Squatting's not quite dead yet, after all!

I was digging around the wonderful world of the internet to find out if squatting in the U.K. really is almost dead and found out that it isn't quite, but it certainly seems to be in its death throws...

I started with the Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS for short, love that!) and followed most of their links. Some are dead, some are just historical, but a couple are live, but that's basically it.

One survivor is a book store in London. This has been around a while, glad it's still going!

The other latest political squat I found was linked to a Network calling themselves AWS - Autonomous Winter Shelter (yea, the Amazon pun isn't lost on me!) - that's a link to their Instagram page which has all the classic memes of playful protest which I remember from the road protest movement of the mid-90s, the last time there was a really large network of occupations going on.

NB While making a political point about squatting is a serious issue, you have to have some fun along the way, to keep sane, otherwise you just burn out and get very bitter, very quickly, so fair play for this.

The collective, in classic anarchist-squat style set up an autonomous space in an abandoned convent in the East End of London (link to an article this time).

They set up the usual cafe with events but also housed several homeless people, including seven people who the local council cut off after putting them up in temporary housing for a while following a fire in their social housing...

Weirdly, rather than working with

the squatters who were doing the council a solid, housing people for free rather than the council paying £1000 a week per person, they went ahead and supported the eviction.

Squatting is a solution to a housing and cost of living crisis...

It got me to thinking that with homelessness being a MASSIVE social problem, and local councils having to spend millions every year of temporary accommodation, that squatting non-residential buildings is a potential solution, an actual win-win.

It's rational, and not actually illegal if it's non-residential.

So these kids - if you check out the photos, they do seem to be quite young, really have got a point....

There are people in need of housing, there are cash strapped councils, and there are empty non-residential buildings all over the place.

Wouldn't it make sense for local councils, the police, community groups to just kind of turn a blind eye to anarchist collectives doing this sort of thing....?

Reality check, no I'm not living in a fantasy land

NB I know this is too much to hope for, I know the links between councils and property developers and the potential profit motive from empty buildings.

If people in need end up being allowed to squat for free for extended periods, you run the risk of setting up a legacy and this sort of ground-up, not for profit community support initiative for social need becomes harder to remove, it becomes a fetter to the development of another luxury block of flats, to put it bluntly.

But it's worth just taking a step-back, nonetheless, to remind ourselves that there still some youngsters out there who have got the balls to do something constructive to meet their own housing needs and a few others along the way!

So squatting is not quite dead, yet! And at least now I've got a source to keep an eye on for more!

And more of this sort of thing, say I!

Oh, sorry to say the Convent was evicted back in summer 2023!