Second is the legal factor, since U.S. laws are naturally different from those of various European countries. Many such places are known for their “open squatting” legislation, which allows and sometimes requires squatters to announce their presence in order to preserve their right to stay. Laws vary country by country, but—at least since my first trip to Europe—there has been a general American perception that Europeans are simply allowed to squat and Americans are not. In the past ten years, however, many of the laws and attitudes around squatting have shifted in Europe. In October 2010, Amsterdam officially criminalized the act, outlawing numerous established squats, as well as the intricate social web that connected and supported them. Throughout 2011, media outlets in Great Britain incessantly reported on sinister squatters stealing houses while owners were on vacation, which prompted Parliament to move toward a criminalization decision as well, effective September 1, 2012 (a penalty of up to six months in jail and maximum £5,000 fine). In addition, since the demolition of Ungdomshuset in 2007, more famous European squats continue to struggle against authorities and eviction, to much public outcry.
In cases such as that of the UK’s criminalization strategy, shifting cultural expectations are able to shape legal conditions. In the United States it is arguable that it works the other way around and that legal conditions predominantly shape our cultural expectations—though realistically it is a little of both: Our cultural climate partially is as it is because of the law and partially influences and reinforces the law.
All of this works to explain why, despite my efforts to imitate a Euro-style squatting utopia at the Power Machine, I was still met with individuals who scoffed at the tidiness of the squat, declaring that “squats are supposed to be dirty.” How tragic that the negative cultural expectations of American squatters have even colonized the minds of squatters themselves! European squatters, it would seem, at least have a somewhat common goal, while American squatters are all over the place: some want to be dirty and some want to be European, some want to live in their houses forever and some want to move on in a month, some want shelter and some want a home, some want to make a political statement, and some want an adventure. With such a spectrum of objectives, Americans have only managed to carve out small squatting communities here and there, while a sweeping movement remains elusive. With this in mind, I conceived the idea for this book. It seemed that there were no centralized resources for squatting in the U.S., and most squatting efforts I encountered were founded on hearsay about “squatter’s rights”—whatever those are. Similarly, there were stories that circulated about monumental, historic squatting efforts, but few people who rehashed them seemed to know many details. I hoped that by researching squatters in U.S. history to establish a cultural precedent, and by pinpointing the legal conditions and issues surrounding squatting (and other forms of property resistance), I might help to reshape both the cultural and legal attitudes toward squatting in the United States. Such a paradigm shift is requisite to any attempt at a broader squatting movement, and it almost happened in 2011 with Occupy Wall Street.
In October 2011, shortly after that movement began, I took a trip to Buffalo, New York, where activists had followed suit by establishing an “Occupy” encampment of their own. A few dozen tents had sprung up and dotted Niagara Square, the plaza across from the behemoth thirty-two-story City Hall that now towered over the mini-campsite. The plaza itself is so large that campers were more like a few ants crawling on the picnic blanket of the municipality, as compared with the “infestation” of Wall Street. For all intents and purposes, downtown Buffalo closes at 5 p.m., and so little traffic these days circles City Hall that the protesters’ visibility was minimal. Without a financial district to picket, and in the midst of a struggling local economy, the occupiers’ tactics struck me as painfully misguided. Since the city lost over half the population that its sprawling infrastructure was designed for, the slogan “Occupy Buffalo” seemed a little on the nose; the municipality has been trying to convince people to occupy Buffalo for the last fifty years!
As a Great Lakes chill whipped about the autumn air, it seemed a curious, cold, and feeble effort to camp at this downtown location. With so many empty houses genuinely abandoned in a city that is known for its brutal snow, ice, and wind, it boggled my mind that these people were trying to think up ways to safely sleep outside through the winter. Some were even talking about erecting permanent structures on the square, which I found even more baffling than Buffalonians sleeping in tents. Why, I thought, wouldn’t the occupiers occupy houses instead?
It took a few months, but Occupy movements in other cities began to have similar realizations. After all, what could be a more fitting response to a housing crisis than the direct reclamation of housing? In this way it was important for each city to examine and analyze the regional conditions that created the inequities they were battling. While occupying Wall Street was (momentarily) an effective tactic in New York City, the same protest rang hollow upstate. This is similar to the way that a European-style social center is more appropriate and viable in Madrid than it is in Memphis: Squatting itself is a tactic, and as with any tactic, we must consciously choose it as a result of our cultural and legal environment. That said, squatting—despite the dedication of this entire book to the subject—is not always a solution.[b]
In these pages, I discuss many ways that squatting has been used as a tactic throughout the history of the United States. By framing it strictly as a tactic, I tend to steer away from instances of squatting as an ends, though they certainly do exist. While there could be as many types of squatting as there are squatters, I define it here as occupying an otherwise abandoned structure without exchanging money or engaging in a formal permissive agreement. I then focus on ways of seeking title to such squatted properties. Additionally, I cite numerous instances of property resistance that cannot categorically be described as squatting; squatting is only one type of property resistance within a broader pool of tactics in the global struggle for equity. This book is about how property outlaws have demonstrated and continue to demonstrate such resistance in the American context. I specify American for two reasons: (1) Squatting is a different animal in Europe, just as it’s a different animal in India, just as it’s a different animal in Brazil. Because squatting happens in other ways and for other reasons in such places, they are mostly incomparable to squatting in the United States without extensive research and severely elaborate analyses that are beyond the scope of this book. (2) Europe is already famous for squatting, while American efforts have been largely ignored.
But as I said, this work is not only about squatting. Because such actions do not exist in a vacuum, it is necessary to also explore complementary ideas around squatting, such as the social and economic conditions that lead to buildings being abandoned, the philosophies that justify property resistance, and the legal realm that dictates future possession.
Some chapters are more law heavy than others, which compels me to declare that, though I have spelunked for a few years in the clammy depths of U.S. legislation to research this book, I am not a legal professional. I have never attended law school nor been licensed to dispense legal advice; I pieced together my research with the help of trusted attorney friends and law students. Also, because the law is constantly changing, I encourage you to do your own research on local laws in your area before taking any actions described in this book.
a. This is, of course, back when phones were phones and cameras were cameras, and ne’er the two did mix.
b. Although a friend joked that I would do well to call the book Squatting: Fuck Yeah This Punk Shit Is Awesome Do It.
Chapter One:
And Then There Were None:
Indigenous Land Struggles and the Problem of Ownership
“Territoriality is a way of organizing and talking about power. The problem is one of power, not space. There is plenty of the