In London 'Guardians' live in empty office buildings
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
The weirdest place I worked was for a couple weeks in an refrigerated food warehouse. It was soon to open, but hadn't yet. It was HUGE and one big chunk was kept at 40 F and another big chunk at -10 F. All I had to do was sit in an office all night and walk around the place 3 times during the night. Perfect job for studying, really. But I had to have a thick jacket and a hat for my patrols!
So, apart from the vacation part, pretty much the same as renting privately in the UK then.
Check the photo attached to this news article for en example of the sort of damage caused by "squatters": http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/7087
Here's a counter-example to your article: http://londonist.com/2009/01/temporary_school_of_thought.php
Musicians, artists, digital media designers, programmers and TV-types - someone who is now a producer at the BBC doing wonderful things - actors, writers, some of the more politically-involved people I've met - a fairly broad swathe of not-entirely-negative character types.
Sure, some of these character types might personally irritate me from time to time, but Goddamn if this city wouldn't be culturally poorer without them...
Whereas - the boors and hooligans, the litterers and asocial egoist vandals I've met in my time are typically what you'd presumably consider 'normal' people - generally middle class, some from the lower tracts, some from the higher - mostly employed, mostly bemonied and self-satisifed. There's a higher catchment of people in this demographic who appear to feel little social compunction, little value in the world they find themselves in, little incentive to invest in others or in society.
Squatters at the very least appear to have considered their place in society and what society means to them and those around them - not something I'd say for the vast lump of the placated population.
imho, naturally.
We moved out and rented premises and homes as soon as we could, which was after about two years. Nobody noticed we were there (no visibility from any other properties or the street, even though it's bang in the centre of a city), and we left it with no leaks, clean windows, the floor restored, everything repainted and cleaned, and the rats and gulls cleared out.
About six months after we left, they bricked up the one and only entrance, and it's once more sitting there, quietly rotting.
Do you actually go up to and introduce yourself to the scumbags? If not, then I call hyperbole.
That is simply not true but thank you for providing an example of the hot air about homelessness that I referred to.
Squatters rely on section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977, which creates an offence of using or threatening unauthorised violence for the purpose of securing entry into any premises, while there is known to be a person inside opposing entry. As I said, this was originally implemented to prevent slum landlords from using violence to drive out tenants who benefited from statutory rent controls.
No UK government has ever passed any law that legalises or permits squatting.
I'm not sure what you mean about "hot air about homelessness"? Do you think squatters have nice warm homes that they could actually go back to if they weren't being such frightful brutes?
Remember this legal philosophy gem next time you read about a corporation using a tax loophole.
This is not to mention that tax law is a lot more complex and likely to result in subtle loopholes than this specific, evidently well-known one.
Actually, it did in 2012.
Still, it's a start and there are indications that the government is taking the problem seriously. Last year, MPs were asked to provide evidence of the scale and impact of squatting in commercial premises in their constituencies, which provided an opportunity for constituents to highlight the problems caused by squatters.
"Offence of Squatting in a Residential Building" https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
It's some pretty curious moral arithmetic you've got going on there.
You are a part of civilization. Accept it.
Perhaps a compromise in which property is protected but the protection comes in exchange for some limitations on how you can use it... isn't actually the end of the world?
I don't disagree, though I'm not so sure that the only possible alternative is Mad Max.
That said, historically, setting rules for how property should be used is as much a part of the State's existence as protecting its owners.
I know quite a few people who've lived in squats from time to time over the years, and they're generally lovely people.
So, you know, we can all have an opinion.
And if you had 5, 10, or 20 squatters... how long do you think it would take one jerk to ruin the place top to bottom.
Squatters don't need to be all bad to destroy properties. Only a tiny percentage of them have to be destructive, and then building will look like a hellhole by the time the owner sees what's been done.
You have made some logical errors here.
The fact that there is a hole in the wall is not ascribed to squatters and could equally be attributed to general disrepair.
I accept you might say: "there has been at least some crime, so there has been at least one criminal"... but you still don't know if that one criminal was a squatter or how many squatters there were who were not committing such crimes.
In the end, this anecdotal/circumstantial evidence teaches us nothing.
But I do take the point about the cost of evicting plus lost revenue. Use of empty properties could be a good solution for homelessness if well managed but the Govt. doesn't want to put resources towards that because it's easier to let charities deal with it.
"The housing situation in London is shocking. Young people, students and people who are low paid just cannot get places to live.
"Rather than going for that legal framework, we should be looking at ways where the owners of those buildings are encouraged to enter in to short term agreements that people will leave as soon as they need the building.
Does she realise that she's advocating the creation of formalised (temporary) slums? These are office buildings, in no way fitted out for residential use.
Building can be empty for all sorts of reasons - between tenancies, pending repairs or building work, or awaiting the granting of planning permission for redevelopment.
It's as if someone hacks into your computer while you're asleep, but you're not allowed to kick them off or even reboot/switch off the computer, unless you go to court first.
The contracts that these so called guardians have seem strange though. Are they standard rental contracts, because the conditions described wouldn't be legal where I live. I wonder if courts will at some stage decide that there people really are renting, and are therefore entitled to all the legal protection of renters.
You mean _anti_-squatting market?
These kind of companies have thrived in Europe over the past few years due to a wholescale clampdown of squatters rights, with the Netherlands and England* making it outright illegal in 2010 and 2012 respectively.
