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RSSIt's a choice between homelessness and a criminal record
Moves to outlaw squatting in empty houses should be an outrage on the left.
By Laurie Penny Published 02 November 2011 17:34
The police called some of them "scum". Many of them who are not already among Britain's tens of thousands of homeless people will shortly become so, following today's ratification of Clause 26 of the Legal Aid bill, which criminalises squatting in empty houses.
And yet, as officers moved in against the impromptu demonstration outside Parliament on Monday night -- dragging and forcibly removing many -- the demonstrators sat down, linked arms and sang "Happy Birthday". "It's one way to defuse a situation like that," said a 26-year old squatter, who did not want to give his name.
The passing of this amendment, tabled in the face of overwhelming public pressure, means that most of the 20,000 citizens who currently live in empty or abandoned housing stock in Britain will be forced to choose between homelessness and a criminal record -- maximum sentence is a year's jailtime and a £5,000 fine.
I have written before about the misrepresentation of squatting in the press, but given that there are over half a million empty properties in Britain, half a million "hidden homeless", five million people currently on the housing list and tens of thousands more facing homelessness as a result of government cuts to housing benefit, according to leading homelessness charities, it should be a point of outrage on the left that the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties have thrown their support behind the anti-squatting amendment.
This, however, is a campaign that has, from the start, been about turning the property-owning middle classes against the poor.
The tabloid narrative, pushed most heavily by the Evening Standard, has been that decent, hardworking homeowners come home from holiday and find their houses invaded by filthy reprobates who are somehow protected by law from being evicted. In fact, in the few incidents where occupied buildings are squatted, there is already legislation in place to criminalise those who threaten homeowners in this way, under the terms of the Criminal Law Act 1977.
This new amendment would make it an offence to squat any empty residential building -- even if it has been abandoned for years. With rents going up, wages going down and homelessness a very real possibility for tens of thousands of people, one can understand why a government determined not to actually fund infrastructure investments like housing projects would want to stop desperate people getting any ideas.
Actual cases of hostile home takeovers are incredibly few and far between. A government consultation on the proposed changes to the law found that out of thousands of respondents, over 90 per cent agreed that no changes were necessary, whilst just ten wrote in to say that they had been "victims" of squatting.
Most squatters do not pose a threat to ordinary homeowners, but they are a potential embarrassment to a government whose best response to the housing crisis is to make homelessness illegal, which is rather like solving a food shortage by making hunger illegal.
Squatting an empty property is an act of defiance, a reclamation of psychic space, and it is no accident that police have focused on raiding squats and other "alternative" communities while searching for dissidents and student protesters this year. Many, although by no means all, squats have become centres for alternative thought, in which people attempt to live outside of the restrictions of capital and consumerism, building new kinds of community. Most have no more illicit aims than running free mother-and-toddler yoga sessions for local residents, but that's exactly the kind of Big Society organisation that's punishable by a night in the cells in David Cameron's Britain.
Squatting is an ancient right, enshrined in the British tradition of the Commons -- or it was, until today. In Cameron's Britain, there is no room for diggers and dreamers, no space for the destitute and homeless who make lives for themselves in the cracks between capitalism. The confiscation of that right will make thousands homeless, for no better reason than spite.
Tags: Protest
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170 comments
Squatting has long been illegal under Scots Law.Since the 19th century in fact.The only provision in the bill that has anything to do with Scotland is the one on prisoner transfers in and out of the UK.But no one would learn any of that from this article.You have to remember when you write a piece like this Laurie that the UK is not a unitary state.Not just because of devolution either.It never has been a unitary state and Scots Law has always been a separate legal system.
When are you going to stop defending yourself with my meds?
They are eating you up.
Why are you listening to them?
Why are you speaking for them?
stuart
"u try living in these fire hazard fucking death traps in london that poor and working class people have to live and survive in you patronising @@@@,,you are a fucking waste of space mate ok,,i hate snobby pricks like you ok.."
I don't even suppose you could explain what any of this could possibly mean...so I'm not going to ask. Nor am I going to point out the huge presumption on your part, based on a major floor in either your thinking or comprehension, which lead you stamp your little feet and drive yourself into a most unbecoming tantrum.
