“Housing is a human right,” said Dominique Walker, who took over an Oakland house that was in foreclosure and sold to an investment company.

Kate Wolffe / AP Sharena Thomas (left), Carroll Fife (third from right), Dominique Walker (second from right), and Tolani King (right), stand outside a vacant home they took over on Magnolia Street in West Oakland, Dec. 30, 2019.

A group of women activists who took over an empty house in a gentrifying Oakland neighborhood for nearly two months were forcibly removed by police Tuesday morning. A judge ordered the women, who had been squatting in the empty, investor-owned home since Nov. 18, 2019, to be removed when he rejected Moms 4 Housing activist Dominique Walker’s argument that “housing is a human right” and that she should be allowed to stay in the vacant home. “Housing is a human right. I pay bills there. I pay water, PG&E, internet. We live there,” Walker previously told the Associated Press. “We want to purchase the home; it needs to belong back in the hands of the community. It was stolen through the foreclosure crisis.” Police, which included SWAT officers, broke down the door of the Oakland home and removed Moms 4 Housing activists Misty Cross, Tolani King, and Jesse Turner while supporters locked arms outside and chanted “shame on you,” according to KPIX. Another man, Walter Baker, was arrested outside the home. “Today, this morning, the sheriffs came in. They came in like an army for mothers and babies,” Walker, who was not home at the time of the eviction and was the only occupant who was not arrested, told KPIX. She said that the police “did this strategically” while she was appearing on Democracy Now. “I’m angry that my sisters are in handcuffs. Our supporters are in handcuffs right now, all because we have the right to housing,” she said. “This movement is just beginning, and we see what we’re up against. But we also see what they are afraid of. They’re afraid of us mobilizing 300 people in 15 minutes. That’s what we did.”

The latest from @moms4housing’s Dominique Walker. @KPIXtv #cbsnbayarea

Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesperson for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, described the eviction as a “very difficult situation for our agency with a lot of concerns.”

“We are thankful the eviction was completed without any use of force or significant issues. Based on intelligence information from inside the house we had to plan for a wide range of contingencies. We faced a lot of hostility from activists and protestors,” Kelly wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News. The sheriff brought an armored police vehicle “in the event there was any type of emergency that required,” he added. “We operated well within policy and the law. Like I said, the outcome was successful in the fact there were no significant incidents.” The Moms 4 Housing activists formed after Walker, who was born and raised in Oakland before she moved to go to school in Mississippi, returned to her hometown and witnessed how the shortage of affordable housing had affected her community, she told BuzzFeed News. Homelessness rose 47% between 2017 and 2019 with black people making up 50% of the homeless population, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “Talking to my community, everybody had the same story. Everybody that was originally in Oakland, they are either displaced hours away and have to commute to work. Or they are displaced out in the streets,” Walker said. “Our goal is to reclaim land back into the hands of the community, where it belongs.” She said choosing that home in Oakland was a deliberate choice and that “a lot of the harm that happened in the community” came about because of investment companies like Wedgewood, which owns the property. The real estate investment firm purchased the house for $501,078 and took possession of it days after the women moved in, Sam Singer, a company spokesperson, told BuzzFeed News in an email. The house is worth an estimated $630,722, according to Zillow.

Jeff Chiu / AP