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Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

idealista.com

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Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#291

Post by _jplc »

otherme123 wrote: post #224
_jplc wrote: post #165

Idealista and all the real estate companies are the morons feeding the problem by putting the country for rent. They’re the reason people can’t afford a house and we have to talk about okupas in the first place.

First, I think okupas are a very small problem, mainly used for propaganda. But how are real state companies feeding the problem? The problem is that there's no houses available, because politicians create artificial scarcity. In any local government, the stronger department is "Urbanism", decides if you get rich by allowing you to develop on your property, or you stay poor because you don't get the permits. Come on,…

You can blame both the greedy fucks and the people allowing greedy fucks to proliferate.

It's not like politicians and real estate developers are a separate group anyway.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#292

Post by _jplc »

matt-p wrote: post #227
otherme123 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I think okupas are a very small problem, mainly used for propaganda. But how are real state companies feeding the problem? The problem is that there's no houses available, because politicians create artificial scarcity. In any local government, the stronger department is "Urbanism", decides if you get rich by allowing you to develop on your property, or you stay poor because you don't get the permits. Come on,…

Yes, seriously, blaming a real-estate listing website for listing real-estate is absolutely insane. We all need to build more housing, that's it. That's the solution.

They do not only list real estate, they own a lot of it and speculate with it thanks to their advantageous position.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#293

Post by kgwgk »

reify wrote: post #84

Squatters cannot break into your home and take residence. They can only enter if you leave a window or door open for them to enter. If they break-in that is a criminal offence and the police will treat it as a buglary and arrest those in the property. I used to squat here on Airstrip One in my twenties when I was homeless. We did not squat in homes where people lived, We squatted in empty properties. The utilities co…

> Squatters cannot break into your home and take residence.

They cannot enter into your house uninvited. No, wait, that's vampires...

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#294

Post by rudnevr »

dr__mario wrote: post #284
rudnevr wrote: post #264

I live in Spain and own property in Spain. There's clearly a gap between imaginary noble okupas addressing housing crisis via occupation of unused bank property and reality of weed smoking anarchists and their collaborating deoccupying mafia harassing mostly not-so-rich middle class, who can't afford the security measures the rich can. It's not a small problem, there's like 12K cases per year last time I checked. Eve…

Can you define that "middle-class", please? If you live purely from housing, you are not middle-class.

In the Mediterranean like in any resort area a lot of people live from housing, which requires not only owning, but also keeping it attractive, complying with local regulations, looks and the culture. It's nothing like rental company in NYC owning a garage full of rats, and charging a arm and a leg.

Middle class is a family from Zaragoza having a vacation house in Maresme or some extra property in Alicante which were sold for like 20-30K a few years ago, and then occupied, which took them a few months to evict.

The collaboration between scary deoccupying folks and okupas should be common, even if hard to prove, and it's mostly directed on people like this. Many people don't go to police and prefer to pay off just not to see their property ruined.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#295

Post by ruiseal »

jmcb wrote: post #141

There is no such "okupas problem" in Spain. If someone enter your dwelling (don't really know if is the correct term in English. In Spanish the house where you actually live is called "morada"), you can call the police and they will evict whoever is in the house in less than 24 hours. Other topic is holiday residences; those are not dwelling ("morada") so, in Spain, the right to have a dwelling is on the top of priva…

If you own a second property and decide to rent it out and your tenant decides to stop paying rent you're fucked. Until they get an eviction notice from a court, which can take more than a year, you have to keep paying utilities for them. Nor can you change the locks. If the okupa has children you're even more fucked.

Considering how many desokupa services exist I'd say it's a real problem.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#296

Post by 4ggr0 »

darkwater wrote: post #207
4ggr0 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wear toxic and low quality clothes uhm...that might be a bad example. winks towards shein, temu, fast fashion in general and thinking for a bit longer - corn syrup/sugar in general is not toxic but it certainly is not that healthy either, and it's got big lobbies and large amounts of money behind it to influence the government.

Consider the worst case scenario and that, without regulations, it would be EVEN worse.

Yeah, that's a good point as well. We would certainly be much worse off in an Anarcho-Capitalist/Libertarian world.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#297

Post by lazyasciiart »

pimterry wrote: post #277
rudnevr wrote: post #264

I live in Spain and own property in Spain. There's clearly a gap between imaginary noble okupas addressing housing crisis via occupation of unused bank property and reality of weed smoking anarchists and their collaborating deoccupying mafia harassing mostly not-so-rich middle class, who can't afford the security measures the rich can. It's not a small problem, there's like 12K cases per year last time I checked. Eve…

> It's not a small problem, there's like 12K cases per year last time I checked. https://maldita.es/malditateexplica/20221026/datos-okupacion... has the actual data (in Spanish): * 10-17k cases of occupation annually (rising until 2021, but down in 2022 and further down in 2023: https://www.cronista.com/espana/actualidad-es/adios-okupas-c... ) * Of those ~15k, 5% are actually occupation of somebody's residence (allan…

In the US, I knew someone who owned a second house in the same city that they had never lived in and planned to rent out in the future. When someone broke in and squatted there early in covid, they reacted as though the squatters were in the house they actually currently lived in - describing their fear and trauma in a way such that people who didn't know the story sometimes literally thought someone had broken into their own residence.

So I wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of those empty homes being squatted in are felt as personal attacks and violations by the absentee owner, which would make it feel like a much bigger problem for individuals if you move in circles where people own empty properties.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#298

Post by joking »

_jplc wrote: post #292
matt-p wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, seriously, blaming a real-estate listing website for listing real-estate is absolutely insane. We all need to build more housing, that's it. That's the solution.

They do not only list real estate, they own a lot of it and speculate with it thanks to their advantageous position.

do you have prove of Idealista owning a lot of real state? are zillow or trullia part of the problem in the US?

Idealista is the lead real state listing site in spain, and has other kind of problems, but I don't think they have a say on this.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#299

Post by e98cuenc »

pimterry wrote: post #277
rudnevr wrote: post #264

I live in Spain and own property in Spain. There's clearly a gap between imaginary noble okupas addressing housing crisis via occupation of unused bank property and reality of weed smoking anarchists and their collaborating deoccupying mafia harassing mostly not-so-rich middle class, who can't afford the security measures the rich can. It's not a small problem, there's like 12K cases per year last time I checked. Eve…

> It's not a small problem, there's like 12K cases per year last time I checked. https://maldita.es/malditateexplica/20221026/datos-okupacion... has the actual data (in Spanish): * 10-17k cases of occupation annually (rising until 2021, but down in 2022 and further down in 2023: https://www.cronista.com/espana/actualidad-es/adios-okupas-c... ) * Of those ~15k, 5% are actually occupation of somebody's residence (allan…

These stats don't account for the much more common case of people that start renting a house and stop paying the rent indefinitely because technically it doesn't fit the definition of "okupas." I've seen estimates of that number being as high as 1% of the people renting, making it ~30K extra people living on a house they don't own and are not paying for.

Re: Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem

#300

Post by [deleted] »

misja111 wrote: post #154

> if a property is not adequately secured and is left unattended, it becomes vulnerable to occupation. > Spanish law provides for an immediate eviction procedure that can be enacted within 48 hours of illegal occupation So if I understand properly, if you go away for the weekend and forget to close a window, you might find squatters in your house when you come back, and you can't quickly get them out in a legal way?

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