Nope...I'm not gonna do any of that stuff. Instead, I'll content mysef with a general observation: "I really get to you, don't I?"
Well, don't let it worry you stuart. I think when you grow up a bit, learn to think and write coherently and generally get over yourself, you'll feel a lot better.
Oh...and realise just what a useful idiot you are...tying yourself to what is essentially an accomodationist bourgeois liberal ideology which discredits itself daily. Radical you ain't sonny...you're Polly Toynbee's pet poor little lapdag.
Who gave you the idea that it is all 'finally' expressed in poetry?
Anyway I've got to sort out the cracks in the pool!
@sam
Laurie means English Common Law, not Common land.
Spud: Chill man chill. Why don't you tell me about what you think is the best housing a government can build.
Here's a song from one me mates from the Pool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dHUfy_YBps
Love Steve
I've been having visions MATT. I can see you playing away from home... you know What I mean MATE? Me, I don't play away from home.
You know MATT, sometimes the past catches up with you. And all of a sudden the words smack you in the FACE. Watch your hat.
This land is my land
I own all of the land
That you stand on
That you sit on
That you shit on
All the houses that you shelter in
All the metals that shine
All the crops that grow
All the animals that crow
You have nothing
That isn't mine.
You don't even have your own minds
You are all mine
For I am you
And you are me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NCZ4l8FCFc
If someone is homeless, then that must be their choice. Fact! Newspapers are full adverts of rentable flats and houses. Likewise, every estate agent has a huge list of properties anyone can rent. Even if you don't have a job the state will chuck you or the landlord loads of dosh to pay for the rent. The local council will even let you live in the publicly paid for property without you paying a single penny council tax. Fact! Squatters are thieving criminals and the worst kind of parasite that infests the public.
Got that Shitface?
Ms Penney,
This is obviously a large issue in the UK. In my native country Sweden,
homelessness, combined with uneployment was a crime until 1944. That is, one had to choose between a jail sentence (6 months, up to one year) or paying a fine amounting to a half years salary (500-1.000 SEK). It seems that the UK now is currently walking into the future with its rear end first. (The persecutions of the poor in the UK around 1820 is something to ponder over.) No - as a nation you can do better than this!
Yours cordially,
Hans M Gabrielson, Bourdeaux
I bet you're one of them blokes that tries it on with your wife's friends.
Are you sure you don't think I'm the First Seal?
Chronic halitosis, check, stale stench of 5 day old sweat, check, debilitating morbid obsession with far right politics and pornography, check...it must be FLASHBUCK. Since being expelled from the League of Empire Loyalists for being dull and repetitive this keyboard obsessive has had very little to do except stalk an infrequently read liberal website, stinking it up with tediously predictable politically incorrect invective inbetween wanks and crying.
FACT!
I can't get over this feeling of being owed a living by the government that many of these lefty's have. They actually feel ENTITLED to take over your home if you leave it empty. If a building is empty that's no individual's business except the person that paid for it. If you are too lazy or stupid to work that's TS. If you are taking from the government you are taking the fruits of someone Else's sweat. You are NOT entitled to enjoy property that other people worked for.
btw; I really adore your face... I really do.
Ten out of a couple of thousand? Not sure h%ow many thousand it is due to the switch from percent to raw numbers (please stick in one unit if you want to accurately communicate statistics..) but that could be as high as 1% or 0.1%. Which sounds like a substantial ptoblem to me if we translated those numbers to another field.
I was a squatter, many moons ago. The houses I saw squatted and squatted in myself had been unoccupied for yonks. Moreover, once in a while, squatters were granted tenancy status by housing associations, because the houses were sited in areas where no one wanted to live and tenancy effectively stopped the house being vandalised and/or falling to bits. I saw people - jobless, some mentally ill - turn to squatting groups when ordinary means of addressing their homelessness have failed. It was literally squat or the street.
Now it looks as though it's going to be the street. Fancy kipping in a doorway? Being sworn at? Being pissed on by pissed-up idiots? Beaten up? Ignored?
If a place lies empty and someone else has to sleep outside in freezing conditions then that someone should be able to sleep in whatever that empty place is.
