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No Vacancies: Squatters Move In
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13037/no_vacancies_squatters_move_inAfter three years of staying in her sister’s living room, Tene Smith decided to move her family into a home that had sat vacant on Chicago’s South Side for more than two years.
With the help of Liberate the South Side, a Chicago-based organization that targets vacant homes for re-occupation and spent months renovating the house, Smith and her three children moved in during a public ceremony attended by community members and the media in January 2012. “I was fearful when I first made this commitment,” she told In These Times, “but as the days passed I had a sense of independence that had eluded me for a long time.”
The term “squatter” conjures images of the predominantly young, urban hipsters who in decades past claimed vacant property in areas such as New York City’s Lower East Side. But with five times as many vacant homes as homeless people in the U.S. today, a new wave of squatters – just as likely to be hard-hit families like Smith’s or young activists making a political statement – is moving into vacant foreclosed properties in cities like Chicago, New York and Minneapolis.
Today’s housing movement has yet to approach the pace of its predecessors – historians Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais estimate that in 1932, unemployed workers’ councils moved 77,000 evicted families back into their homes in New York City alone. But buoyed by the support of the Occupy movement, housing rights groups have stepped up their efforts.
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dkf
(37,305 posts)This looks like a decision to be a criminal though. How can we accuse a thug of thievery if we condone this?
2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)fuck them. I hope squatters move into every single one of their stolen properties. They have created the mess by illegal means, and quadrupled it's severity by refusing to work with anyone to save their homes and lifelong investment.
People out on the streets while their homes sit there and rot. Fucking rotting. This was a delierate redistribution of yet more wealth from the poor and middle class back to the super rich. THose are not bankster bonuses, they are bankster hush money.
Fuck the banksters. Hope they all die horrible deaths. I hope every single homeowner, who may be contemplating suicide, because he has lost his lifes work to the banks, decides to NOT send pretend white powder poison to the banksters.
dana_b
(11,546 posts)I think some people here forget who the real criminals are.
Snake Alchemist
(3,318 posts)2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)If the house is owned by the city, that would mean they took it for delinquent taxes. What is happening in our country today is not what we would consider the norm. Special policies should have protected the American people from disaster. The city should have worked out something with the owners. If that failed on all fronts, then the house should have been repaired, rented or sold, rather than to sit there empty slapping the homeowners in the face.
As it stood it was probably technically unlivable if repairs had to be made. It was probably a blighted property, an eyesore, and would eventually have rotted until it was condemned and torn down at the taxpayer's expense.
You can bet your ass if it had any real value, the bank would have bought it at auction.
New rules should have been made to prevent the decline of the citizens, and then the country, rather than helping the corporations that caused the whole thing.
fuck the banksters and the roaches they rode in on. (with the banksters you may include the govt. entities that they bought)
Snake Alchemist
(3,318 posts)The city is under no obligation to work with tax dodgers. Squatters would also be avoiding taxes, not to mention code compliance.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Snake Alchemist
(3,318 posts)Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Or lightning. Or a lit cigarette...
Not sure what you're saying here.
cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)Is what I believe the gist of the question is.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)What is the point of hoarding so many houses, anyway?
WinniSkipper
(363 posts)Zalatix
(8,994 posts)The Government are sitting on huge amounts of properties, collecting no taxes.
We have tons of people out there who need houses, and yet the Government and banks are sitting on them.
WinniSkipper
(363 posts)that my city is holding the titles to the foreclosed houses.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)awhile back. i can't remember the percentage, but it was rather high -- a lot of expensive properties that through various means were untaxed. not talking about churches or anything here, income-generating properties.
shraby
(21,946 posts)but I think if they live there for X amount of time, they have a valid claim on the property.
ProgressiveProfessor
(22,144 posts)A guy in Texas did just that.
www.geekosystem.com/16-dollar-house
Adverse Possession.
