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Comment by pineaux | Hacker News Reader

Actually, what they mean is squatters. In many parts of Europe -especially germany and spain- it's quite normal for 16 to 25 year olds to squat abandoned buildings and live there until the police kicks them out. These kids tend to get intoxicated and do stupid stuff. Like ringing a bell in the middle of the night. The squatting thing is seen by many as a measure against speculation on living space and at the same time giving young kids a cheap place to live and get on their feet. In most places in Europe the squatting is semi-allowed because of remnants of old roman law. It's quite fascinating and -in my opinion- a tragedy that it is disappearing.

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Drunk kids unable to afford housing, in a society where owners of property would rather let it get run down instead of develop it or sell it, and where it's expected that the homeless youth will harass their neighbors, sounds like a failure of society.

The young people shouldn't have to squat and abandoned buildings shouldn't be allowed to just sit and rot.

You are making too many assumptions. Some squatters are the homeless, some are young-ish adherents of the far left, for whom this is a lifestyle choice.

The most famous Prague squat, Klinika in Žižkov, was full of blue-haired nepo babies whose parents were well connected politicians or businesspeople. That is also why it was tolerated for a fairly long time, and it was always able to summon a crowd of friendly journalists whenever someone tried to empty the building.

(Note that this is something that actual poor people rarely are able to - but lifestyle squatters who studied the same faculty before dropping out can do easily, as they still have the phone numbers of their graduated friends).

The common feature is freewheeling attitudes to drinking and drugs. Most homeless shelters or cheaper landlords won't tolerate too much consumption on the premises, or even have a dry policy. In a squat, anything goes.

> in a society where owners of property would rather let it get run down instead of develop it or sell it,

Nobody would "rather" do this. They are incentivized to, typically as an Nth order consequence of public policy.

you think nobody runs out of money, or finds themselves up shit creek? what about inherited properties that you dont have the money, time or ability to renovate and youre waiting for someone else to buy it from you?

Those situations happen but they are rare and usually short lived. The reason we see boarded up store fronts and unoccupied homes for literally years is because we incentivize it.

A friend of ours is an old lady who needed to spend a few weeks in the hospital. While she was there, her house was squatted and removing the squatters took a bit more than a year during which time she was effectively homeless. So I am glad that the laws are gradually being tightened against squatters

Apparently in France it’s common enough that you can hire people, effectively goons, to harass and intimidate them into leaving.

Be careful though when hiring goons, you might get involved with the wrong kind of people.

I think it was in Andy Mcnab's autobiography, where there was a story of a British SAS (Elite special forces) soldier who came home from an overseas tour to find squatters in his house. Apparently he sent flowers to them while they were in hospital.

Yup that was in France. Now with the law of 2023, it's significantly easier to deal with squatters.

Yep, a very common story. Or someone whose parents pass away, they take a few months to put affairs in order and start selling the house, only to find out the house is now being squatted and they have a nightmare to deal with.

But somehow people much prefer the “bohemian squatters sticking it to greedy capitalistic landlords who don’t use their property” narrative.

It didn't take a year to remove the squatters. In fact, it probably took about 10min.

It took a year to remove the squatters without risk of government violence being applied to the owner.

There's a subtle difference.

What's the point of what you wrote here?

Think about that a little more.

It's not uncommon to be able to illegally do something very quickly that would take longer to do legally. I'm sure most of us are already aware of that.

Where do you get all that from? Except for famous cases like the Rote Flora in Hamburg or i guess Berlin in general there's not a lot of squatting going on in Germany, or is there?

In Germany squatting laws dictate you have to openly live at a place for 30 years and the property needs to be registered to your name in order for you to be able to claim ownership.So here it can hardly be a measure anyone can take to get a cheap place to live.

Same as in Spain. I know multiple cases of "okupas", not of what OP describes.

No, there is not a lot of squatting going on in Germany. AFAIK, the only EU countries with rather active squatting scenes are Italy and Spain, but my information is probably 20 years out of date.

I have several friends who have squatted abandoned buildings in Europe. I have other friends who live in otherwise abandoned buildings under agreement with the owner to prevent squatters breaking in to the building. When I moved into my house several years back it looked abandoned (because it had been before buying it), and when I invited friends over for the first time some assumed I was squatting there upon arrival. Squatting is really not an unusual thing. Squatters aren't squatting in order to claim ownership. Often they're students looking for a cheap place to stay.

> The squatting thing is seen by many as a measure against speculation on living space and at the same time giving young kids a cheap place to live and get on their feet.

This is true for abandoned empty buildings. If the owners are not using a building and someone starts to live in there, they are allowed. The idea is that the right to housing is greater than the right to own empty buildings just for speculation.

In cities were housing offering is lacking this is seen as a measure to push speculators to sell or rent their properties.

this was known in the US as "squatter's rights." unfortunately it's mostly vestigial now.

Underage kids that ran from their family should be brought back to the family or into foster care, not live in crack houses, that's not a tragedy, it's progress.

That they will do with anyone below 18.

But there are some rules that allow teens above 16 to work in certain jobs and they may be considered adults depending on the circumstances depending on a judge interpretation. Below that age the police will bring the kids to their parents or to a foster home.

If you're an independent and clever 16 year old you might be better of on your own than in foster care.

There are enough foster care horror stories that I don't think anyone "must" be there.

Young teenagers live in streets and squats are abused a lot. By a lot I mean, massively lot.

You make it sound like a common occurence in Europe. For my country (Germany) it has been only 1000~ buildings in total since the 1970s and I am pretty sure 90% of that has been in Hamburg in Berlin. So no, it's a very unlikely explanation for an abandoned building in rural Bavaria.

So yeah, feral children

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