By an anarchist living in Vancouver, Canada, territory of the indigenous Coast Salish peoples
Monday, October 23, 2006
What is a squat? It's any occupation of a building or space without permission from its owner or owners [in which the space is intended to be used for some purpose other than simply disrupting the use of an already occupied space, as may by the case in a "civil disobedience" occupation]. No rent is paid to any kind of landlord, neither a private individual nor a government-funded agency.
Why have I squatted and why will I squat again? Because I wan't to take control of my life, of where and how I live, of the social and material conditions of my life. I don't want to pay rent. I don't want to have to work a job and be exploited in order to get a paycheck and then have to pay most of it to a landlord, a parasite who does next-to-nothing useful, when he or she does anything useful for my home at all. I want and need space to breathe, eat, drink, socialize, be creative and enjoy my life. I need space to think and plan and prepare, so that I can progressively expand my creative projects, which at the same time are destructive projects to undermine all the institutions of exploitation and politics.
I enjoy squatting, both the initial act of taking the building and its maintenance, which is also its defense. I'm happier in a squat beyond comparison to life in a rented home.
For a few days in September of 2002, I lived inside the Woodwards Squat, a huge department store building that had been long empty and was the size of a city-block in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the poorest neighborhood in Canada. It was an incredible experience, despite its many contradictions and problems. At that time, various political activists and activist groups, some of them being non-squatters, were calling for the government to turn Woodwards into social housing. If the government had agreed to that right then, we squatters would have had to leave our new home so that the government could get to work renovating it. At least one of the guys who opened the squat wanted us all to leave after a week. He and some other guys didn't really want a bunch of homeless people to come into the squat and live there. I guess it made their protest harder to control. But their protest was our home and some of us didn't want to leave voluntarily.
For the first few days, the cops would enter the building to check things out and talk to the activists and squatters. Some of us wouldn't talk to the cops and avoided them and this made them uncomfortable. Some of us made barricades and left when the riot cops eventually busted in. The activists got a bunch of squatters to sit in a circle and be arrested. Some of the activists had gotten angry about the initial barricades and had spoken against them at a special meeting. After the inside of the squat got evicted, some people came back and set up camp around the outside of the building. A few people had been doing that from the start, but this new tent city grew quickly all around the outside of the building. Many weeks later, the city government and the Portland Hotel Society evicted the tent city and put some of the squatters in welfare hotels. The cops were waiting in the background as backup, because some squatters had said they wouldn't go willingly. In the end, I didn't hear of any resistance. No activist group voiced or put into practice any opposition to the eviction.
Recently, most of the Woodwards building was demolished to make way for a redevelopment by Westbank Projects and the Peterson Investment Group with 500 condos, 200 units of social housing, businesses, and educational and community spaces, according to the City of Vancouver's website. Over the decades, a lot of a welfare hotels have been evicted in the Downtown Eastside and lots of condos have been developed and are under development all around the neighborhood, which is caught in a vice grip between the tourist district of Gastown on the north side and the yuppie towers of Yaletown on the south side. With condos comes the demand for yuppie shops and more cops. The hotel evictions have increased over the past couple of years, partly because the 2010 Winter Olympics are coming here. The cops have also launched multiple crackdowns over the past years, targeting drug users and dealers.
Yesterday, I went to check out the squat called for by the Anti-Poverty Committee, which was one of the groups involved in the Woodwards Squat. Their poster for the event said "buy it or guard it", because they want the city government to live up to its promise to buy one welfare hotel a year and convert it into social housing. They'd rather not squat apparently and are only doing it now out of desperation and to put pressure on the government. A handful of people were occupying a hotel that had been shut down by the city, but nobody else could get into the squat at the support protest outside the building. The media reported APC as saying this was because they don't want to get homeless people arrested or have a confrontation with the police and they are waiting for word from the cops before letting more people in. The cops praised the protest as peaceful and said they support social housing and won't evict the building before talking to the landlord.
At Woodwards I was able to go into the building the first day and it was inspiring, despite the activists. This APC squat was mostly a spectacle for the people outside and the media, and I found the whole thing to be both sad and frustrating. Nobody put forward any ideas on how to support the squat other than to just stand around and protest, which obviously won't stop the cops from evicting it. It also doesn't seem like APC wants to resist eviction. The whole thing is much closer to an act of civil disobedience than a squat, because APC say they'll leave if the city buys the building. Social housing may be better than welfare hotels, but I think squatting is better than both. More social housing won't stop condo and business development, all of which drives up property values and rents and drives down the living conditions of poor and working people in the Downtown Eastside.
A squat is an act of dignity, a direct action, an act of taking what's needed and desired without asking. The APC's occupation of the North Star Hotel is a protest to pressure the government to provide housing for the homeless, rather than an action taken by the homeless to house themselves and inspire others to do the same. It's intended as a temporary occupation, whereas most squatters try to hold onto their squats as long as they can or as long as they want to live there or use it as a social center. Most squatters want to use their squat itself, not just use the squat to convince the government to do something. A squat can certainly be very useful and enjoyable when it's used as a base for other actions and activities, for building free and mutual social relations, but the squat also has value in itself, as an occupied space that the occupiers create for themselves.
Squatting can inspire the possibility of a world without capitalism and government, while social housing can only further delay the urgent task of freeing ourselves from government control, wage slavery and landlords. Social housing in itself won't stop the onslaught of development or police crackdowns, but direct action that grows into social rebellion can, and in any case is more dignified and joyful.