2ndAmForComputers
(3,527 posts)
SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)
tammywammy
(26,582 posts)Adverse possession isn't applicable in that case. You have to maintain possession of the property for at least 10 years before it's yours. It's mostly used in cases involving things like driveways.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts) 
Earth_First
(14,910 posts)
dkf
(37,305 posts)Same as I did. Hell why shouldn't I have been able to squat then instead of saving for years to afford a downpayment and waiting for a decent price? All this stuff about taking what you want because your planning was horrendous is a horrible example.
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)dkf
(37,305 posts)proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)Not everyone has what I have. I try to remember that every day. Yet everyone deserves a roof and food. That's not as easy as you apparently believe.
dkf
(37,305 posts)But in order to get those things you need to be lucky or plan well.
Is there any country in which you own a place without a job? I would say there are universal expectations of the opposite...you need a job to own a home.
Now whether people are entitled to jobs may be the sticking point.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)On that, we agree.
However...all that statement does is to make a case for a second New Deal and possibly a constitutional amendment establishing a RIGHT to a decent-wage job-it doesn't justify a zero-tolerance policy towards squatters.
What you don't get is that your position, taken to its logical conclusion, ends up justifying even more repression than you think you are fighting against by being
a property-rights absolutist...it ends up creating the rationale for things like the U.S. backed fascist coup in Guatemala(launched when the democratically elected Guatemalan government dared to expropriate land the United Fruit Company owned, but wasn't using and wasn't going to use anytime soon, in order to give the people of Guatamala enough land to provide food for themselves) and for the Fugitive Slave Act, a law which required people in "free" states to return escaped slaves to their owners, since, in the eyes of the law, those slaves were the owners' property.
That's the only kind of thing an absolutist position on property rights leads to. It doesn't do a damn thing for the tens of millions of Americans who DON'T own a home-in fact, it treats them as if they are nothing at all. It pushes us more and more towards the future-as-Ayn Rand-theme park that the GOP is fighting so hard to inflict on us.
Property frees no one, except for those who arrogantly claim the right to use their property to deny freedom to the rest of us.
Learn that, before the Jackboot Libertarians(and these days, that isn't an oxymoron)chain us all up in privately-owned dungeons.
dkf
(37,305 posts)When people have the mentality that they have the right to take what they want from others, I have a problem with that.
That doesn't promote the ideal of working hard to achieve in life, but instead promotes taking at will, and justifies theft. I would never ever teach my kids that, if I had any. it's a recipe for a disastrous life.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)is to make it easy to GET work, to make the work well-paying and meaningful, to give everyone a real say in running their workplace(we no longer need the boss-as-tyrant model of management-it never achieved anything in the past) and to give everyone a REAL chance of moving on in the work. The door to hope and the future should always be open and the drawbridge should always be down.
Our current system is trying to crush any hope the majority have of ANY of the above.
It's creating a tiny economic aristocracy(most of whom got to that place through a fortuitous combination of skilled theft and luck)who expect everybody else to treat them as gods who walk the earth. It's creating a country in which everyone who ends up out of work, even though the vast majority of such people are innocent victims of the arrogance and greed of the few, as if they are failures as human beings and beneath contempt of those who are lucky enough to be temporarily winning at the game.
This is no longer capitalism as we once knew it-it's life as a schoolyard with the 1% as the bullies.
People should work. Pretty much everyone wants to. No one should ever have to beg for work, or go months or years without getting it, OR have to live their work life as a powerless sycophant if they DO get it.
Life doesn't have to be like this...it's just that the few are trying to force it to be. Why defend those few? Why defend the economic bullies who don't give a damn about you?
You should join forces with the majority of the human race who have done nothing to deserve being put through what our current system puts us through, and who are working to make something better. You should live, as we all should, as if we're all in this together and we all have SOME basic human connection.
Work is good. Work should not be a privilege, though. And life should be more than just trying desperately not to be cast aside.
And in a decent society, people should at least have a right to some sort of basic housing, as well as to an affordable education(through grad school if possible)and to the means of cultural and personal expression, and...because without those things, you can't have dignity. All you can have is a life of bitterness, resentment, and fear.
dkf
(37,305 posts)It's not about being rewarded, the value is in having integrity and doing things to the best of your ability.
