Squatting Law Matters

On September 27, 21 year old Alex Haigh became the first person to be sent to prison under the new law that criminalises squatting in residential buildings. He received a sentence of three months in Wormwood Scrubs for the crime of temporarily residing in an empty building while he looked for work in London. Covering the story with a habitual sensationalist alarmism, the Evening Standard lamented “the crisis of invaded homes” that afflicts the country. There certainly is a crisis of homes, but the real problem is not habitation in empty buildings. Rather it is the ever-growing waiting lists for social housing and increasing numbers of people forced to sleep on the streets. In the aftermath of his sentencing, I spoke with other London squatters and advocacy groups about the implications of the new legislation.

In response to the prison sentence, advocacy group Squatters’ Action for Secure Homes (SQUASH) issued the following press statement: “The real crimes are the 930,000 empty properties across the UK, not the people who are bringing these back into use. This crazy law is aggressively punishing the victims of our housing crisis, at an exorbitant cost to the taxpayer.”

The new legislation comes as part of the Legal Aid bill, which was expected to generate savings of £350 million. A report commissioned by SQUASH, however, estimates that the cost to the taxpayer of enforcing the ban could be as high as £790 million over the next five years.

In a squatted South London factory due to be demolished I spoke with Rob, who has been living in squats for the past two years. I asked for his response to the first prison sentence under the new law, and how it was covered in the media:

“I think there’s a fairly concerted media hate campaign going on at the moment. When you look at the Evening Standard article about Alex Haigh being jailed, and their claim that there’s a squatting crisis going on in the UK with gangs of Eastern-Europeans targeting family homes, it’s clearly delusional nonsense.”

Catherine Brogan from SQUASH suggests that Rob could be right. She points out that “one hundred and sixty leading legal figures have signed a letter arguing that the public was misled over the necessity of the new law.”

Despite the Daily Mail and Evening Standard stories about families made homeless by squatters whilst on holiday, legislation already exists which protects homeowners in such circumstances: Section 7 of the 1977 Criminal Law Act states that it is a criminal offence to remain in a building if asked to leave by a displaced residential occupier.

I asked Rob why he thinks opposing the new law is important: “For me its not just about the house I live in at any one time. It’s about a community that I’ve become a part of, and it works as a unique type of community entirely because of squatting.”

This notion of a squatters’ community may prove to be their greatest strength in opposing the new legislation. A few days after my visit to the South London squat, a text goes out on the squatters’ networks calling for people to resist the eviction of a family from a residential property where they were formally tenants. I spoke with Peter, a long time squatter and housemate of Rob: “It’s important to resist evictions because everyone should have the right to a home and shelter. It’s ridiculous that in the middle of a housing and economic crisis the government should bring in a law that’s going to result in more people sleeping on the streets.”

Speaking of strategies being employed to oppose the new law, Peter said: “People are becoming more organised. Eviction resistances are proving to be a good way way of building solidarity and networks. The more that we resist, the more unworkable this law becomes, and that is why I think it is important to keep squatting residential buildings.”

Even in news coverage generally critical of the new law, much is made of the distinction between ‘legitimate’ squatters, who are sleeping rough with nowhere else to go, and so-called ‘lifestyle squatters’, who choose not to pay London’s exorbitant rents. As pointed out by a number of sociologists, currently there is a great overlap between these categories. Catherine Brogan notes, “We saw a great rise in squatting during the recessions of the 70s and 80s, and we’ve certainly seen an increase in the last three years.” With youth unemployment sitting at just over one million and an emergent graduate-without-a-future generation, squatting is both an budgetary necessity for many young people today, and a way extricating oneself from a system that pointedly reveals its unfairness in these times of economic crisis.

In this context, the act of squatting is not only a form of protest in the refusal to pay rent.  It also provides the space to experiment with alternative relations and modes of living that do not follow the logic of the market. For Peter, squatting provides a space free from the financial compulsion of rent: “we can create spaces that embody the ideals we would like to create in a future society. This can be seen in various social centres and community projects that have been run from squats, whether in Holland’s popular ‘people’s kitchens’, that provide free hot meals, or at 56a here in London, which offers the public bike repair services by donation.”

Those who supported Occupy should acknowledge a common cause with the fight against the criminalisation of squatting, because it is an attack on a form of protest that uses space to practice prefigurative politics. The strength of Occupy resides in its ability to transcend the usual protest politics of temporary spectacle by actualising radical notions of democracy, which seek to expose and disrupt certain mechanisms of power, and demonstrate the potential for alternative power relations. But building these radical alternatives requires space, whether the city square or the squat.

Viewed in this context, the space of the squat is inherently ideological. For Rob, “squatting is the domain of people living outside the norm; whether that’s because of political ideology, economic condition, nationality or sexuality.” Catherine Brogan agrees, suggesting that the new law is not just about reasserting property rights, but “closing down spaces for alternative discourse and protest.” That’s why opposition to this law is essential. It’s a fight not only to provide homes for those in need, but also to keep spaces where opposition to hegemonic power relations can flourish.

By Fin Green