Property rights should not supercede the right to a reasonable standard of life. Anyone who thinks otherwise lacks empathy and a basic level of human decency.
Alex with that logic if you found someone sleeping outside due to lack of funds he/she should be able to draw cash from your bank account.
It's a choice between homelessness. getting a criminal record OR GETTING A F*******G JOB.
@A
"The commons" usually has the other meaning.
@Buckskins
That argument would only stand a chance of being legitimate if "the person that paid for it" really did pay the full cost of the property through honest means. Meaning:
a) They fully compensated the labourers who built it (or built it themselves) to the value of their labour.
b) They somehow generated the limited materials it was made from (copper for pipes, wood, etc.).
c) They also created the land on which it was placed (can't have two houses on one patch of land).
Otherwise, b and c have a leftover price that can't really be assessed... and so certainly can't paid for (also the question of who to pay). The only thing you could say about the price of these is that it would be rapidly increasing as population grows.
This brings us back to the commons, those things like the space on this planet and the materials it provides, which belong to all of us.
@B. Small: What's wrong with having your own psychic space?
What's wrong with having your own psychic space anywhere you want it to be?
@B. Small: What's wrong with saying what you feel?
Everything was going fine for me. Then this..."Squatting an empty property is an act of defiance, a reclamation of psychic space..."
"a reclamation of psychic space" FFS Laurie, it's not the fuckin 80s, we're not in Santa Monica. Stop using this bullshit terminology; it doesn't do you any favours: post-structuralism's about goalposts these days; 'Theory' theorised itself out of existence and if this is some New-Age-Eco-Spiritualist-Feminist vocabulary of your own invention then New-Age-Eco-Spiritualist-Feminism isn't gonna make it through bootcamp...Dermot.
Lets face it B. Small the flood is happening now and you can't stop it. If people want to live in the Uk there isn't that much stopping them. All they've got to do is get over the Channel and they are lost in the system. Some do it legally some 'illegally'. Doesn't make any difference .. they'll be there. It's a rich country. That's why all the Eastern Europeans are there and loads of illegal immigrants. Good luck to them I say .. i aint affected .. I'm in Australia mate. If they can get in and live a better life sod what small people like yourself think. You might cry your eyes out but the valleys of Wales will be concreted over before you blink. Stick on your St George T-shirt and whinge till kingdom come. You're brown bread.
You may want to look at the existence of Shelter and numerous other housing advice and advocacy agencies as an indication that this is the case. You may also want to look at your own local authority's website under Homelessness and see what assistance is actually provided. http://www.furniture101.net/
@Buckskins
That's why I give money to homeless people. As a point of interest though: if a homeless person had literally no money (total balance of £0) they would be far better off than I am. The difference between me and that homeless person isn't cash, it's credit.
And B.Small don't you ever by your round of drinks? Or are you one of those people who always let others buy the drinks for you?
Quote from Flashbuck "Newspapers are full adverts of rentable flats and houses. Likewise, every estate agent has a huge list of properties anyone can rent. Even if you don't have a job the state will chuck you or the landlord loads of dosh to pay for the rent. The local council will even let you live in the publicly paid for property without you paying a single penny council tax"
For once,he is right. This is a FACT! and to be honest only someone on the real loony far left would really care about this. When oh when will you grow up laurie?
no problems, I think Laurie is saying that when her laptop is not being used then anyone else can use it - and also her bicycle.
Any takers?
Or does her 'property' not qualify for being used by others when she is not using it?
Alex Baldwin: You're talking Marxist economic theory crap. If the person paid for or inherited the property it is their property. You're only navel gazing.
"Otherwise, b and c have a leftover price that can't really be assessed... and so certainly can't paid for "
Those copper pipes passed through a manufacturing process that several entities made profits from including the builder. Many of those involved are skilled workers. Skill is a valuable commodity when in demand. Land is a commodity that has had a monetary value for centuries. It all comes down to supply and demand. You can make the copper pipe yourself or pay for it as part of the infrastructure of your home.