The value is in creating beauty and perfection and being disciplined and controlled while doing so.
The worst sin is being lazy.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)"The worst sin is being lazy. .."
I think the consensus among classical 18th, 19th and 20th century apologists is that pride is the worst sin-- which may be a wee bit inconvenient when we brag about our accomplishments being a standard that we hold others to.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)callous disregard for one's neighbor/friend/family/earth....
I could go on and on but the REAL problem imho doesn't reside with the little guy who you seem to want to condemn but the greedy fraudsters who are glorified in our troubled, flawed capitalistic system. That system which has been increasingly exposed as a shyster's game played best by those with the most grotesque moral fiber.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)Let's say I've had a good-paying job for many years and own a home. Then a CEO ("people have the mentality that they have the right"
decides to outsource my job so "investors" can have more wealth ("to take what they want from others" , then I should just buck up and find another job before the next mortgage payment? Only that other job has been outsourced, too.
Isn't this "structure" with chaos?
I don't see how this differs all that much from the OP's scenario...
Chan790
(20,176 posts)
SomethingFishy
(4,876 posts)pull yourself up by your bootstraps you miserable little fuck!
And fuck those homeless people, just because a house was foreclosed on, is owned by the bank and sits empty for years and years doesn't mean your lazy homeless ass should have a roof over it since you didn't EARN IT. OR PLAN FOR IT.
Yeah, could you squeeze anymore selfish, greedy, nasty republican sentiments in your attitude?
You remind me of Jeff Bridges in Iron Man. Standing there screaming "TONY STARK BUILT THIS IN A CAVE WITH NO HELP"
Yeah well, I'm not Tony Stark.
And not all of us are dkf. But hey you go on thinking that everyone in the world is exactly like you, with your education, job, parents, with your health, and with your resources. It's the perfect way to promote selfishness and greed.
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts) all with no job, or sustenance. Way to blame the fucking victims!
Selatius
(20,441 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)save money. Period. There are hard working people who can't save enough money to be able to rent.
How the fuck do YOU know whether horrible planning is to blame. YOU fucking don't.
What are you even doing on this site. You don't appear to have a single liberal tendency. Not one.
You just seem callous toward those who are less fortunate.
It makes me want to vomit.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)In this case, for months or years?
dkf
(37,305 posts)Because the occupants are in care homes. Can I take over this million dollar property because no one is living in it?
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)
No different than the banksters did. They didn't have legal documents either!badtoworse
(5,957 posts)I don't recall reading that.
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)badtoworse
(5,957 posts)lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)Nope don't have time.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)...but it sure is convenient painting all banks and all foreclosures with the same broadbrush.
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)badtoworse
(5,957 posts)...and since we know nothing about the facts of this foreclosure you point is not relevant.
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)badtoworse
(5,957 posts)That was the deal. If you don't pay the mortgage, you really shouldn't expect to keep the house.
The only situation that would qualify as theft would be one where the bank foreclosed on a property and the borrower had not defaulted. IMO, such occurrences are rare.
Even if your point were valid, the squatter would still have no right to occupy the house. The difference would be that it would be the borrower evicting the squatter instead of the bank.
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)a property and the borrower had not defaulted. IMO, such occurrences are rare." Back to my second response. "If even one was bad and they stole one fucking house from one fucking American that's too many!" By your own admission, "rare," at least one home was stolen.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)to continue to be Americans? Afterall we stole it from the native Americans when we first came over here.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)You're losing me here. What would make us secure in our land/property holdings? I'm happy with the 5th Amendment. What are you advocating?
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)badtoworse
(5,957 posts)lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That way lies neofeudalism, my friend. A country that obsesses on property rights isn't going to be truly progressive about anything.
FINALLY somebody said it. Said poster is a strong believer in neofeudalism. A libertarians wet dream.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4468553&mesg_id=4468739
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)I was supporting the squatters by comparing an abandoned house to, say, a bike that had been left on the street for weeks.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)thanks for getting it.
