As the city probes a taxpayer-funded nonprofit that held a “teach-in” on accessing vacant apartments and seizing ownership, the group now claims it never endorsed the squatting seminar.
Officials for Bronx-based Picture the Homeless contend Andres Perez was not speaking for the group on March 15 when he brazenly advised 20 onlookers on the finer points of breaking and entering.
But their defense doesn’t square with what actually happened.
Perez is a member of the board of Picture the Homeless, which has garnered at least $240,000 in taxpayer money in the last five years and was to receive another $50,000 this fiscal year. The money was halted after The Post witnessed, and reported on, the teach-in.
Perez leads the group’s “Housing Not Warehousing” campaign.
In a March 13 press release, the group’s housing organizer, Adrian Antonio Paling, announced it would stage a “sleep out” at Councilman Erik Martin Dilan’s office in Brooklyn to protest housing issues.
The next day at the protest — which included four scheduled “teach-ins” and a tour of Arlington Village, a half-vacant housing complex nearby — PTH members distributed literature promising new members a way to “SECURE A HOME through direct action, sweat equity and commitment!”
Perez twice gave a how-to on breaking into a property, first to a reporter before the tour and then to the gathering of 20 people at the teach-in. He used “we” in his statements, as if he was speaking for his group.
“We teach them to go online and check the property for damages and who owns the property,” he told The Post. “We go there at a certain time and open the property. We bring tools.”
Later, Perez provided more guidance to the full audience.
“The best time to enter a building is in the late hours,” he said. “You make sure you have your proper tools. You remove the chains and padlock, and then you go in.”
He went on to explain that once inside, the “homesteader” should document repairs, open utility accounts and establish a mailing address to lay the legal groundwork for eventual ownership.
Marcus Moore, described as the group’s housing campaign leader on its YouTube feed, also told a reporter that day, “I have homesteaded in two places. I’m on my second property right now.”
Lynn Lewis, president of PTH, still maintained that Perez was speaking only for himself. “We don’t have a program to teach people to squat,” she said.
