In college I worked nights as a security guard for a year or so. I was often assigned to empty buildings, which apparently made the insurance cheaper.
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!
"There are some hitches. No parties are allowed. She needs permission to go on vacation. There is a hole in the kitchen ceiling. She had to paint over a swath of graffiti. The four-week notice to move out can come any time."
So, apart from the vacation part, pretty much the same as renting privately in the UK then.
Squatting in commercial property is a real problem in London. There's a lot of hot air about homelessness but your typical squatter is simply a criminal scumbag who's taking advantage of a loophole in a law originally introduced to prevent slum landlords from forcibly evicting tenants.
This is actually quite the opposite of my fairly substantial experience with the London squatting scene. The vast majority of them seem to be well-meaning, anarchist or at least hippyish artistic young people. Most of them don't smoke or even drink very much. They're very good at caring from their property, especially historic buildings. One group I know paid for an expert to evaluate and do some repair work on some antique wallpaper, which had originally been left to rot by the absent owner. The friends in commercial spaces will keep them tidy, clean and free of vermin. They use the space, as opposed to letting it sit, rotting and empty in the heart of a city on the cusp of a genuine housing crisis. They put on workshops and host events, trying to bring life to often wholly non-residential areas. They make themselves part of the community. As far as I have seen, they're a wholly positive force for good.
I've never been a great fan of squatting, but I'm part of the London warehouse community which sits around its periphery and as such have met quite a few people who've spent years squatting... and I can't think of a single one who I'd consider a 'criminal scumbag'.
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.
I've squatted. We started our business in one. Commercial property (Grade 1 listed commercial property...), unused for decades, full of leaks, no services, infested with vermin... so we got a DSL line slung over the roof from a friendly neighbour, threw down some sleeping mats and skip-diving desks and chairs, and got started.
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.
Sounds like selection bias. Or are they actually not there. If you travel in artistic circles, then yes you'd meet quite a few artist-squatters. But that doesn't mean the other kind aren't there.
Do you actually go up to and introduce yourself to the scumbags? If not, then I call hyperbole.
Note that most talk about marginal groups are based on selection bias. In the case of a squatter, the selection bias is usually towards the graffitying, punk who steals, dopes and vandalizes. The comment above was just presenting an anectode against the prevaling prejudice (which in turn are based on other anectodes).
So people should freeze on the streets so property owners can keep their buildings empty? Fuck that, squatting laws are to make sure property is being used and not hoarded. Whether squatting is right is independent of any criminal activity that might happen during squats.
>..squatting laws are to make sure property is being used and not hoarded.
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.
That doesn't mean it doesn't set up a good incentive, similar to the use of disused land going back to the Peasants Revolt and Diggers and concepts like adverse possession. While Parliament might not have explicitly legalised it, it also hasn't closed the loophole, perhaps in recognition of its social use and history.
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?
If you want to dissuade underusage of owned land, then advocate for higher land taxes, not for squatters. As squatting becomes more socially acceptable it gets harder to evict squatters and people become forced to hire standing guards at every commercial underused building. This is not how to cure homelessness.
Exactly, my main thought when companies are being bullied for their lawful behaviour is if parliament wanted to stop corporations using a specific tax loophole, it could pass a law against it. Why hasn't it? Not that it's always easy to divine its intent.
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.
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.
Again, squatting is not the issue, but human decency. If the owner would give her/his consent, it would be really hard for a squatter (given that she/he has human decency) to oppose eviction, given a good reason for why she/he has to leave.
I don't know. Threre are numerous examples of a consent being given after squatters move in. In most cases the owner has nothing to loose, so a consent makes perfect sense if you want to keep good comunication with those who are using your property.
And there are numerous examples of squatters who don't leave when given a good reason. Squatters who have the consent of the landlord aren't really squatters in any meaningful sense.
There is a fixed amount of land available in a city, and a city is responsible for servicing it. If you've a property that's gobbling up some of the city's carefully-managed land and creating an eyesore that's a detriment to your neighbors, then it's perfectly reasonable for the city to take action.