*In England, the term "squatting" is defined in legal terms to mean "the act of knowingly entering a _residential_ building as a trespasser and living there". Entering a non-residential building without permission is still not illegal, provided you don't cause any damage.
I'm glad to see a turn back from punishing the victims of crime to punishing the perpetrators. Perhaps now the government can do something about prosecutions of people for attacking burglars in their own home, another longstanding victim-punishing law.
Squatting is a non-violent act. It provides shelter to someone who didn't have it before. The owner of the shelter can be unaware of the fact that his property is being used for several months, emphasizing the lack of damage by the act.
Evicting a squatter, on the other hand, causes damage to the victim in fact, it removes a shelter from someone.
So mugging and squatting are two very different acts
Defences for squatting typically hinges on arguments around that the squatters need the building more than the landlord who leaves it empty. As a moral argument, that would carry more weight if squatters were known to leave when the landlord was putting the building to productive use, but they don't. So on that angle, squatting is mere theft, too, but of a much higher value item than any regular burglar or mugger could ever hope to make off with.
Intention doesn't come into theft. "I stole his car but only for a day" doesn't change the fact that a crime was committed; neither does it for houses or offices.
What you have to consider, though, is the fact that not all property is equal. There is a difference between owning a toothbrush, and owning slaves. Equalling all property would be identifying a policeman's action of emancipating a prostitute from her pimp as theft of property, which of course is nonsense.
To give an example. Imagine you go to a country where slavery is legal, disgusted by their treatment you join some activists that emancipates slaves. Now you are stealing the slaveholders property and therefor committing a crime. Are you going to hold that crime at par with stealing someones money, or someones bicycle?
Now this is an extreme example, but a few hundred years ago it wouldn't be so far out, and slave emancipators, now considered heroes, were then considered criminals? Same may hold a few hundred years from now in case of land. Land hording is criminal, it keeps other people of it. It could and should be used for the great of the community. Squatting a few hundred years from now may be looked at as land emancipation, even though now it is as criminal as stealing a bike.
As said by massive hypocrites from within their safe homes. Most first world anarchists would likely be murdered and robbed within days if there was actual anarchy, and no police to get help from then.
>slaves
Property doesn't have free will.
Not to mention their money and time in getting the squatters evicted, which usually involves courts, the hiring of security people, etc, followed by the cost of repairing the damage they did to the property.
plus I have no empathy towards folks that have property they don't use, and then actively engage in preventing others from using it, and then finally complain about how difficult it is to prevent other people to use their property they don't use in the first place.
I'm less concerned with invasion of business properties - while it should still be illegal, there is less loss to a business, who also typically have the legal staff and expertise as well as funds to get rid of them more swiftly and easily.
In short. Squatting is sometimes, but rarely followed with more violent and damaging crimes. But squatting in it self are not those crimes.
--- [1] with exception, of course, in the case of vandalism, if no the "owner" is oblivious of its value, or when vandalism acts to prevent further vandalism, like the destruction of military tools and weapons.
Sounds like burglary and criminal damage, not squatting, is the issue here. The problem is that those are hard to prove and it's easier just to have a catch-all crime for squatting.
The existence of the "right" to squat is a historical accident, and this legal right should be eliminated entirely.
It's good that there's a more legit way that empty properties can provide homes for people. The fact these properties are no longer providing homes for other people is not the best thing about this.
"finally"
The reason to have squatting legal (with restrictions) is to make it unattractive to keep buildings unused in the face of housing shortage. Find some use for it or turn it into housing. If you don't, eventually, someone else can.
The guy in the church stayed there for about 4 years...
The UK-based YC startup Tuxebo used property guardianship to reduce their costs.
For example, I am sure it is not possible in Germany because tenancy contracts that include short-notice eviction clauses are void.
Dutch rent law is stricter than German and it's still allowed. It's a combination of a regulatory framework at a higher level, and anti-squatting not being 'renting' but 'borrowing'. (terminology is a problem here since there is no word in English for the civil law legal form that is used. The closest is 'lease' but that is used for regular renting already in English.)
More to your point, it certainly exists in Germany, and is generally called "Hauswachter" (that is, the people living there, not sure about the form itself). Companies offering it are for example http://de.cameloteurope.com/ .
I have friends who did this in a nice house in an expensive town for a couple years, taking advantage of the low rent to save for a down payment on their own home.
All this to make sure we would flee the place and never come back, thus keeping her cushy low-rent 'temporary' housing. Any wonder this is not a popular option with landlords?
When I was a landlord, I let my tenants stay in the house while it was for sale (at the end of the regular lease, they signed a month-to-month lease to cover this), with the understanding that they were to keep it ready for showing with 12 hours notice. The one time this was a problem I made it very clear that they'd be out at the end of the month if it every happened again. It didn't!
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/i-moved-out-for-decorators-an...
A properly secured property, where you make sure all windows are repaired and doors and windows are locked, is basically safe from squatters, assuming you get all the entrances (many old Victorian houses have common loft spaces, so when residential squatting was legal people could find one unlocked door in the street and claim a whole terrace. I heard of a priest who did it once in Lancashire somewhere and then used the row as almshouses.)
A common tactic is to do it in two passes. First one dude comes along, smashes in the locks and walks away. Then a couple of night later a second group of dudes come along and find the house unlocked and 'legally' move in. So you basically have to have security people check your buildings at least once a night.
Worth noting that squatting was pretty much never legal in Scotland - although we do have the Right to Roam over land which I don't think the rest of the UK has.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Right_to_roam_i...