Calling All Squatters! - Old and New
Published:
May 19, 2011 12:17
by Homemade |
Neighbourhoods:
Got any positive, funny or random stories from your squatting experiences?
We're putting together an exhibition and zine with positive squatting stories to contradict and show the other side to squatting, to the one regurgitated again and again by the mainstream media.
Wherever you squatted, be it Brixton or Kurdistan, or whether you squat now or you did in the 70s, any positive stories are welcomed - the more varied in time & place the better. Some of the stories we have so far include from after the second world war when families took refuge by squatting abandoned army barracks, as so many homes had be bombed in the blitz, as well as some stories of how newly arrived Asian families to Britain gave up the council housing they had received to squat together in empty estates to avoid the racial abuse they were suffering.
Your stories don't have to be this extreme though, anything that is positive, funny or in some way a success of managing to stick it up to the landlords or a successful use of squatting for a protest or campaign, is very much welcomed. The stories don't have to be your own experiences but can be ones of friends, or ones you've heard, just so long as they are true.
Any good pictures you might have that can accompany the stories would be brilliant too. Also, if you have pictures of transformations you've made turning a destroyed building into a beautiful home, they would also be really appreciated. Of course you can be completely anonymous from anything you contribute.
Email stories & stuff to homemade@lorax.org.uk
Download a poster of this call out from here... www.drivehq.com/folder/p8480302.aspx
Many thanks!
Contact email: homemade@lorax.org.uk
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New Coalition to be Launched in Parliament to SQUASH Anti-Squatting Legislation
New Coalition to be Launched in Parliament to SQUASH Anti-Squatting Legislation
House of Commons, May 18th 2011, Committee Room 6, 7pm
Journalists are invited to attend the meeting in the House of Commons, Committee Room 6. There will be an opportunity for one-to-one interviews between 7pm and 7.15pm with the speakers: John McDonnell MP, Katharine Sack-Jones head of Policy at Crisis and Paul Palmer and others.
Housing charities, MPs, squatters, property consultants, activists, lawyers and artists will gather in parliament this Wednesday to launch diverse campaigns against government plans to criminalise squatting. John McDonnell MP will chair the launch.
The meeting will hear from homeless charity Crisis about how criminalisation will hurt the most vulnerable people in society, already reeling from the cuts and the recession. An associate of the Empty Homes Agency along with the Advisory Service for Squatters will talk of how the law change will only protect property speculators and unscrupulous landlords not home-owners. SQUASH will outline how the legislation may be unworkable in law, unenforceable by the police and unaffordable to the public purse.
A parliamentary briefing[i] by SQUASH on the impacts of criminalisation will be launched at the meeting. SQUASH last met when it successfully opposed criminalisation in the early 90s by the last conservative government[ii]. Now it has reformed to face down the latest attack on the squatting-homeless.
John McDonnell Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington said,
'When government is launching major cuts in public services, especially investment in housing and provision for the homeless, it is no time to also introduce measures that criminalise people for trying to keep a roof over their heads.'
He added,
'How does the treasury plan to pay for the additional costs to the police, the courts, prisons, homelessness providers and the housing system with their budgets straining already?'
There are nearly 700, 000[iii] empty investment properties in the UK. The Ministry of Justice has already indicated it would like to extend the existing legal protection of homeowners to these absentee landlords[iv], allowing them to continue to keep the buildings empty.
A spokesperson for SQUASH said:
'Squatters often help these properties to be bought back in to use by bringing the owners out of the woodwork. Very often the owners turn out to be property speculators who are deliberately keeping the properties empty simply to up their profits.'
Paul Palmer an empty property consultant and associate of the Empty Homes Agency said, 'Squatters tend to occupy long term empties often owned by absentee property speculators registered in offshore tax havens. So no I don't think that squatting should be criminalised. To do so would only help to protect one set of people, the greedy and the powerful who can afford to keep property empty.'
http://www.squashcampaign.org/squash-launch-in-houses-of-parliament.html
oooppps, i think you only asked for positive contributions :-(