As economy dives, squatters live it up
LONDON
A dozen people, mostly in their teens and 20s, chatted in the cavernous living room, wearing heavy coats in the unheated parlor lit by a single bright light.
About 15 squatters have lived since late November in this grand but vacant five-story house, with spiral staircases, an elevator and 19th-century Chinese wallpaper hand-painted with birds and flowers.
“It’s better for a building to be occupied than empty,” said Simon McAndrew, 29, a former hairdresser who has organized takeovers of several expensive and vacant homes in central London. “We’re artists, and we’re doing something good with the space.”
Squatting
Despite local governments’ efforts to discourage it, squatting appears to be on the rise once more as a deep recession hits the country.
In Britain, trespassing is a civil offense, not a criminal one. Provided the squatters do not break a window or door to enter or otherwise damage the property, police are largely powerless to remove them.
Landlords must petition a court for an eviction order, and they can be prosecuted if they attempt to remove the intruders by force.
“The owners are upset and distressed about this. They can’t understand how the squatters can be permitted to break into their house and live there,” said Andrew Jeffrey, a lawyer who represents the owners of the Mayfair house. “In nine out of 10 countries around the globe, this would not be tolerated, and the police would remove them immediately.”
Nic Madge, a circuit-court judge in London and a specialist in property law, said proposals in the 1970s to criminalize squatting were defeated in the face of “considerable political opposition.”
Ron Bailey, an activist who started Britain’s modern squatting movement in 1968 and has written books about squatting, said Britons have a history of sympathy for the practice that goes back hundreds of years.
“We look at it as a social good,” he said.
No one knows how many squatters there are across Britain, but estimates range from 4,000 to 15,000 or more. Most are evicted in a matter of days or weeks, but some occupy properties for years. If they last 10 years, the law allows them to petition a court for ownership.
In one celebrated recent case, a judge awarded a $3.5 million piece of land in the Hampstead Heath park in North London to a 70-year-old man who had lived in a shack there for 21 years.
Many squatters, such as those in the Mayfair mansion, are well-educated young people with counterculture ideals. Some are artists looking for a cheap communal space in which to work and live, while some just want to tweak the establishment.
Others squat because they have nowhere else to live.
Britain’s Council of Mortgage Lenders said home repossessions soared from 8,200 in 2004 to about 45,000 last year and could reach 75,000 this year, creating more homeless people and more empty houses.
At the same time, falling house prices mean fewer contractors see profit in buying and restoring vacant and crumbling properties.
“These places are staying empty now; a couple of years ago, they would have been bought and fixed,” said David Ireland, chief executive of the Empty Homes Agency.
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008641992_squat18.html?syndication=rss
