Squatters take over Gordon Ramsay's London pub | Hacker News Reader

Squatters take over Gordon Ramsay's London pub

bbc.com

35 pointsdarth_avocado46 comments

>The Kitchen Nightmares host unsuccessfully attempted to free himself from the lease in a legal battle at the High Court in 2015.

i'm guessing it's been vacant since at least then?

There needs to be some mechanism for communities to reclaim spaces like this. they have value to a town, and leaving them vacant has a cost. i'm not sure giving them over to squatters is the right solution, but there needs to be consequences for property owners who harm a community by taking up space and ensuring it provides zero value to anybody by leaving it vacant.

The property owner pays taxes, right? So the mechanism now is that investors don’t like to pay taxes and expenses without income to offset.

I don’t know if the UK has eminent domain, but in the US the city can use eminent domain to purchase and do something. But in this case, I think if anyone wanted that property, they would purchase it. So it’s a bit of a tough problem to fix by government intervention.

And Gordon Ramsey restaurants are pretty luxury, so it’s not like there’s some essential gap by this pub being empty until someone wants to purchase the space.

>The property owner pays taxes, right?

My understanding is that they do not, for a listed building that is vacant.

Well that's an easy fix right there. In the US you pay property taxes regardless.

Not exactly. I mean, in the US, as far as I know in all/most jurisdictions you don't get a different tax rate depending on whether the property is vacant or not. But in many places you can get a sizable property tax deduction for historic designated properties, sometimes equal to 100% of the value of the structure. Note that in the UK "listed building" means the property is registered as being historically significant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listed_building.

That's pretty rare though, especially in the US. And generally afaik, historic listings here impose a cost on the homeowner but not a benefit (i.e. a tax break).

That seems odd as in the UK property taxes are based on ownership, not vacancy. What makes you think vacant properties aren’t subject to taxes?

The exemption for vacant buildings only applies to listed buildings in the UK. E.g. https://www.clearway.co.uk/news/does-a-landlord-have-to-pay-... :

> If your commercial property belongs to one or more of the following categories, you’ll be eligible for an extended period of relief for business rates, provided that your property is fully empty and not in use:

...

> If your building is a listed building, you will only begin paying business rates once the property is occupied once again

That pub closed last month according to https://whatpub.com/pubs/NLD/5989/york-albany-london

Google reviews from 10 months ago, so at least active till then

Double the taxes every year it's vacant.

> Signed by "The Occupiers", the notice ... claimed any attempt to enter the premises without their permission was a criminal offence and could result in a prison sentence or fine.

This is insane that squatting is not a criminal offense and that they can even argue that forceful eviction by the owner would be a criminal offense

It is by no means insane, especially if you consider the broader legal status. It's illegal to break into places, and it's illegal to occupy people's homes. What is called squatting refers to occupying empty/abandoned places, and it would be insane to make that a criminal offense.

Trespassing is a criminal offense, right?

In the UK, it’s a civil matter in almost all cases.

You mean that if I have a place and leave it empty for any reason, then it can be squatted, and this is perfectly legal?

If yes, this is unbelievable and insane, yes.

IIUC, a UK place of residence cannot be squatted but a business can. In either case, damage can be prosecuted

There is subtlety here. Leaving it empty because you are away doesn't mean it's not your residence anymore. Abandoning it changes the legal status of its occupation. Only abandoning the place makes squatting not a criminal offense in most countries.

Such difference exists for a reason, as a balance against an absolute power of owners which drives the number of homeless people up as we can see in certain areas. Take for example the netherlands. It was very common and well regarded to squat for a while, and the homeless population was very low. Now that squatting has been outlawed, both homeless and empty dwellings have gone up. There was some public study on the topic a while back: https://en.squat.net/2016/05/27/netherlands-housing-crisis/

UK squatters generally move into buildings the local community consider to be blighted, so there’s never much of an outrage. As an owner it’d be hard to claim damages against a building that was a tear-down thirty years ago.

In the context of your point:

Leaving your primary home empty because you visited a grocery store is not the same as leaving your 2nd (physically unnecessary) home empty except for 4 weeks a summer.

Housing should be a right.

Hoarding it should be criminal.

Including your empty guestroom, presumably? After all, no one's using it. Or is it only other people who have to deal with criminal invaders?

Assuming you are commenting in good faith, no of course not your empty bedroom. A person's residence is protected by law in most countries, and this has nothing to do with the legal status of squatting.

Occupying part of someone's residence while they are there, or while they are away is strongly illegal and criminal, a violation of the residence. Nothing to do with squatting: this practice of stealing people's homes does not exist (or very anecdotally) and is dealt with by the police without trial in every country.