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,340 posts)No wonder I've had a few bikes go missing. Who knew?
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)A month? Two?
Chan790
(20,176 posts)If the bicycle is on the street or public property and has not moved in 72 hours after a query is affixed asking if the property is abandoned, it can be claimed by anybody willing to pay the $5 to claim it. Otherwise they are scrapped or sold at auction.
There is a flea market stall at the Silver Spring open-air market which deals entirely in claimed abandoned high-end bicycles. They make a killing because the bikes cost them $5 each and they resell them with cleared bike-registration for full appraised used retail value as-is, no warranty.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)They only show up every 35 years or so. I just found my new source of firewood; it was abandoned, after all.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Big Timber, Inc. fully intends to cut their trees down when they are grown. Presumably, the couple in the nursing home has at least some intention of returning to their home. The banksters? Not so much.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The theft is what the private property fetishists and the banksters do. And it has nothing in common with anything a "thug" would do, because this woman didn't physically harm anybody.
Why do you take the side of the slumlords?
dkf
(37,305 posts)Does that mean I can have your house?
Is it only yours because you are living in it? Say you get dementia and are in a care home. Can I then take your property because it's vacant?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There's no way to square your attitude with support of progressive ideas about anything else. Once you've become a property fetishist, you've gone to the dark side.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)You?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's the bank's fault that the original occupants lost their home,not the squatters. You can't put property rights before common humanity-once you do that, you end up salami-slicing your soul.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)Who gets to decide what property is OK to steal and what isn't.
People with property and resources have an obligation to help the less fortunate, but the timing and amount of help is up to the owner, not the people that need the help. I give a lot to charity in terms of my time and my money, but I do believe in property rights (I'm very comfortable with that) and "common humanity does not have the right to just take what it wants or needs.
BTW, the article gave no details about the foreclosure. How is it the bank's fault that the owner defaulted?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)into home loan terms the banks knew perfectly well those people couldn't live up to.
But I will say this:
It should not be "up to the owner"-it should be based on what is required to meet the particular needs. To leave it "up to the owner" is to assume that the owner is entitled to claim personal and moral superiority over those in need...when, in this day and age, being an "owner" or being among "the successful" is mainly a question of luck and timing.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)We're not going to find any common ground on this one.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You won't find common ground with any of that.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)You seem to be moving in the direction of Marxism. I doubt you find a lot of common ground for that either.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And I'm not talking about state expropriation of property, for God's sake...I'm talking about the use of property for human needs when the property owner has either abandoned it(most squats are in abandoned buildings, so you really can't oppose squatting under THOSE circumstances, especially in times of barbaric inequality like the present)or were taken by the bank.
That's totally different from not allowing anybody to own anything.
There's no way to wipe out poverty and homelessness if property rights are treated as an absolute. If you do that, you give the propertied class a veto over everything, and democracy no longer exists. Elections between two parties that put property rights above and beyond all other things are always going to be meaningless elections, elections in which the poor and the near-poor have no say and are given no consideration. A strict enforcement of property rights would have made EVERY New Deal and Great Society measure impossible.
If you have ANY progressive views, why would you want that?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Why would any decent human being defend privilege?
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)"So who gets to decide when it's OK to take someone's property and when it isn't?"
General consensus is that your banks get to decide. Doesn't leave many options when they look out for their profits at the expense of people though..
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)badtoworse
(5,957 posts)that is the essence of theft. Do you actually know anything about the real owners of the house?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And this is likely due to the past owners having left no paper trail and no updates as to their whereabouts...which means, in all liklihood, that they don't even care about what is done with this property.
Why are you so concerned about the more priviledged AND less concerned people in this particular situation? The squatters did this because(as is the case with virtually all squatters)they had no alternative. And the question remains...
Why should we be a nation of people without homes AND homes without people? What good could possibly come of leaving that cruel and absurd state of affairs as it is? Treating property as sacrosanct simply because it is property is obscene in a time of misery.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)Once we're OK with taking someone's private property for some perceived common good, we're into incrementalism. The argument will become why should I be allowed to keep what's mine if the "common good" needs it more. Sorry, I'm not willing to move one inch down that road.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)in which only the wealthy can be free and no one at the bottom can move up. You take our current situation and END all hope of anything better or more humane or more life-affirming.
