are standing outside the Garrahy Judicial Complex which is home to Providence’s housing court a.k.a. eviction court. I’ve stood inside its halls with some of the people you heard speak tonight, and watched lawyers laugh and joke with each other as tenants move through the eviction machine in an assembly-line style. As Mike and Ebz mentioned, just this month there was a proposal to build a new courthouse with $350 million of state funding, to replace this one. We do not need a new courthouse, just like we don’t need new jails or new prisons. We need an end to evictions, and new public housing that is rent-controlled and democratically governed by the tenants who live there.

“This December, I’m thinking of the hundreds of Rhode Islanders who are sleeping outside in the middle of winter, just like last year, and the year before that, and the year before that... who are harassed and violated constantly by Mayor Smiley and the Providence Police Department, who are evicted yet again from encampments where they’ve made homes for themselves after already being forced to sleep outside. I’m thinking of the thousands of Rhode Islanders who lost their homes this year because of evictions. This December I’m also thinking of the millions of Palestinians that have been displaced by Israeli bombing and Israeli settler violence over the last several months of genocide and last 75 years of Nakba.

“It’s important to me to weave these things together. These issues aren't separate. The people in power in this country are eager to spend billions of dollars funding genocide in Palestine and around the world. They are eager to spend billions of dollars on border militarization as hundreds of people die each year seeking asylum in the U.S. They are eager to send billions of dollars in aid to Israel, so Israeli settlers can experience universal healthcare and free higher education, while hundreds of thousands of people in this country die without a roof over their heads, and/or drowning in medical debt and student debt. These politicians, these police, these slumlords are all enemies of life. We are protectors of life. We care for each other. We keep each other safe. So we say freeze rents, freeze evictions, no new courts, no new jails, no more borders, ceasefire in Gaza now and free Palestine.”