Miranda Leitsinger/msnbc.com

The Brooklyn, N.Y., home that Occupy Wall Street protesters intend to seize on behalf of a homeless New York City family.

Marchers have arrived at the vacant foreclosed Brooklyn house they intend to “liberate” so a homeless New York City family can move in.

"This is no longer a house, this is a home,” the Rev. Patricia Malcolm said moments after the throng gathered in front of the home. “... Where the people are one, we can achieve anything and everything.”

Nonetheless, marchers have called on musicians to set up, saying that a "block party" will begin in 10 minutes.

Click here to read previous posts on this story.

Miranda Leitsinger / msnbc.com

Yates McKee, 32, brought a housewarming gift on the march.

Several hundred housing activists and “Occupy” protesters are marching toward the home in Brooklyn that they intend to seize on behalf of the homeless Glasgow family.

Police are escorting them toward their destination, and have so far taken no action to stop them.

Despite a steady drizzle falling on the marchers, the mood is festive. People are carrying balloons and playing drums. One fellow is blasting away on a vuvuzela horn. They are chanting things like “back to the neighborhood” and “block by block.” And many marchers are carrying wrapped “housewarming gifts,” such as chairs, stools and plants.

 They have stopped at other foreclosed homes in the area before heading toward the home they have targeted for the Glasgows.

At one, Yates McKee, a 32-year-old art historian carrying a potted palm tree, said he joined the march “to stand with communities that are resisting the foreclosures and evictions. That's really in a way the 'ground zero' of the financial crisis.”

“The plant is a metaphor for sustaining life,” he said. “That’s really what housing is about. It's something that ... helps to sustain the lives of families and that is a right that is being fundamentally violated.”

Click here to read previous posts on this story.

Click here to read complete coverage of Tuesday's day of action on foreclosure and housing.

Sam Lewis

The Glasgows stroll through what they hope will be their new neighborhood.

Here’s a bit more on the Glasgows, the homeless New York City family being moved into a vacant foreclosed home in Brooklyn on Tuesday as part of a national protest by “Occupy” protesters and housing activists: 

Natasha Glasgow, 30, her former partner, Alfredo Carrasquillo, 27, and two children, Alfredo, Jr., 5, and Tanisha, 9, are among the more than 41,000 homeless adults and children who sleep in city shelters every night, according to Coalition for the Homeless.

The family has been living in shelters for more than a decade, a “very stressful” situation, according to Glasgow, who is jobless as well as homeless.

A program she was participating in that would have provided a rental subsidy to help them find permanent housing was defunded earlier this year, scuttling her efforts to get her family out of the shelter in New York’s Far Rockaway neighborhood, she said.

In preparation for their move into the foreclosed home targeted by the protesters, the family packed a few suitcases and bags.

As soon as they arrive, they will first meet neighbors and then begin the cleanup work with activists and “Occupy” protesters, Natasha said.

She said the children were excited but also anxious about making new friends. “(But) they know that mommy’s not going to put them into a predicament,” she said.

As for any potential problems with the authorities, she said: “I’m not really been worrying about them too much because I know that I am actually doing something that’s bettering myself, bettering my kids, bettering my whole life, so I’m not really worried about them too much. … I think that this is the best thing that’s going on for me.”

She never expected to become politicized and join such a protest action, but noted that it made her a “little angry” to know there were many homeless people living in shelters amid unused, empty housing.

“It’s good to release my story and have everybody talking, especially the people that’s going through the same thing I’m going through. …  I can hopefully make a change for everybody,” she said.

Click here to read a previous post about the effort to place the Glasgow-Carrasquillos into the foreclosed home.

Complete coverage of Tuesday 'Occupy' actions

Sam Lewis

Natasha Glasgow, 30, her husband Alfredo Carrasquillo, 27, and children Alfredo, Jr., 5, and Tanisha, 9, will have a new home Tuesday if "Occupy" protesters and housing activists succeed in forcing their way into a vacant foreclosed home in Brooklyn.

A New York family with two children that has been living on and off in shelters for more than a decade will move into a new home on Tuesday, say housing activists and ‘Occupy’ protesters who intend to force their way into a foreclosed house in Brooklyn later in the day.

"We are going to liberate the house,” said Sean Barry, of VOCAL-NY, which has been working to prevent homelessness for 10,000 low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and their families. "We want to make a public stance … for people to take sides."

The home that protesters aim to give to the Glasgow family -- which is not affected by HIV/AIDS – is in Brooklyn's East New York neighborhood, which has foreclosure and underwater rates that are nearly three times greater than that of New York state, Barry said, citing data from the housing and property database ListSource. 

The move-in is part of a national day of action coordinated by the 'Occupy' movement and housing activists in some 25 cities and towns, such as Petaluma, Calif., Southgate, Mich., Atlanta and Denver.

Activists and protesters plan to march to the Brooklyn home, where they will hold a housewarming party for them -- mother Natasha, 30, father Alfredo Carrasquillo, 27, and children Alfredo, Jr., 5, and Tanisha, 9 -- and then begin renovations. Carrasquillo is a community organizer at VOCAL-NY.

Rob Robinson of Take Back the Land, a national network of organizations focused on housing rights and securing community control over land, said the protesters plan to resist any efforts by authorities to remove the family from the home in a low-income neighborhood that's home to mostly African-Americans and Latinos.