What you are advocating is a perfect world (In your eyes) that simply does not exist. Individuals must have incentive. If it's all handed to them by the citizens who work then why not stay at home and let the others build society. Some of you think this is Socialism at it's best. In fact Socialism as is in the UK for instance produces way to many lazy parasites that are content to let you feed them and take care of their needs. I have no problem helping those who can't help themselves. Those others living from the workers should be made to earn it. There is plenty for them to do.
Fraziel1 - Not fact at all. The changes in housing benefit have made most of those places unaffordable. Indeed from January you can't get a flat or house on housing benefit at all if you are under 35. You have to find a bedsit, at best.
The fact that there are many empty houses means that there are resources that are being wasted. Squatting enables those resources to be used, to have value to people.
The problem occurs when the squatters damage the property or refuse to move out when the owner wants them to. This is the grey area which at times leads to media sensationalism.
It will be interesting to see how the new law will be enacted.
Dermot ...LOL. Yes the language was very clear up to that point.
"It's a choice between homelessness and a criminal record"
Close Laurie, but you're forgetting the Tories are in charge so perhaps there will be another option: the return of the workhouse.
Alex how could the homeless person be better of than you with the frost biting his ass.
In-Negative
"Re squatting though, I personally don't have any particular view or agenda. I merely want to give some acknowledgement to where the issue lies and that issue is in a further dismantling of one ideology - common land - in favour of another - private property."
I agree with you. But what you're describing is a programme of political action with well-defined goals and a long and well founded philosophical heritage. It is not "reclaiming psychic space". It isn't 'reclaiming psychic space' because nothing is 'reclaiming psychic space'.
Unless you're some kind of nominalist who is happy to assert that the utterance of the term "reclaiming psychic space" actually conjures into existence a coherent concept which involves a physical action in the phenomenal world which is uniquely mapped onto an analogous supernatural or noumenal event. So you're either happy to condone Dualism in one of its multifarious new age incarnations or you haven't thought about it.
Personally, I consider that a Left that isn't materialist just isn't a Left. This whole agnostic /numinous/ "who knows?"/ local truths/ ethnic-gendered-sexualised epistemology/ relativism business is just a bit too Guardian Women's page for me. Bourgeois metaphysics for the woman who's got it all...except a shred of intellectual honesty.
NO TO "psychic space" and it's ilk!
There are very real, objective, justifiable, equitable and humanitarian reasons for opposing this clause without importing spurious arguments from the highly contested arena of Psychobabbology.
Keep it 'material' Laurie ....or has Rushbridger decided you need to turn up the 'Woo' dial before he gives you a column?
"You've got to remember Laurie that the 'mythical truths' of Aboriginal creation stories have just as much to tell us about quantum physics as..."
...and if you really want to turn down that road, don't forget that misogyny and pissing up walls is culturally embedded and determined...fuck all you can do about it...the sexist male epistemology is a sacred text, and I consider your feeble efforts to redress the balance in favour of women to be a wanton act of cultural imperialism and an unprovoked attack on the sanctity of my cultural endowment.
See how fuckin stupid it gets? Keep it real, keep it objective, keep it material.
@ Sir Michael. That is just not true.Where did you come by this information? My office deals regularly with teenagers and adults under 35 who receive housing benefit and council tax benefit.
Re-branded of course; perhaps Domiciliary Employment Initiatives
Fraziel/Sir Michael: Maybe I can solve this: people already having houses and flats can receive housing benefit but new claimants can't.
@Fraziel1 - They get housing benefit, but it has been cut. And as I said, from January people under 35 can not get a flat or a house, they have to get shared accomodation or a single room.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/DG_192415
It's on the governments own website.
Well said, Joe Fox. FlashBuck's ignorant post sums up the v iews of most in this country. Those who do not understand the reality of housing supply and the benefit system which forces people to be homeless and this is likely to get worse under new reforms and benefit caps. Squatting is one option for those desperate - a better option is the complete abolition of private property - revolution your time is nigh
What on earth is psychic space, Laurie? I really do want to know.
I'm a local authority homelessness officer and can assure dear flashbuck that it is far from the case that the state will provide housing, or funds to access housing, for anyone that rolls through the door. You may want to look at the existence of Shelter and numerous other housing advice and advocacy agencies as an indication that this is the case. You may also want to look at your own local authority's website under Homelessness and see what assistance is actually provided.
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