That is part of what a government's reason for existence is. That's what taxes are for. To protect people with livelihoods and property from those who would deprive them of such. That's what makes us live in a first world society and not the world of Mad Max.
The modern patterns of land ownership in Britain are due, basically, to a Mad Max world of taking what you want and having "rights" only to what you can defend by force against all comers.
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'm confused - these are the lovely people tearing holes in the wall in the article? Painting graffiti? Heck, living in someone else's building just because they want to and have a crowbar? At least two of those are crimes, so yes they are criminals. I'll let you have the scumbag one - maybe they are really nice vandals...
If the building is insecured-enough for squatters to take up residence, then it's insecured-enough for anybody else who wants to come and visit and do some damage.
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.
> At least two of those are crimes, so yes they are criminals.
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.
So do I...they (at least part of the squatting community in the 80s/90s) are a big contributor to what London is today and none of them criminal scumbags. They also run their own businesses and some bought their properties from the Council. In fact they're probably jackgavigan's boss hah ha!
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.
It's unbelievable the difficulty there is in evicting squatters. AFAIK it's a civil not a police matter. It should just be re-classified as property theft.
"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.
That's not correct. Squatting IS a problem, even where no vandalism or criminal damage takes place. An empty office, not far from where I live was occupied by squatters last year. It literally had a "To Let" sign up above the door. The presence of the squatter made it impossible to get a tenant in until after the squatters had been kicked out which can, in itself, be quite expensive. How do you think the landlord felt? He had to continue paying the mortgage and pay thousands more in legal fees and costs to evict the squatters and, all the time, he was losing revenue because he couldn't get a tenant in.
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.
Like I was saying to him, I told him: "Fuck with me and you won't leave."
So I smacked him in the head and downed another Carling.
Bada-bada-bing, for the lads like. Mad fight, his face's a sad sight. Vodka and snakebite.
Going on like a right geez, he's a twat. Shouldn't have looked at me like that.
Anyway, I'm an upstanding citizen. If a war came along, I'd be on the front line with 'em.
Can't stand crime either, them hooligans on heroin.
Drugs and criminals, those thugs are the pinnacle of the downfall of society. I've got all the anger pent up inside of me
It's great that someone is finally disrupting the squatting market.
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.
Tenants in England do have a lot of rights (for example a tenant can only be evicted by a court) but these aren't tenants, they're "licensees" who do not have any of the legal protections afforded to tenants. You raise an interesting point though, and according to this article there are potential conflicts between these arrangements and the law that may eventually lead to court involvement: http://www.landlordlawblog.co.uk/2013/03/11/property-guardia...
> It's great that someone is finally disrupting the squatting market.
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.
Mugging is an act of violence. It violates the victims freedom of action and causes great damage.
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
Squatting violates the victims freedom of action and causes great damage. Squatting is non violent, so it's more comparable to burglary than mugging, not that that moves is far up the scale.
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.
No. In case of burglary, the victim looses its possession. In the case of squatting, the possession is still theirs. It is only the status of the property that changes from "vacant" to "in use". Note that the change of status is temporary and reversible (as opposed to burglary).
Keen to have an argument today? Someone I know had to move in with his family because squatters effectively made him homeless. It took months to get them out. It was a very stressful time for him. They also stole all his property before they left.
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.
Funny you should say that since "property is theft!" is one of the earliest slogan in the anarchist literature and is often quoted by squatters advocates :-)
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.
>Funny you should say that since "property is theft!" is one of the earliest slogan in the anarchist literature and is often quoted by squatters advocates :-)
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.
Since when was 'free will' a criteria for property?? So you couldn't own a dog, you couldn't own farm animals? If that is not a fair comparison (since farm animals arguably don't have free will), then who is to say that slaves do?
...except for all their possessions that were in the property that were stolen / smashed up / ruined / sold for crack.
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.
Not always though. There are cases where people have gone on holiday and had their homes invaded and damaged, their possessions stolen (and often sold for drugs), and have been stuck with long and costly legal battles to regain what is rightfully theirs. Squatting violates the victims' freedom of property. If insulting someone verbally can be referred to as violent, so should stealing their home and possessions.
