Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem • Hacker News Board

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

#811

Post by kjkjadksj » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:04 PM UTC

southerntofu wrote: post #774

chipdart wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can blame the okupas, calling them lazy if that suits you. But (...) I think you are completely missing one of the main origins of okupas in Spain: organized crime involved in extortion schemes. I personally witnessed a case where individuals took over a store lot previously occupied by a restaurant. As the story goes, the restaurant operator tried to negotiate lowering rent to no success, followed by spending m…

[flagged]

I’m not sure how they do it in Spain but in the US merely lowering the rent is not always realistic with the way financing values properties based on rent values (collected or not).

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

#812

Post by s1artibartfast » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:04 PM UTC

hgomersall wrote: post #743

s1artibartfast wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, financial damage is real and can have long term consequences that outlive short term inconvenience. You are probably right in the majority of cases,but I do think it is a mistake to automatically discount financial harm as less. If I invest 20 years of my income in a property that someone has stolen, that is a significant loss to me in human terms as well as financially. I would be open to treating the destr…

Maybe the moral point is that housing shouldn't be an investment class?

Housing is inherently an investment.

It take a huge amount of materials and labor to build, and returns value slowly over time. Depending on the inputs and returns, this can either create positive or negative value.

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

#813

Post by diggan » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #809

diggan wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is it about this issue that makes so many people wish to treat landlords harshly? Compassion. They see someone without a roof over their head, while at the same time seeing agencies/owners owning multiple properties just to enrich themselves. It's not hard to understand why people are more compassionate towards the people with nothing, compared to how they see the people with a lot .

Sure, but does it not occur to them that property owners might be performing an important function such that a policy that causes most of them to leave landlording might worsen the situation of homeless people and other poor people? Suppose the government instituted a rule that applies to any game developer and in particular to the developer's office or whatever structure he likes to be inside when he is developing g…

> Sure, but does it not occur to them that property owners might be performing an important function such that a policy that causes most of them to leave landlording might worsen the situation of the homeless and other poor people?

Sure, but I think most people feel stronger about helping people at the bottom of society, rather than the ones closer to the top.

Worst case scenario for the homeless, they remain homeless and have lesser life expectancy. Worst case scenario for the landlord with vacant properties losing their vacant properties, less wealth in the future.

> Suppose the government instituted a rule that applies to any game developer and in particular to the [...]

Yes, that'd be a terrible policy. Same if it applied to property. So luckily, there is nothing like that in Spain that works like you described it, regarding properties.

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

#814

Post by kjkjadksj » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:08 PM UTC

MrJohz wrote: post #727

thegrim33 wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that while squatters might hold political beliefs, few people would choose to squat if they had other housing options Here in Seattle, time and time again, studies are done which show the majority of homeless, when offered shelter, turn it down and prefer to live on the streets. Which seems to completely contradict your claim that they would make use of housing options. Maybe Seattle homeless are dif…

Interestingly, they've found the opposite effect in a number of places in Europe, which suggests that the Seattle homeless population really are quite different, or that there's something odd in how these sorts of policies are being implemented in Seattle. I suspect the latter: you're talking about temporary shelter accommodation, but the policy of Housing First is to give homeless people permanent flats and houses o…

There’s also the fact that compared to Europe, you can do quite a bit of hard drugs in public in Seattle and not really have a cop go after you over it. This also precludes shelters, since accepting the offer of shelter probably means accepting withdraw symptoms as well since you aren’t allowed to do drugs there.

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

#815

Post by kjkjadksj » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:16 PM UTC

tstrimple wrote: post #741

winterismute wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem imho is that a lot of people, not only "the very rich" but also some very "middle class" people/families, have access and can make use of houses as investment vehicles, but houses (aka shelter) is also a primary need for humans. If you hold share of a publicly traded company, you can hold it forever until you think somebody can accept to buy it from you at a price that you like, hoping to make a profit if…

> The problem imho is that a lot of people, not only "the very rich" but also some very "middle class" people/families, have access and can make use of houses as investment vehicles, but houses (aka shelter) is also a primary need for humans. As an example, we bought our house for $280k in Iowa seven years ago. It held steady for a bit, but jumped up to close to $400k shortly after Covid. YIMBY policies in my area co…

The most building would do is cool off the market and limit future gains. I believe only a proper economic crash is capable of smashing prices at this point.

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

#816

Post by kjkjadksj » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:18 PM UTC

thatcat wrote: post #786

tstrimple wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem imho is that a lot of people, not only "the very rich" but also some very "middle class" people/families, have access and can make use of houses as investment vehicles, but houses (aka shelter) is also a primary need for humans. As an example, we bought our house for $280k in Iowa seven years ago. It held steady for a bit, but jumped up to close to $400k shortly after Covid. YIMBY policies in my area co…

End foreign owned property, tax vacant property harshly, and offer discount loans to first time owners... there are plenty of options to reduce the pressure on the unhoused. Your house isn't a business and does not continuously create value for the community, why should you be guaranteed profits and have advantage over everyone that cones after you?

Those three points wouldn’t do anything significant but change how property companies organize themselves perhaps. only building more housing to meet the demand would cool prices.

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

#817

Post by kjkjadksj » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:19 PM UTC

roca wrote: post #744

kerkeslager wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Introducing speculator taxes and then making it more attractive to be a speculator (landlord) just means that speculators pass the speculator taxes on to renters. Letting people get rich off holding people's basic needs for ransom is never going to be part of the solution to homelessness.

A tax on empty properties can't be passed onto renters.

It is when its passed onto their landlord when a new landlord buys it to rent it out.

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

#818

Post by kjkjadksj » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:19 PM UTC

tieandjeans wrote: post #764

petre wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> e.g. by introducing taxes for empty properties So the speculators set up a company, buy the property and list it on AirBnB at several times the market price. Now it's not an empty property, it's a business. Business is slow so they only have to bother with guests during spikes in demend.

To get around this, we'll establish complex municipal regulations around AirBnB, with steeply escalating punitive fines. https://airbtics.com/airbnb-regulation-in-barcelona/

And then you list it illegally anyhow.

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

#819

Post by pier25 » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:20 PM UTC

kaskakokos wrote: post #419

Aurornis wrote: post #358

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…

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…

I'm from Mallorca but I don't own property there.

Yes the situation is bad but nothing justifies squatting. And the okupas have been an issue for decades now, way before Airbnb existed.

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

#820

Post by kjkjadksj » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:21 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #625

gsky wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Law abiding citizens are the suckers it seems everywhere. True! When laws are made that benefit a few and harm everyone else, you'd be a sucker to follow them. > It's easy to be nobel and generous when you are not the one being taken advantage of. It's easy to abide by the law when you are the one the law benefits. > Regardless of who benefits from Lawlessness, it always ends up destroying the society Maybe it's no…

This is like toddler logic. “If I can’t have anything nice neither should anyone else.” The energy spent colluding with organized crime to squat is probably better spent trying to get laws passed that support new housing construction if the problem is to be solved.