Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.
Author Robert Neuwirth suggested in 2004 that there were one billion squatters globally. He forecasts there will be two billion by 2030 and three billion by 2050. Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, “squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualised, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement.”
Squatting can be related to political movements, such as anarchist, autonomist, or socialist. It can be a means to conserve buildings or to provide housing.Overview
The term squat
Okupa and its derivatives come from the word occupation. The occupation of abandoned houses has always existed, and in Spain it experienced a great boom during the 1960s and 70s, as a way of giving an outlet to the great demand generated by the influx of population from the countryside to the cities. Also, various political conceptions insist and influence the taking of lands, means of production and housing for the construction of their social ideology.
The occupation arose in the mid- 1980s in the image and likeness of the English squatters, after several hesitations with the denomination (since there was no word in Spanish to name the occupation with subcultural motifs of houses, uninhabited and local buildings). The difference between occupying and squat resides in the political nature of this last action, in which the taking of an abandoned building is not only an end but also a means to denounce the difficulties of access to a home.
The word squat and its derivatives have been popularized by the press so that it is commonly used, both in the colloquial language and in the media, as well as in bilingual dictionaries as the Spanish equivalent of the English squat. It is used in Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician and other Iberian languages. However, in its popularized meaning by the press it has been used to designate anyone who settles in an abandoned house, whether this action has a political character or not. The term squat can also designate the squatted place.
Regarding the expression “squat movement” to determine the sociocultural movement that orbits around occupations is also a term that has had an unequal reception. There are those who affirm categorically that there is no such movement but a multiplicity of squatting processes not necessarily related. Others prefer the plural movement of squatting, or movement of social centers for those who consider that it is the social center that gives identity to the movement. The word squat referring to people has been used in recent years.
General
In most cases, a squat is against the will or without consideration of the will of the owner. The ensuing breach of law, which in the Federal Republic of Germany derives from the guarantee of property in Article 14 (1) of the Fundamental Rights in the Basic Law, is deliberately accepted by the occupiers. These relate – in particular in the context of social movements – in general to an abuse by owners (mostly societies) and thus to Article 14 (2) of the Basic Law: “property obligation. Its use should also serve the common good. ”
There are also cases of tolerated house occupations, especially when it comes to very dilapidated buildings. Especially in the early period (1970s and 1980s) squatting was often tolerated for more than a decade. Cooperative behavior of squatters favored such toleration in some cases, but the sometimes militant pressure from larger support groups often led to owners and / or government agencies refusing to evacuate occupied property (especially as there was a likelihood that the evicted property would be vacated or other squatters would “retake” the property sooner or later if they vacate again after the eviction). A well-known example of such a militant pressure was the Hafenstraßein Hamburg. Cities and municipalities also had a certain self-interest: young people and young adults, who would otherwise have probably been homeless, had a “roof over their heads” as squatters.
Occupied houses are referred to as squats in some countries, such as France, the UK, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. As motives gave and give to squatters often that living room (or rooms for social and cultural events) missing or is not affordable. Lack of money or lack of housing are not suitable to justify serious property crime. Interim uses are not covered by this definition as they take place by mutual agreement and for a limited period of time.
Causes and Distinctions
House occupations are made of different, often overlapping motives: These are the desire for free living space, own housing shortage or even homelessness, protest against speculative vacancy and protest against high rents. Many squatters deliberately set themselves apart from social norms and try or practice alternative forms of coexistence.
The self-declared goal of repair work is to save dilapidated houses from demolition and make them habitable again.
In squatting there are basically two classes:
“Open occupied houses”, where the public may know – and should – that the house is occupied. Often banners are hanging on the facade, flyers are distributed, etc.
“Silent occupations”: this is where people move in and try not to make the occupation public.
The symbol of the squatter movement is a circle through which an N-shaped lightning strikes from bottom left to top right. The character was created around 1970 in the Amsterdam squatter scene and spread quickly across Western Europe.
Another explanation is the origin of the North American Indian Symbol treasure: a lying in a circle, pointing upward arrow means “The fight goes on”. A lightning bolt symbol means “fast”.
Motivations
There are several reasons why a squat is usually performed, although it is usually due to one of the following:
Diversity
A squat can accommodate a single person like dozens, in a small downtown apartment, a suburban industrial wasteland or a rural site. The living conditions may vary depending on the initial state of the site, the means and motivations of the occupants: young runaways refusing to enter a home, migrants, artists without workshops, nomadic truckers, private travelers of areas home, homeless, activists for the cause libertarian, independent, people looking for a space for social or community life.