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.
May I note that theft, invasion of privacy, and vandalism are all violent crimes that causes harm to the victim[1]. Those crimes can follow almost any human acts, such as partying (party people mug), alcohol consumption (drunk people steal), protests (politically opposing people vandalize), but you wouldn't say those things are equal, you would look at these marginal cases as a subset and to be treated as separate acts.
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.
"had their homes invaded and damaged, their possessions stolen (and often sold for drugs)"
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.
> It's great that someone is finally disrupting the squatting market.
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.
They certainly wouldn't be legal in Australia, we have a pile of protections for renters that by the sounds of things these places don't fulfil. No hot water, no power?
"Peculiar law"? Dutch laws aren't that different. A property has to have been empty for at least a year before it becomes legal to squat (and I believe these rules have been tightened further a couple of years ago, but I'm not entirely up to date).
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.
This is common in Amsterdam too. I have a friend in this situation and she has had to move 10 times in 7 years. The rent is damn cheap though; something like 150 EUR/month.
Churches, schools. Yes. some offices? maybe. Yet its not allowed for the big empty office buildings, since they do not provide all the sanitary needs, and are usually cut off from power and electricity altogether. Also wondering how much guardians will be needed in the future now that squatting is punishable and has been upped to up to 2 years in jail.
Don't offices and residential buildings have different building regulations, not to mention licenses. I don't know much on the subject but it would't surprise me if this was either illegal or only legal in a small set of cases where the buildings are up to standard.
My friend is in one of these in North London - they say it's great, although it is sharing. Sharing with about thirty others, but in their wing or flat there's about five. It does appear that most properties have shared space, so you get a bedroom but have to share the bathroom and living spaces.
The company Camelot arranges this in several European countries. I have seen their posters on nice medieval monumental buildings owned by the state, too.
Here's a map of properties available:
http://uk.cameloteurope.com/8/0/available-properties/availab...
Seems odd, even with the interesting conditions (no hot water or no electricity in some rooms), that with demand allegedly so high the "rents" are still so low.
Toronto building guardian? But note that it doesn't necessarily exist as the whole arrangement is a reaction to a specific combination of extremely high regular rents and laws that make it hard to evict squatters but allow people to live permanently in office buildings while paying rent and bein evictable on short notice. If any of those factors doesn't hold, there will be no such "guardians".
For example, I am sure it is not possible in Germany because tenancy contracts that include short-notice eviction clauses are void.
"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/ .
There is a similar situation in the US where people live for very low rent in vacant houses that are for sale. The arrangement is that in exchange for substantially below market rent (perhaps 70% less), they keep the house clean, are ready to move out with 30 days notice, and leave the house when the agent needs to show it.
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.
Yeah I looked at a house occupied by a temporary renter. She had a passel of squalling kids, probably primed for the event of our arrival. Also she kept a pot of cabbage on the stove, which she had boiling when we arrived and took the top off of, smelling up the place like no other.
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?
That would have gotten her kicked out of the place my friends were living in, plain and simple. Nice house in Greenwich, CT that you're preventing the sale of? Nope, you're history.
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!
It will depend on what your laws on squatting are. In the UK these are very biased in favour of the squatter; invading someone's property isn't a crime here, so the police won't do anything, it is a long drawn out and extremely expensive process for the legitimate owner to go through the courts to get an eviction order, and other than having to leave, the squatters get off Scot free.
I think invading is too strong a term here because it implies force and violence. As your link indicates, squatters can only move in to a building which is 'unoccupied'.
indeed, and can only do so without "breaking" any locks or windows (so it isn't "breaking and entering," which is the legal name of burglary.)
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 properly secured property, where you make sure all windows are repaired and doors and windows are locked, is basically safe from squatters
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.
It's not as extensive as the Scottish version though. It basically just applies to government owned land (Forestry Commision, National Parks) and uncultivated moor/mountain land.
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!