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

idealista.com

391–400 of 930 posts

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

#391

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…

> 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. I had a friend who bought a house that needed a lot of work. Before he could get started on the remodel, someone broke in t…

Law abiding citizens are the suckers it seems everywhere. It's easy to be nobel and generous when you are not the one being taken advantage of.

Regardless of who benefits from Lawlessness, it always ends up destroying the society

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

#392

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…

> 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. I had a friend who bought a house that needed a lot of work. Before he could get started on the remodel, someone broke in t…

Squatters fight against private property which is usually protected by law, it's very rare that it goes the other direction. A lot of squatters want to abolish the possibility of someone having to pay rent to another person to have a place to live, considering that relation inherently oppressive and against a self-ownership of the individual.

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

#393
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Squatting is a problem, period. Doesn’t matter if the house is empty or not.

Homelessness is a problem, even having to pay rent to another person to have a place to live is a problem. Squatting is just a strategy to fight an inherently oppressive private property norm.

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a house and purposefully leaving it empty is immoral, sqatting or not.

This is not correct; purchasing real estate is obviously morally neutral.

No, because if there is not enough for other people they either are forced to get exploited by landlords or become homeless. Purchasing real estate is immoral, as is whole notion of rent-seeking through usurpation of unused land such that other persons cannot use it when you don't use it and occupy it.

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a house and purposefully leaving it empty is immoral, sqatting or not.

No, it’s not. Living where you want, for free, is not a right.

Having a free shelter is fundamental to a person's freedom, arguing otherwise is immoral.

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

#397
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is also the problem with the insecurity for the landlord in Spain: right now, is you rent to a family with kids, and the family doesn't pay, you can't do nothing! How is it a mistery that landlords are retiring their properties from the rent market to sell them? That's causing a massive shortage, that causes prices do go up. There's an easy way to fix that: create a tax for unoccupied housing. If real estate…

>landlords only exist because most people can't afford or aren't eligible for the kind of loan that would allow them to build or buy a house I rent. Not because I can't afford to buy, but because I'm not convinced that I will stay where I am forever. Maybe in a few years I move to Tarifa to work remotely, maybe I move to China. Today I live in a flat, I don't know it I want to live in this flat forever or buy a house…

> I need landlords to invest their money in houses I can rent.

No, you need affordable housing. There's no reason that has to double as a way for someone to make a considerable ROI. Having to rent means that even if you stay in one place long enough to pay for the cost of building/buying the house twice over, you still get to pay an ever increasing rent every month just for the service of not kicking you out of your home.

> If you don't like it, it's fine, but leave the rest of us live and rent in peace.

But that's the problem, isn't it? Everyone needs housing. It's not something you can simply opt out of. You can try being homeless but that precludes you from most ways to make an income. If you're wealthy enough, you can buy a house so you never have to rent again but again that's not a choice most people get to make even if they could afford it (because it hinges on their ability to get a loan, which is up to the bank).

I'm not saying you should have to pay a million bucks to have a place to live. Nothing I said contradicts the idea that you may want to live in different places over time. I'm saying commodity housing (i.e. having housing subject to a housing market) necessarily leads to a housing shortage and there are better options than trusting the benevolence of every single landlord not to charge as much rent as they can get away with.

> If being a landlord was so profitable and risk free, we would be drowning in properties for rent.

This (drowning in properties for rent) doesn't logically follow from that (being a landlord is very profitable) and that isn't what I said. There are other factors involved like how profitable being a landlord is relative to other things you can do (like selling) and how high the initial investment required to run a profitable landlord operation (with multiple properties) is.

> The fact that it doesn't happen, but we have a massive house shortage speaks by itself.

If it's a housing shortage, that's a supply problem. But according to other comments from people claiming to know the situation in Spain, there is no lack of housing supply (i.e. there are plenty of houses for sale and many empty houses for rent) so it seems to be a problem of pricing.

It's more profitable to sell (or rent out) a highly priced property even if it means you'll sit on it for a longer time, as long as you can afford the initial investment and maintenance. In fact, overpricing a property can be beneficial if you own other properties in the same area because it can raise the average and thus justify increasing the prices for other properties in the area. Not to mention that due to population growth over time demand goes up and new development usually happens in the outskirts, meaning supply in the area won't increase.

You can be okay with the status quo. That doesn't mean there aren't good arguments why the status quo is bad in certain ways. And changing the status quo doesn't mean removing one thing and being done with it. As much as some may feel it when rent is due, I don't think the solution is to kill all landlords (or more figuratively: abolish the profit model of being a landlord). De-commodification doesn't mean simply banning the sale of something. It's about replacing one model with another and there can be intermediate steps (e.g. the Red Vienna model of public housing).

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

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the owner hire thugs to show up with baseball bats? I would do that, or do it myself with a ski mask.

In theory I bet it's an efficient option. But I'm curious about the risks and costs involved in dealing with such "services", and how easy it is to find reputable thugs.

I used to know a guy who had an impressive physique and foreign accent and was hired for similar "communication jobs" (debt collection). It was all above board so he didn't carry any weapons and didn't do anything but the mere implication in his presence was often enough to motivate debtors to find ways to pay shortly after his visits. He was actually a nice guy and not much of a fighter.

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

#399
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously not accurate. The 48h delay is not 48h after squatters entered the place, but 48h after you DISCOVERED them. And after those 48h you will still get your property back, just much more slowly because it is just not considered an emergency anymore if you discover a problem and don't signal it immediately. If you go on vacation for 3 weeks, discover squatters when you come back and can prove you are the…

It is not what happens in Barcelona. For six months the "okupas" have been inside an apartment that a family left completely closed to go away for a weekend, the Mossos arrived 15 minutes after the occupation, probably alerted by "Securitas" and did absolutely nothing. Saw everything from my window, and now I’m terrified if I have to leave my house for one day.

> It is not what happens in Barcelona. For six months the "okupas" have been inside an apartment that a family left completely closed to go away for a weekend, the Mossos arrived 15 minutes after the occupation

If that was the primary residence of the family, it wouldn't be considered a "occupation" as discussed in this submission, but rather "breaking and entering" ("allanamiento de morada", or similar), and police should definitely get them out ASAP, anything else is a disgrace.

But again, has nothing to do with okupas because it wouldn't be considered an occupation in the first place.

Try go to the local news, because if the police does nothing about this, I'm 100% sure the news are interested in this story.

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

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I had a friend who bought a house that needed a lot of work. Before he could get started on the remodel, someone broke in t…

Squatters fight against private property which is usually protected by law, it's very rare that it goes the other direction. A lot of squatters want to abolish the possibility of someone having to pay rent to another person to have a place to live, considering that relation inherently oppressive and against a self-ownership of the individual.

You make an interesting point, TotalCrackpot. These “activists” do seem to be captured by the strange illogic of a mind virus.
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