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Comment by ibaikov | Hacker News Reader

> 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

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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.

> 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.

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

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