Spaces and Community
For a large majority of squatters, the occupation is part of a residential path marked by precariousness. This is why many squats provide a space explicitly dedicated to the accommodation of people passing by: the sleep’in. In addition, they reconcile often place of residence and space of activity: they try to develop a collective management of the everyday, through the rehabilitation of the place, the organization of meetings and debates, the creation and the cultural diffusion, setting up workshops, and of course political information and action. There are also squats that host free shops, commonly called free-shops or “free zones” (thrift stores, internet access, etc.).
Search for a home
In some cases it is about families, groups of people or individuals looking for a place to live and can not or do not want to pay a rent or a mortgage. It is a social movement which expresses the right to enjoy housing and is not included in fundamental rights, such as the moral justification for entering into property belonging to others, both individuals and entities, and to obtain its use, regardless of the damage and economic expenses caused to the legal owners of said properties. Generally supporters of okupación often justify this by arguing that the real okupados are abandoned or are used only to speculate. Moreover, pressure exerted by the authorities makes the settlement squatter is inherent to him certain precariousness, which in turn energizes the movement and intensify their protest actions.
Realization of activities and propagation of ideas
There are numerous cases of squatting promoted by people who seek to create cultural and associative alternatives in the neighborhoods in which they live, through the so-called squatted social centers. For this, they use the squatted spaces in a self-managed way, carrying out various political, cultural or other activities in them. The squattingit is used in this way as an instrument to achieve an objective: the transformation of society. Some are ideologically linked to movements such as communism or anarchism. You can not talk about homogeneity of the movement because there is divergence of means and objectives in each social center. The very heterogeneous nature of the movement makes it difficult to identify with a specific social group, although its ideas are often related to anarchist thoughts. Social centers maintain a fluid communication with each other, taking advantage of new technologies 9To inform about their calls. However, only occasionally do they participate in common activities, such as protest mobilizations. In general, a social center responds to the specific context of the environment in which it is located, which will determine the nature of its activities. October November
In social centers, various social activities are carried out or coordinated, usually free of charge: lectures on different topics (traditional agriculture, political concepts or citizen awareness), theater, dance classes, various workshops (from children’s games to GNU promotion) / Linux), vegetarian canteens, field trips, concerts, poetic recitals, library service, language classes for immigrants, meetings of political, environmental, artistic or anti-prison groups. Its function in many cases is similar to that of the libertarian athenaeums of the early twentieth century.
Sometimes squatting is carried out only for temporary purposes and without having in mind the creation of a permanent social center, as was the case of the squatting of the old headquarters of the Spanish Credit Bank of Barcelona, vacated since 2007 and squatted by a hundred activists at the end of September 2010 to support the 29S general strike day.
Structural aspects
Impact on urbanism
Although one of the foundations of the phenomenon is the recovery of abandoned spaces, according to some analyzes the impact of squatting is not necessarily favorable to the development of the area in which it is developed. The phenomenon of occupation has been compared to the growth model of settlements in favelas in developing countries. In the third world countries, the process of urban growth generates spontaneous sclerotized settlements, which over time define the definitive structure of the city in which they develop. In this context, the proximity to urbanized areas -and the advantages facilitated by communication and a developed socio-economic environment- accelerates the process of settlement, accentuating the concentration of settlement. Some authors have studied the phenomenon of occupation from two models of growth, the so-called “central agent” model and the favela model:
The central agent model defines settlement based on a heuristic growth model based on the infrastructure present in the environment, as well as migratory flows characteristic of an area.
The favelas model interprets the development of a settlement based on favorable and negative points around a squatted area, which define and limit its development.
Some authors have described urban development as the effect of the flow of people and the flow – or change – of structures. In this sense, the spontaneous settlements offer a small-scale paradigm of a development process parallel to that of the city in which they are registered. Independently of its socio-economic environment, the highly mobile nature of the squatter population is related to the so-called flow of economic movement in Third World cities: According to Hillier, it is the city’s own structure that determines the volume of population movements. A) Yes,”Considering a city from the perspective of an axial map, the most integrated streets – from the urban point of view – should correspond to the most developed areas, while the less integrated streets, and the most segregated neighborhoods would be the poorest areas of the city. in large cities in developing countries, where informal settlements flourish, urban structure is characterized by a marked disarticulation. the spontaneous settlement, therefore, in that environment it is characterized by its proximity to highly developed areas, a significant characteristic that is not necessarily typical of squatted settlementsof the cities of the developed world. Some authors point out that although the defining factors of the distribution of urban settlements respond to the same factors-namely, availability of land and proximity to developed areas that offer job prospects-the contrasting nature of urban development of developed or third-world cities justifies a geography of the completely different occupation.
