Solving the housing problem the British way: if you cannot buy your own house, occupy someone else's - and nothing will happen to you for it
Squatting (from the English "squat" - "to take unauthorized possession of an empty house") emerged as a phenomenon right after World War II in Britain, which had suffered severely from Nazi bombing. Britons returning from the front lines and left homeless settled in empty buildings, and the authorities did not particularly obstruct them. Very quickly this movement became organized, and the house invaders were called squatters. A second wave of squatting came in the late 1970s. In Britain in those years there was a demographic explosion, and young families had to spend years on the doorsteps of municipalities hoping to get at least some inexpensive housing. It was then that enterprising young Englishmen remembered squatting, beginning to invade empty houses on a mass scale. Squatter organizations in that period succeeded in creating "legal" agreements with municipalities that allowed empty municipal apartments to be assigned to invaders if the squatters were on the housing waiting list.
And that is why today the laws of Great Britain are such that evicting a person from a house, even if it does not belong to him on paper, is very, very difficult. This is what squatters take advantage of. If a house is empty, they say, and its legal owners are nowhere to be found, then why not settle in it with all conveniences?
Today in London there are thousands of houses empty for various reasons. Quite often, demolishing or renovating a dwelling for legal owners turns out to be too expensive, and so they simply abandon the houses to their fate. "As a rule, this applies to houses with a criminal history or a bad past," says one of the leaders of the squatters' association ASS, Michael Ziklin. "Most often in such houses either someone died under strange circumstances and relatives do not want to live there anymore, or someone was killed. For example, our friends - squatters from Poland - live in a house where a mentally ill woman was beaten by her son. When the police arrived, there was neither the son nor the mother in the house. They seemed to have disappeared, they are still being searched for, and the big house, it turns out, remained unowned." Squatters believe that a building should be used effectively, and if the owner does not live in it, then he should lose the right to it.
The ASS organization has existed for about 30 years. Its members prepare practical guides on taking over empty premises. Such manuals describe in detail different types of door locks and safe ways to connect gas, water, and electricity.
The invaders act quite legally. Having moved into a house, they quite often hang up a poster: "This house is occupied. Fine for trespassing - 5 thousand pounds." In essence, squatters have the same rights as ordinary citizens and cannot be evicted without certain legal procedures being carried out.
- "Squatters cannot always be subjected to legal pressure from the property owner," says Michael Ziklin. - "In England, the owner of a house does not have the right to break into the premises, even if it belongs to him, at the moment when people are already in the house. True, most abandoned houses belong to the municipality or real estate agencies. If squatters entered a house without breaking anything, they cannot be forcibly evicted by the police or the property owner. The municipality may send a notice asking them to appear and explain the reasons for moving in. Some go to the meeting, while others prefer to change their place of residence."
One of the main norms of squatter behavior is that the dwelling remains in the same condition as it was at the time of its seizure. You may use the furniture and appliances, if any, but all of it must be left intact. There should be no signs of changes either inside or outside. You simply live in the house, and when you leave it, there should be no traces of your stay.
That is the ideal. In practice, however, squatters often undertake to fix up the occupied dwelling. This happens if they manage to stay for a long time. They reason like this: since no one is bothering us, we can't live in a house with rotten floors and a broken bathtub.
How long an "uninvited guest" will live in a particular house depends both on himself and on the municipality. Some are evicted the very next day (such a fate, as a rule, befalls eccentric squatters who decorate houses with graffiti, which is a direct violation of order), while others (quieter than mice) manage to stay in houses for several years. "The main thing is not to draw attention to yourself," warns Michael Ziklin.
If someone wants to evict a squatter, he must first go to court. Courts, which can last for years, usually issue eviction orders against squatters, but sometimes it happens differently. The latter often manage to obtain a delay of several months before eviction. Squatters who win court cases are few. Lucky ones often turn out to be those who are considered conscientious caretakers of abandoned housing.
Interestingly, many British homeowners often benefit from having houses that they for some reason do not want or cannot sell or rent out, occupied by organized squatters rather than some vagrants. It is known that squatters treat their housing better. They may pay for electricity and gas, and sometimes even pay a symbolic fee to the homeowner. Moreover, today in some British cities squatters enter into agreements with municipalities under which the squatters still do not pay rent, but as it were "register." In the "Squatter's Handbook" published in 1990, among the main recommendations it says: "Immediately start paying for utilities - gas, water, electricity. Then you have a much better chance of staying in the occupied dwelling."
