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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

In Amsterdam, any property that has been empty for over a year can be legally squatted, and once in, legal squatters may be hard to get out. For this reason, landlords tend to rent out their empty properties cheaply as "anti-kraak" (anti-squat), on the condition that the tenant moves out when the landlord needs the property again. This is quite popular for students because you often get a ridiculous amount of space for very little money, though it may come with excessive restrictions.

Amsterdam has (or used to have, perhaps) a pretty healthy squatting culture. Many squatters are ideologically driven and improve the neighbourhoods they're squatting in.

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Its "had" isnt it? Squatting was made illegal in 2010 if i recall correctly.

Municipalities can still kind of "allow" it on case by case basis. Nation wide legal basis (loop hole) is gone now indeed.

Thats likely with buildings owned by the municipalities? We have something similarly with a few decade old squats in Germany.

Not exactly, but that's often the case.

That's possible. I admit I haven't been keeping up, and my knowledge of squatting stems mostly from the 1990s, when I was a student.

I still think it's a very pragmatic way to fight real estate speculation. But my impression is that Amsterdam doesn't have a big problem with buildings sitting empty, so if squatting is illegal again, I guess they've found a different way to prevent it? I have no idea what that is, though.

There are manuals out there called "It's still possible" in the Dutch squatting community.

Houses still get squated, but less often and the squatters have to leave much quicker.

A quick translation of a Dutch article explaining how squatting is still possible:

>Today, squatting is illegal. This means that if a building is squatted and the owner makes a declaration, a procedure is started by the Public Prosecution Service that can result in evacuation. The squatters must be informed in time, so that they have the opportunity to institute summary proceedings. That does not mean that the squatters can just be removed from a building once they live there. That is only possible if they seriously misbehave, break house peace, get in the way of the activities of a company, or are at risk because the building is in poor condition.

> Many squatters are ideologically driven and improve the neighbourhoods they're squatting in.

Says who ? Not that I don't believe you or that I believe it's false but are there more than one account of that happening ?

Yes there is, and it's fairly common as far as I can tell, but it's not universal. Roughly speaking, my impression at the time is that there are roughly three different types of squatters:

* Opportunistic squatters: they simply need a place to live, would like it to be nice and cheap, but don't have the time or dedication for any sort of activism. Mostly students and young unemployed people. Artists possibly, though they can also fall in the next group.

* Ideological squatters: they have political opinions about housing policy. They tend to know the law, but may also disagree with it. Likely to organise information meetings, protests, but also provide services like community centers or soup kitchens. Tend to take good care of their squats in order to show this can work, but the more militant type may organise riots. Amsterdam had a lot of "krakerrellen" (squatter riots) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but that hasn't really happened since the situation got normalised. Though there has been the occasional evacuation where quatters had to be forced out. They usually leave of their own accord and obey court orders, though.

* Criminal squatters: don't care about the law, or may be very aware that they're breaking it. Probably doesn't care about the state of the house. Possibly involved in various crimes. I'm not aware of real criminal squatters in Amsterdam; crime happens more on the real estate owners side: lots of organised crime in Amsterdam is involves in the real estate business. That said, I imagine militant anarchists may also cross over from ideological to criminal squatters. And of course this is the group most likely to keep a low profile.

There's grey areas between all of them of course.

not anymore, squatting has been prohibited in the Netherlands for a couple of years now.

I've never understood the pro-squatting arguments. It's theft, no?

The German constitution mandates that (property) ownership brings obligations for the public good. Ownership is a construct secured by society, so society as a whole must at least partially benefit. As such, keeping a building empty can be considered theft, too.

> As such, keeping a building empty can be considered theft, too.

Your assertion makes zero sense even if we accept your thesis at face value. For example, it's absurd to leap from "society mut at least partially benefit" from private property to assert that private property not being used in compliance to your personal taste to be theft. That's just plain nuts from any angle.

You’re absolutely welcome to make an argument how a building kept deliberately empty of tenants over years benefits society.

You can consider that position nuts, but given the amount of public support and legal backing for a current initiative in Berlin to enact eminent domain against entities that hold > 3000 flats, “plain nuts from any angle” seems to be slightly exaggerated.

There's more to life than property rights. Keeping buildings empty in an area where there's high demand for buildings is harmful, and real estate is inherently subject to regulation already. Opponents of squatting do indeed complain that it's theft of some sort and should be illegal, and that's hard to deny, but at the same time it's a very cheap and pragmatic solution to a problem: one way or another, it ensures that buildings are kept in use.

Liberation.

Most private property was at some point converted to private ownership by violent acquisition. Owning land is not a natural right -- of you're not using it for societal improvement it seems right that society can cease to recognise your right in that land.

A similar thing happens with IPR, whereby governments can coopt it in times of need.

>> Many squatters are ideologically driven and improve the neighbourhoods they're squatting in.

How did you quantify the improvement?

Not sure about the Netherlands, but from other places I know, if the empty building was dirty and falling apart, with broken windows and such, with junkies and other such people frequenting it, and the squatters painting it, made repairs, started doing community stuff (from soup kitchens to concerts), allowing some homeless/poor people to stay in, and so on, I'd qualify it as improvement over an idle building sitting there...

I don't, but I can qualify it. Some squatters run neighbourhood projects or cultural projects of some sort, workshops, art-related stuff, community center, information meetings, that kind of thing.

How much notice does the landlord need to give? It would suck to get evicted mid-semester.

I don't know. From what I understand, they don't have normal tenant rights, so can be evicted pretty quickly. Yes, that sucks. That's the downside that comes with cheap space. You've got to pay the ridiculously overpriced costs for student rooms if you want stability.

This is why it's better to just live inside the dorm, Real Genius style ;)

In the uk to get round this sort of tax its common for buildings to have their roof removed.

Doesn't that ruin the building? It rains a lot there.

I noticed in Egypt that are a lot of inhabited unfinished buildings everywhere. From what I understand, that's for tax reasons: you don't pay tax (or pay less) if the building is still under construction, but you can still live there.

Looks really ugly.

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