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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

#561
post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refusing to pay for a place to live is simply theft and entitlement. They expect people to build and maintain homes for them while doing nothing in return. If you abolish property rights, your two options are state slavery or anarchy where the strong take whatever they can. These misguided ideologies can only live parasitic ally on the fringe of a otherwise functional society. If they got their way, the society would…

> while doing nothing in return If you could see the extent of organization that such a life requires, you wouldn't say that. Especially when the alternative is "I bought this place and now you have to pay to live there" which is the highest form of doing nothing.

> "I bought this place and now you have to pay to live there" which is the highest form of doing nothing.

It is when you skip out the bit where you have to pay the mortgage or had to save up to buy the place.

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

#563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Refusing to pay for a place to live is simply theft and entitlement. They expect people to build and maintain homes for them while doing nothing in return. If you abolish property rights, your two options are state slavery or anarchy where the strong take whatever they can. These misguided ideologies can only live parasitic ally on the fringe of a otherwise functional society. If they got their way, the society would…

> If you abolish property rights, your two options are state slavery or anarchy where the strong take whatever they can.

I'm pretty sure they're talking about real property. Land and improvements. Not the strong taking away everything you have.

And there are reasonable ways to manage land and housing other than private ownership. There's also the option of limiting it to personal use.

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

#564
post #391

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…

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

[deleted]

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

#565
post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make it financially risky to own a rental property you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments. This hurts both renters and the potential landlords. It would be much better to just increase property taxes.. Speaking as a Dane, this kind kind of economically illiterate leftist lawlessness is an important reason why Spain is poorer both poorer and has a worse welfare…

> Speaking as a Dane, this kind kind of economically illiterate leftist lawlessness is an important reason why Spain is poorer both poorer and has a worse welfare state than Denmark. If only Spain could profit from helping murder brown people in 3rd world countries overseas and by speculating on banking, then forcing the bailout of those sunken PRIVATE banks on other countries and then forcing them to privatize their…

>> If only Spain could profit from helping murder brown people in 3rd world countries overseas

You mean like when Spain colonized Americas?

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

#566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments You would be surprised about the sheer number of spaniards that would welcome this second-order effect. In the last ~10 years, renting has skyrocketed, due to the discovery of the spanish renting market by international money, and renting laws relaxation (demand side). Meanwhile, this has not increased the supply of homes, as i…

I think you misunderstood what the above commenter meant when they wrote that risk of squatters makes it "less profitable to buy and rent out apartments". Because of the additional risks of squatters, landowner will either have to take additional security measures (and make up the costs with higher rent) or accept the risk of squatters (and make up that risk with higher rent). In either case, the rent getsor expensiv…

> Because of the additional risks of squatters, landowner will either have to take additional security measures (and make up the costs with higher rent) or accept the risk of squatters (and make up that risk with higher rent). In either case, the rent getsor expensive.

When renting becomes less profitable, real estate prices fall as landlords want to get rid off their bad investments. That means people can buy instead of rent, which means more rentals become vacant as renters become owners, which means that rents go down.

> and make up the costs with higher rent

This is not how it works. Landlords will always extract maximum rent possible from tenants.

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

#567
post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Spain, I have friends from both ends of the spectrum: those speculating with houses and those who cannot afford to buy one. We can blame the okupas, calling them lazy if that suits you. But we are missing half the story if we don't consider the other end of the spectrum: people buying property purely for speculative investment. For example, consider the housing crisis in Majorca [1]. Since we have enough mo…

Maybe the housing crisis is related to the lack of legal security that owners have, which severely reduced the offer and obviously increased the prices. The housing law that the current government passed wasn’t very clever…

You were downvoted but you're hitting the nail on the head.

The housing problem is an issue of supply and demand. Currently demand is bigger than supply and that leads to problems, no matter what you do. Either renting prices go up until many people can't afford to rent anymore, or if some law is put into place such as restricting rents or reducing owners' rights, supply will become even smaller and demand even bigger.

To solve the housing crisis the government has to either decrease demand or increase supply, or both.

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

#568
post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what case does it make no difference to me, a person who bought or built a structure, that I can no longer use it and it has been stolen?

I'm not sure what the question is, could you reformulate that?

You said

>Worth looking up the difference between trespassing on property someone actively lives in, and "okupas" occupying otherwise empty buildings. Once you understand the difference, you'd understand that you can continue living your life like normal :)

I dont see how the duration between my visits means there is not impact on my life if someone steals my 2nd house. Im still out my savings, or retirement funds, or years of work it took to build the house.

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

#569
post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what will the buyers do with the apartments? Rent them? Yes. > This is as nonsensical as the proposals Its not nonsensical. Its what is happening. Use it or lose it. Works. Find a good tenant, rent it for decades - like how it is supposed to be.

Again, the comment you responded to explains how this makes it more risky and less profitable to rent out apartments. It's dissuading people from renting: > you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments When something becomes riskier, fewer people do it unless there's some other incentive. A vacancy tax could incentivize renting, buy enabling squatters does nothing but makin…

When a renter buys an apartment or house to live in, that means the place they rented becomes vacant. It is the most basic math, addition and subtraction. Lower real estate prices means less renters and thus lower rents. Unless you conjure people into the country by immigration.

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

#570
post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refusing to pay for a place to live is simply theft and entitlement. They expect people to build and maintain homes for them while doing nothing in return. If you abolish property rights, your two options are state slavery or anarchy where the strong take whatever they can. These misguided ideologies can only live parasitic ally on the fringe of a otherwise functional society. If they got their way, the society would…

> while doing nothing in return If you could see the extent of organization that such a life requires, you wouldn't say that. Especially when the alternative is "I bought this place and now you have to pay to live there" which is the highest form of doing nothing.

>"I bought this place and now you have to pay to live there" which is the highest form of doing nothing.

How can that be worse than "I didnt even buy this place, and now I get to live here"

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