Under British law, unauthorized occupation of housing carries no serious consequences. At worst, squatters will be evicted. Since the houses where squatters live almost always belong to the city, the plaintiff in court must be a representative of the municipality, and officials rarely initiate such proceedings.
According to ASS data, at least five thousand squatters live in London today. Searching for abandoned housing is an activity that depends largely on patience and luck. Some people spend months exploring wealthy areas, noting neglected yards of private houses and leaving so-called beacons there - for example, a thin fishing line on the doors of a house. If the beacon remains untouched for two or three weeks, then you can safely go on the assault.
"A sure sign of abandoned housing is lowered metal blinds, no trash bags in the garden, a heavy lock on the door, and untouched newspapers," says Marcin, a squatter from Poland. "I've been doing this for three years. I came to London as a tourist and decided to stay. I liked the country and its people. I do this because it's the only way I can save money for travel. I've already been to Thailand, Burma, and Holland. And here I have friends who use London as a temporary refuge, so to speak, a transit base. Once, a female friend of mine was walking her dog and saw an abandoned house with heavy iron shutters. We didn't break anything, carefully opening a second-floor window. We took over the entire first floor - three rooms, a kitchen, and a living room. We pay for nothing: not for electricity, not for gas, not for water - we simply don't have them."
Another squatter, Alex, came to London from Spain. The thirst for travel also made him leave his home and start invading others'.
"My friend and I were walking in the northern part of London," says Alex, "and we saw the house where we now live. It was difficult to break into this house. On all doors and windows except the very top one, wrought iron plates were hung. We didn't have to break anything to get inside. At a construction site we found a long ladder and climbed through that very top window. At night the police came and tried to break down the door. The thing is, on the very first day I decided to remove the steel blinds from the windows so they wouldn't block the light. Probably the neighbors noticed and called the police. But we were calm: the house belonged to the municipality, and the police couldn't break in. It's private property, and how are they to know that perhaps the real owner is in the house?"
British law states: if you are caught in the act of breaking in and there are witnesses, then it is a prosecutable offense. But if you are already inside the house and the police have no evidence that you stole or broke anything, then the number of problems decreases.
Overall, living as a squatter is a great opportunity to save money. Adherents of this lifestyle usually do not spend more than ten pounds sterling a week. "But I still want to work to save up for travel," continues Alex. "We eat whatever we can. The other day we had a barbecue in the garden. We laid two bricks and put wire racks on top, on which sausages and meat were grilled."
In the London borough of Hackney, considered the most "squatter-friendly," I met a Belarusian named Vladislav, who has been living this way in the British capital for two years. In his homeland he worked as a currency broker, but upon arriving on the banks of the Thames he decided to give it all up and live a new life.
"I don't know myself how I decided to do this," he says, "but I like it here. At first, my friend from Germany and I took over a small house. However, two days later five thugs with baseball bats, hired by the owner of the house, burst in, and we had to flee. But now we live in a three-story house. There are five of us, and each is busy with his own thing. Someone repairs the house, someone cooks food, someone obtains it. We don't have much money because no one works, and the benefits are catastrophically insufficient."
The police have no right to use force against squatters before a court decision. But if eviction is inevitable, the squatters either prefer to quietly disappear and find themselves a new house, or they try to attract the attention of journalists and the public by staging entire theatrical shows near the house. It is precisely these clashes with the police that allow human rights activists to side with squatters.
According to squatters, the municipality knows perfectly well about people who do not have money to buy their own housing, but no one is in a hurry to give vacant houses to the poor. By law this can be done, but only if the house is in good condition. Municipal authorities prefer to board up abandoned houses. "Why?" the squatters wonder. "So they stand and rot? Better give them to us. But for some reason it is believed that we turn empty dwellings into dens and live on drugs. There are, of course, some among us like that, but there are still more positive squatters."
Recently, the ranks of squatters have been mainly replenished by the so-called advanced youth. Among the invaders of empty dwellings you can find many independent artists who use these houses as exhibition galleries, and simply as venues for various parties and concerts. Many prefer this way of life because they believe that every person has the right to their own home. Even if it belongs to someone else.