Another characteristic of the population dynamics of the third world city is the centralized growth. Growth, also defined by points of “attraction” favorable to settlement, therefore presents an irregular structure, which can create areas of high population concentration together with large spaces that lack factors favorable to settlement and remain unoccupied even in the long term. In any case, the development of a settlement ultimately depends not so much on its own tendency but on the policy of local authorities regarding the alienation of property. That is why the legal factor is of specific importance for this type of settlement.
Urban homesteading
Urban homesteading is a form of self-help housing where abandoned private properties in urban areas are taken over by the building’s usually poor residents.
Worldwide
In many of the world’s poorer countries, there are extensive slums or shanty towns, typically built on the edges of major cities and consisting almost entirely of self-constructed housing built without the landowner’s permission. While these settlements may, in time, grow to become both legalised and indistinguishable from normal residential neighbourhoods, they start off as squats with minimal basic infrastructure. Thus, there is no sewerage system, drinking water must be bought from vendors or carried from a nearby tap, and if there is electricity, it is stolen from a passing cable.
Besides being residences, some squats are used as social centres or host give-away shops, pirate radio stations or cafés. In Spanish-speaking countries, squatters receive several names, such as okupas in Spain, Chile or Argentina (from the verb ocupar meaning “to occupy”), or paracaidistas in Mexico (meaning “parachuters”, because they “parachute” themselves at unoccupied land).
Politics
During the period of global recession and increased housing foreclosures in the late 2000s, squatting became far more prevalent in Western, developed nations. In some cases, need-based and politically motivated squatting go together. According to Dr. Kesia Reeve, who specialises in housing research, squatting by necessity is in itself a political issue, therefore also a “statement” or rather a ‘response’ to the political system causing it. “In the context of adverse housing circumstances, limited housing opportunity and frustrated expectations, squatters effectively remove themselves from and defy the norms of traditional channels of housing consumption and tenure power relations, bypassing the ‘rules’ of welfare provision.”
Typology
Dutch sociologist Hans Pruijt separates types of squatters into five distinct categories:
Deprivation-based – i.e., homeless people squatting for housing need
An alternative housing strategy – e.g., people unprepared to wait on municipal lists to be housed take direct action (as discussed in the preceding paragraph)
Entrepreneurial – e.g., people breaking into buildings to service the need of a community for cheap bars, clubs etc.
Conservational – i.e., preserving monuments because the authorities have let them decay
Political – e.g., activists squatting buildings as protests or to make social centres
Legality
In many countries, squatting is in itself a crime; in others, it is only seen as a civil conflict between the owner and the occupants. Property law and the state have traditionally favored the property owner. However, in many cases where squatters had de facto ownership, laws have been changed to legitimize their status. Squatters often claim rights over the spaces they have squatted by virtue of occupation, rather than ownership; in this sense, squatting is similar to (and potentially a necessary condition of) adverse possession, by which a possessor of real property without title may eventually gain legal title to the real property.
Anarchist Colin Ward comments: “Squatting is the oldest mode of tenure in the world, and we are all descended from squatters. This is as true of the Queen [of the United Kingdom] with her 176,000 acres (710 km2) as it is of the 54 percent of householders in Britain who are owner-occupiers. They are all the ultimate recipients of stolen land, for to regard our planet as a commodity offends every conceivable principle of natural rights.”
Others have a different view. UK police official Sue Williams, for example, has stated that “Squatting is linked to Anti-Social Behaviour and can cause a great deal of nuisance and distress to local residents. In some cases there may also be criminal activities involved.”
Perceptions
The public attitude toward squatting varies, depending on legal aspects, socioeconomic conditions, and the type of housing occupied by squatters. In particular, while squatting of municipal buildings may be treated leniently, squatting of private property often leads to strong negative reaction on the part of the public and authorities. Squatting, when done in a positive and progressive manner, can be viewed as a way to reduce crime and vandalism to vacant properties, depending on the squatter’s ability and willingness to conform to the surrounding socioeconomic class of the community in which they reside. Moreover, squatters can contribute to the maintenance or upgrading of sites that would otherwise be left unattended, the neglect of which would create (and has created) abandoned, dilapidated and decaying neighborhoods within certain sections of moderately to highly urbanized cities or boroughs, one such example being New York City’s Lower Manhattan from roughly the 1970s to the post-9/11 era of the New Millennium.
Adverse possession
Adverse possession is a method of acquiring title to property through possession for a statutory period under certain conditions. Countries where this principle exists include England and the United States, based on common law. However, some non-common law jurisdictions have laws similar to adverse possession. For example, Louisiana has a legal doctrine called acquisitive prescription, which is derived from French law.
Source from Wikipedia