The Nation - News from Aug. 17, 1988
A day after Denver police evicted 12 homeless women and their children from a vacant, federally owned house, Housing and Urban Development officials agreed to lease 55 vacant homes for $1 annually to shelters. The agreement was worked out with shelter sponsors after HUD, a federal department, had police oust the squatters who broke into a $73,400, HUD-owned home over the weekend and refused to leave. The squatters were protesting the number of repossessed homes that are left vacant. Grady Maples, regional director of HUD, defended the evictions. The precedent of allowing occupancy at will of vacant HUD buildings “had the potential for being a very serious problem,” he said.
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