Why do you want to reduce the whole county to nothing but a soulless struggle for daily survival? That's all you can have in a society where property trumps all.
There can't be beauty, poetry, music, magic, or life. And forget about retaining ANY dignity at all. You condemn us all to an eternal future as WalMart greeters.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)The big problem I have with your position is that once the right to retain your own property ceases to exist under some circumstances, you can't be sure that those circumstances won't keep expanding. Banks have a lot to answer for, but allowing their rights to be taken away puts everyone's rights at risk. If you accept the premise that it's OK to squat in someone's house because they're not occupying it, how do you defend against the argument that no one needs more than X in terms of money and other resources to survive, so let's just take the excess and use it for some better purpose? Now that we've done that, X doesn't really need to be all that large, so let's cut it in half. In a few decades, private property as we know it would be gone. It's called incementalism and the way you stop it is by not letting it get any traction, especially in the beginning.
In another post, you suggested I'm a freeper because of my position on this and I guess you think I'm just trying to defend the banks. The truth is that I'm worried about my own civil rights, yours and everyone else's. I'm a strong believer in guarding ALL of our civil rights, because once they're gone or weakened, they never come back. We have a desperate need for affordable housing and I'm all for finding a legitimate way to make foreclosed and abandoned homes available to people who need it, but I'm not willing to trash our 5th Amendment rights to do it.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Property rights are simply a tool with which the rich can overrule democracy and the will of the 99%.
And yes, we've had property rights(put in the constitution to appease slaveowners and the rising merchant class)but they've never been of any benefit to those who aren't wealthy. To the rest of us, to the tens of millions who don't own their homes(the vast majority of whom never will, thanks to all the drawbridging that property rights absolutists have imposed on what used to be the right to a real chance at upward mobility in this country) property rights are a mockery of freedom and a chain on the soul.
In the world we live in now, private property is the enemy of the human spirit.
Either we put property rights absolutism aside, or all hope of a humane, democratic, progressive future vanishes and we will be stuck in a world or high-tech neofeudalism for the rest of eternity.
If you back property rights, you back the rule of the strong and the power of the arrogant. Why would anyone want to do that?
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)What it would do though is insure that everyone is equal (equally miserable), because everyone would be equally dependent on whatever entity gets to decide who keeps what property and what property is OK to just take. BTW, you never described who would do that or how it would be done. People in that state of dependency are anything but free. The absence of property rights would also insure low productivity and a low standard of living for everyone because without the assurance you could keep the fruits of your own labors, what would be the motivation to strive or work hard for anything?
You strike me as young and very naive. It's a shame you weren't born 50 years earlier than you were. You could have emigrated to the Soviet Union and I'm sure you would have loved the place - no property rights. You would still have had to deal with the rule of the strong and the power of the arrogant. They were called the party bosses.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The problem in the Soviet Union wasn't the lack of property rights...it was the lack of democracy in the power structure. Having a right to private property wouldn't have made that country any freer...things were just as repressive under the czars as they were under Stalin.
And in El Salvador in the Eighties and Chile under the generals, there was private property and dictatorship that was as brutal as any Stalinist state. No one has ever been protected from repression through property rights.
The way to fight repression is to run society democratically from below...not to encourage people to have the mindset of the landed gentry.
The answer is democracy, transparency and equality-not fetishizing private property. In every country where it exists, strict enforcement of property rights pushes everything to the right. It was invoked by segregationists in our South, by fascist machine politics mayors like Richard J. Daley and Frank Rizzo, and by every slumlord in every slum. Why on Earth would you ever want to be on the same side of history as people like that?
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)So why don't you lay out how it should work. Who gets to keep what? How do you go about taking? Is there compensation? How do you distribute what is taken? While you are at it, why not talk about what rights the well off minority might have when the majority decides they have too much in the way of assets, so let's go and seize some.
