Before you get too excited, I'm not talking about what you do in a gym, unless you want to squat the building. Searching for 'squatting' brings up a thread about Robert
Förstemann. :)
Years ago, there usually used to be one or two largeish community squats on the go in London, that is, fairly substantial buildings that were squatted which had quite a large population and which were open by doing lots of events and supporting various initiatives.
That was when the London property market still had many more empty buildings (as opposed to 'buy-to-leave' and that sort of thing) and squatting residential properties was still relatively easy. Since then, of course, the Government has introduced new rules against squatting residential buildings with the aim, most likely, of eventually making squatting illegal entirely; for the time being, non-residential buildings are still somewhat squattable, and there have been a few high-profile squattings recently, such as this one:
As high-profile goes, this is pretty audacious and undoubtedly they won't last long, like the squatters who recently took over a building in Charing Cross Road:
The high-profile squatters these days know that they won't be able to establish themselves in there and usually seem to aim at raising the profile of certain issues, e.g. the Charing Cross Road people wanted to feed homeless people at Christmas, although the main focus of action right now seems to be on other forms of protest, like the work of Focus E15 ...
... or Russell Brand's work first with the New Era Estate (which was successful and probably gave these protests a lease of life (no pun intended) and now in Barnet ...
All very different kinds of protest and who knows if their collective momentum will be critical enough to bring about lasting and effective change, but what is certain is that what is currently going on in the London property market is not right. Many more people are becoming homeless:
Before you get too excited, I'm not talking about what you do in a gym, unless you want to squat the building. Searching for 'squatting' brings up a thread about Robert
Förstemann. :)
Years ago, there usually used to be one or two largeish community squats on the go in London, that is, fairly substantial buildings that were squatted which had quite a large population and which were open by doing lots of events and supporting various initiatives.
That was when the London property market still had many more empty buildings (as opposed to 'buy-to-leave' and that sort of thing) and squatting residential properties was still relatively easy. Since then, of course, the Government has introduced new rules against squatting residential buildings with the aim, most likely, of eventually making squatting illegal entirely; for the time being, non-residential buildings are still somewhat squattable, and there have been a few high-profile squattings recently, such as this one:
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/fivestar-squatters-take-over-historic-office-block-near-buckingham-palace-10112490.html
As high-profile goes, this is pretty audacious and undoubtedly they won't last long, like the squatters who recently took over a building in Charing Cross Road:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/23/love-activists-rbs-office-trafalgar-square-squat-protest-homeless
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2014/dec/31/christmas-soup-kitchen-eviction-rbs-love-activists-video
The high-profile squatters these days know that they won't be able to establish themselves in there and usually seem to aim at raising the profile of certain issues, e.g. the Charing Cross Road people wanted to feed homeless people at Christmas, although the main focus of action right now seems to be on other forms of protest, like the work of Focus E15 ...
http://focuse15.org/
... or Russell Brand's work first with the New Era Estate (which was successful and probably gave these protests a lease of life (no pun intended) and now in Barnet ...
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/russell-brand-leads-sleepover-housing-protest-against-barnet-estate-evictions-10114990.html
... and Eddie Izzard has also recently weighed in:
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/05/eddie-izzard-locks-horns-landlords-chelsea-social-housing-estate
All very different kinds of protest and who knows if their collective momentum will be critical enough to bring about lasting and effective change, but what is certain is that what is currently going on in the London property market is not right. Many more people are becoming homeless:
standard.co.uk/news/london/number-of-people-sleeping-rough-in-london-goes-up-by-a-third-official-figures-show-10074245.html
Some commentators see echos of the late eighties/early nineties.
Previous forum thread on squatting:
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/169912/