"I am going to put up a real defense," said Robinson, who will serve as the police negotiator. "Until a judge tells us we have to leave, we're not leaving that house, so the family is in that house to stay. We're not ... disruptive, we do nonviolent civil disobedience. We call it positive action."

The 'Occupy' movement served as an inspiration for housing activists, who have been trying to help homeowners facing foreclosure keep their residences.

"Like September 17, when Occupy Wall Street started, people looked at it and there was this real question, 'Is this going to last? how is it going to grow?' and one of the reasons it grew is that as people stayed down at Zuccotti Park ... other people were inspired to take action," said Matt Browner Hamlin, an activist with occupyourhomes.org. "This is not something (where) ... we want a family to have a home for a day, we want them to have that home for a lifetime."

And for 'Occupy,' the initiative gives them a new focus after the dismantling of many of their encampments nationwide.

"It’s part of a national day of action that we hope will kick off a wave of defenses and home reoccupations,” Max Berger, 26, told the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly late last week while requesting $6,400 in funding to buy tools for the project. "This is not just about one event; this is a huge frontier for us. We can do these kinds of actions all the time, and we should. And it doesn’t have to be just us. We got to do this one right so we can inspire people to do it theirselves.”

Click here for all the posts on this developing story.  

Housing activists and "Occupy"protesters were gearing up Tuesday to take over foreclosed homes and empty lots and help defend families facing eviction in at least 25 cities as part of a bid to re-energize the grassroots movement and put the spotlight on the ongoing housing crisis.

From towns such as Southgate, Mich., and Lake Worth, Fla., to cities like Portland, Ore., and Chicago, activists were planning to disrupt auctions on foreclosed homes, hold candlelight vigils and join families battling eviction in their residences. In Denver, they were intending to dump trash from empty homes on the mayor's lawn; in Minneapolis they planned to help a veteran remain in his foreclosed home; in New York they planned to move a homeless family into an abandoned home.

"Like September 17, when Occupy Wall Street started, people looked at it and there was this real question, 'Is this going to last? how is it going to grow?' and one of the reasons it grew is that as people stayed down at Zuccotti Park ... other people were inspired to take action," said Matt Browner Hamlin, an activist with occupyourhomes.org. "This is not something (where) ... we want a family to have a home for a day, we want them to have that home for a lifetime."

"Occupy" protesters already have been squatting in vacant houses in cities like New York, Seattle, Portland, Oakland and London, where protesters have taken over an abandoned office block bought by UBS several years ago and dubbed it the "Bank of Ideas." They also have made scattered efforts – some of them successful -- to help families facing eviction defend their homes in California, West Harlem, and Minneapolis, among other places.

Banks are expected to repossess some 800,000 homes this year, down from more than 1 million last year, said RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio. But the number of U.S. homes that received a first-time default notice during the July to September quarter increased 14 percent compared to the second quarter of the year, according to the firm.

The increase is a sign that banks are now moving more aggressively against borrowers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments following industrywide foreclosure processing problems that emerged last fall. Those problems resulted in a sharp drop in foreclosure activity early this year.

Click here for all the developments on this breaking news story. 

Jason Redmond / AP

Activist Mario Jefferson, 31, right, leads a chant as Good Jobs LA and Occupy LA activists disrupt a home auction outside the county courthouse in Norwalk, Calif., Friday.

Dozens of Occupy Los Angeles protesters -- who lost their encampment to eviction and many of their comrades to arrest this week -- rallied Friday morning at a courthouse where some 7,000 properties are being auctioned after foreclosure by Bank of America.

The protesters are chanting and carrying signs outside the Norwalk Courthouse reading,"Banks got bailed out, we got sold out," "Keep people in their homes," and "Stop Foreclosures!" Organizers who were monitoring the sales online announced each property sale as it happened via megaphone.

"Protesters are calling for a moratorium on foreclosures and for Bank of America and other Wall Street banks to end the practices that crashed the economy and continue to hurt LA communities," says a release by Good Jobs LA, a nonprofit coalition of labor, housing and immigrant rights groups that is supporting Occupy LA. 

There was no obvious police presence -- only what appeared to be ordinary courthouse security, according to Jacob Hay, a Good Jobs LA spokesman who was there. In a bit of street theater, protesters held a mock auction of a tent from the dismantled occupy encampment.

"This is an example of the type of smaller but quick-hitting actions that the Occupy Movement will be transitioning to now that they don’t have the permanent camp at City Hall," said Hay, speaking by cell phone from the courthouse. "So it’s going to be a lot of these quick things.

Adam Carolla calls OWS protesters 'self-entitled monsters'

"On Monday, City Council will be considering a responsible banks ordinance, so people will be rallying there in front of City Council," he said. "And there will be more events like that to come."

Los Angeles is considering a Responsible Banking Ordinance which would attempt to compel the government to do business with banks that are rated "socially responsible," which the activists support. Similar proposals are being weighed in other cities.

Across the country, Occupy activists are resetting their strategy after many encampments have been forced to shut down.

In Wednesday night's massive police action to clear the protesters' encampment at the park in front of City Hall, more than 290 people were arrested. The Los Angeles Times on Friday posted a full list of those who were taken into custody, with bail set at $5,000 for most.

Related stories on msnbc.com

• Foreclosed homes, empty lots are next 'Occupy' targets
• More Occupy evictions loom
• Mass. AG sues five major banks over foreclosures

 Click here to follow Kari Huus on Facebook