Your words are so sad.
Is there any modicum in you that isn't hard and mean?
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)the criminals who wrongfully foreclosed on so many homes, accountable for their crimes'?
I know one victim of those crimes. She lost her home, wrongfully. Now, two years later she is in a position to sue Wells Fargo and their Law Mill for that loss. NOW, they want to talk to her. After ignoring her completely while they were taking her home.
Good for those people for moving into those properties. People are more important than property, at least in any civilized society.
There should be no homeless people in this, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and it's at a point now where people, having given up hope of their elected officials doing something about, are taking matters into their own hands and this is not a new idea, btw. When the gap between the top 1% and the rest of the country becomes as wide as it has in this country, we are approaching third world status and something needs to be done to restore some kind of equity.
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)That, and more group homes.
Alas, many of the homeless have such severe mental illnesses and substance addiction that they need to be living under closely monitored situations. It seems to me merely putting a roof over someone's head and then leaving them alone is no better for them, and in some cases may be worse, than being homeless in a shelter.
At least most of the people working shelters really care, and can keep an eye out. Trapped alone in a house, without the means to provide for one's needs or maintain the property may cure the "homeless" problem, but at what cost? As long as they suffer and die alone in a house, we don't have to see it the way we see the clearly visible homeless?
So as a society, are we prepared to not only give anyone any vacant house they want to live in, but to pay for the utilities and maintenance on said property?
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Without additional qualifiers, I imagine everyone doing 70 on a highway zoned at 65 has decided to be a criminal also-- how can we accuse Rove as leading us into a criminal war if we do 70mph on the highway...?
cali
(114,904 posts)What do you suggest? That she stay in shelters with her three kids? On the street? In a car?
It's our society, with little aid for people like this woman that's to blame.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)As an alternative to homelessness, squatting is neither unreasonable nor execrable. Anyone in a similar situation might make a similar decision.
Where the law disagrees, the law is an ass.
RKP5637
(67,108 posts)such a peoples' man.
Liberal_in_LA
(44,397 posts)cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)an occupied one.
something as simple as regularly sweeping accumulations of pine needles and leaves off a porch makes it last longer.
bhikkhu
(10,717 posts)...in that people (and animals) can trash a house a whole lot faster than time can. Not to say anything about the Chicago group - they may really be a actual solution for people - but knowing people who own and rent out houses, even where there is money and credit involved, rental houses tend to get trashed to where sitting empty would have been about as close to breaking even.
I wonder about power and water and so forth? Do they have a way to turn on the services?
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)he squatted a house in New Orleans, which had a huge foreclosure crisis many years before Katrina.
He was finally able to bring his ten-year-old daughter to live with him.
Oh yes, who do you suppose helped him out? That'd be ACORN. Remember ACORN?
BeHereNow
(17,162 posts)Digging through the trash cans at the gas station looking for recyclables.
In the corner of my eye, all I could see was the boarded up businesses, unused
potential land for community food growing land around us and thought-
a change is going to come.
I want to be part of that.
BHN
EmeraldCityGrl
(4,310 posts)It started in Europe and is happening all over urban America.
Here's a couple websites to get some basic info.
http://www.guerrillagardening.org/
http://www.wikihow.com/Start-Guerilla-Gardening
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)What is to stop them from evicting the Smiths?
Response to xchrom (Original post)
JonLP24 This message was self-deleted by its author.
The Midway Rebel
(2,191 posts)
BOO-FUCKING-HOO
upi402
(16,854 posts)The Occupy Movement folks are heroes too.
:salute:
Mc Mike
(9,114 posts)
nadine_mn
(3,702 posts)Empty houses can attract crime, make the whole neighborhood fall apart. If a squatter occupies a house, cleans it up that improves the whole neighborhood.
We will never be able to buy a house (we rent) and I am not advocating a free for all of property theft. On the other hand... people need to get off the streets, homeless shelters are unsafe and/or overcrowded and we have empty houses.
There is a solution here, it just needs some tweaking.