You can for example study the mediatic cases brought forward by the french far-right media (BFM TV / CNEWS) such as the Maryvonne case or the Roland case: they have not been acted upon by the police because they were abandoned houses that were not the residence of the owners despite what they claimed in the media.

In this case the property was closed sometime in mid-March [0] and the police were made aware of the squatters on 4/10. That's less than one month empty before the squatters took possession.

Now that the squatters are there and apparently can only be dealt with through a civil lawsuit, the odds of someone wanting to buy the property are presumably much lower, so it's going to remain abandoned and unused for much longer than it otherwise would. How is that a favorable outcome for the community?

[0] https://whatpub.com/pubs/NLD/5989/york-albany-london

> is insane that squatting is not a criminal offense

No. Clearly a civil case.

If someone breaks into your place of business, is it not a criminal case? Is it different if the business place has been cleared out for renovations?

Yet stealing property that isn’t real estate is criminal.

Squatting is not stealing. There isn't abundant access to the resource such as in digital piracy, but the squatted goods are not damaged and will return to their lawful owner. If they are damaged, that's a case of degradation, which is another offense completely disconnected from squatting (both can occur separately).

Squatting rights are necessary in any property system. In many European countries they were setup after WWII because an absolute property system was failing the people: there were many abandoned buildings whose owners were dead/missing/gone and many people whose dwellings had been destroyed. Squatting saved many lives, and so did the laws that legalized squatting.

I'm not a lawyer but I'm a bit skeptical of The Occupiers legal claim. It's generally true for residential property but I'm not sure about pubs.

It's unbelievable that squatting isn't a criminal offense.

I saw someone solving this problem by subsequently leasing the squatted premise to someone else, and then occupying the residence. Because the person wasn't the owner but a renter they had more rights than the landlord. I wonder if this is the right solution for all of these squatters.

you gotta outsquat the squatters

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-12/out-squa...

Property law is abysmal in the UK, the fact that the squatters stuck up a sign on the wall naming their rights to occupy, just shows what a joke it is. I dont agree with property being left empty, but there is due process to these things, and the average worker has to suffer through all of it to even get one home.

If no one is buying at the current price then thats the market saying the fair price is lower, and perhaps it should just go to auction. I'm sure it's pocket change to Ramsey, but it set's an ugly precedent letting this go forth.

If you sit on a train without a ticket it's a jailable offence. How is breaking into someone's property and living there not completely illegal? It's completely inconsistent and squatting is a real problem here.

> pocket change to Ramsey

He does not own the property.

Ugly precedent? Squatting, and more generally adverse possession laws have been around for literally centuries? https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law/squatters-rights-to-propert...

This is why in Asia, local gangsters/mafias/triads/yakuzas exist to solve this kind of problems. Usually it start with intimidation to squatters directly. Then doxing. Then intimidation of the occupiers families (even living across different countries). Then assassinations (after being tortured for a week - std is 7 days but can go a month). Police usually stay out of this kind of dispute as long as it stays within intended targets (families counts as included). Europeans and Americans are a bit primitive as they rely on "laws". Asians typically had gone thru this millenia ago and settle with the triad system as it works better than government involvement.

If property isn't protected by laws and citizens aren't left with any recourse, the results will be ugly.

It isn't ... look up civil forfeiture.

People need to understand the history of squatting. It has served a useful historical purpose. Even after WW2, it was unclear who owned what and if they were still alive so squatting became a way to reclaim abandoned property.

Even in the wake of the GFC, we've had unclear ownership on houses taht were foreclosed on (sometimes legally, sometimes not) where the foreclosing firm didn't have clear ownership of the debt and may have just gone out of business anyway.

I, for one, am more interested in people having shelter than I am with a house sitting empty for decades because it has no heirs or the true owners own so many properties they don't even notice.

Yet squatting can be (and is) weaponized with fake leases that turn the issue into a civil complaint with all that delays that entails. Squatters are getting sophisticated by finding out details of the owner to make their forged lease seem more realistic.

Which brings us to the real problems:

1. Housing is unaffordable. Squatting is a symptom of unaffordable and/or unavailable housing; and

2. Private property (as opposed to personal property) as a form of wealth creation is fundamentally broken and incompatible with affordable housing.

Im sure there is a “squatter removal agency” that would take care of this for a few grand

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40032832

Lots of comments here complaining about the fact that squatting is allowed.

But the property seems to have been empty for years. It's hard for me to be sympathetic to the right to leave a property completely vacant and unused.

The property was functioning as a pub until March of this year:

https://whatpub.com/pubs/NLD/5989/york-albany-london

The squatters seem to have taken possession less than a month after it was closed.

Thank you for adding some real info!

Could this possibly lead to a new Gordon Ramsey series?

"Squatting Nightmares"

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