> 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 to the empty house, changed the locks, and started occupying it.
I remember being shocked that someone could do this and be protected under the law. He had to follow a formal eviction process, even though they broke into his house and never had any agreement. The perpetrators were known to the police as professional squatters and they advised him on all the things to avoid doing so they wouldn’t countersue him, which was mind blowing.
Even weirder was to watch the reaction on his social media when he posted the story. A lot of people, including many of his friends, jumped to defending squatter’s rights or trying to make some broader point about inequality.
There’s something about squatting that appeals to people who think it’s always a RobinHood situation: Stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. It’s more fun to imagine these people as noble warriors against an unjust society, rather than seem them as people abusing the laws for personal gain at the expense of random victims. Even here on HN there are comments trying to downplay the issue by portraying the victims as mostly wealthy or landlords, which are presumably acceptable victims to people who like these kind of narratives.
It can be surprising to be on the other end of something and see the lack of sympathy.
I went on a group hike once and somehow ended up telling people that my house had been broken into. It was a bummer. Actual monetary damages about 10k, but so many little gifts and heirlooms that were irreplaceable. It's hard to express the sense of violation. They also stole some of my wife's underwear which was just gross.
Someone replied with "well maybe if they were paid a living wage they wouldn't have to steal". Because obviously stealing my wife's underwear is much like stealing a loaf of bread to survive ala les miserables.
It's like all nuance has been lost. Some people think that if you believe that the housing situation isn't great then you just have to be pro anything that calls itself a solution.
I hope they eventually figure out that's not necessary.
People also maliciously ignore the obvious fact that living in a society which is lenient towards burglary automatically attracts opportunists, who were not actually poor in the first place.
People like watering down good versus bad as if it were binary. They don’t care to think a good person can sometimes be bad, or that many crimes are crimes of opportunity, because then they’d have to question their own goodness
Do you really think people he met on some random hiking trip are "maliciously ignoring obvious facts" as some convoluted political tactic?
Personally I think it's because people have these standard narratives floating around in their mind, and pattern-match them reflexively even when it doesn't make sense.
I have several teachers in my extended family, so I hear a lot of teacher stories. There’s a similarly weird phenomenon that happens when they have to do major discipline like suspension or expulsion: Critics come out to heap blame on the teachers for “failing the students”. They defend the child as the victim and heap blame, either collectively or individually, on the teachers involved. Some times they hand wave it away as blaming society. However, the one thing that is not allowed in these discussions is any appearance e that the child has responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Note that some of these children are nearly 18 years old at time of expulsion.
For some people, the only lens they have is a 1-D spectrum of perceived societal power. Blame can only flow up the spectrum and victimhood can only flow downward.
As soon as anything violates this idea of how justice, blame, and victimhood should work, they jump in to defend the side they think should be the victim in their worldview. They inject unrelated or assumed narratives to try to load up the victimhood of the lower side (living wage) while trying to downplay any victimhood on the upper side of their 1-D worldview (insurance can pay for it, you have enough money to replace things). By rewriting the narrative with something new that they injected , their worldview is protected and they can continue to feel correct.
In the teacher example above, this has a sad side effect where the problem students now know they have advocates to protect them despite their bad behavior. Some of them are becoming very good at reaching out to those advocates to share a sob story and replace their narrative with one of being the victim on social media. It’s creating a scary environment when kids know that not only are there no consequences for bad behavior, they know they can find someone to help defend them for it.
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 money to buy a house, it's easy to blame the okupas. However, you should ask yourself: How much would housing prices need to increase before I can no longer afford a home? What would I do with my kids in that situation?
Justice should be defended with a veil of ignorance about your personal situation. It's easy to talk about what is fair regarding housing if you own two or three properties. Talk to people, and you will understand how lucky you may have been.
> 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 many months not paying rent until they were evicted. As yet another retaliation tactic, the restaurant operator managed to find a kind of service where he arranged for a lawyer team supporting a group of indigents to take over the store space, report it as their home address, and declare squatter's rights. The indigents were day in day out involved in disturbs, all sorts of vandalism, assaulting passer-bys and patrons in neighboring stores, etc. Nasty bunch, they were even caught on film shitting in a sandbox of a kids playground nearby for absolutely no reason. The police came in every single time, but every single time their lawyers were a moment's away. It took a couple of years of due process and multiple court cases exhausting with the lawyer team exploiting all possible legal recourses until the okupas were kicked out. The landlord had to hire a round-the-clock security because the exact same indigents, once kicked out, repeatedly tried to invade the same space.
The street was packed with businesses. The restaurant was a business hoping to profit by taking over someone else's property against their will. Once their profiting scheme failed, they resorted to pull extortion schemes at the expense of every single person living in a 4 block radius.
You're here talking about greed as if the businesses trying to freeload off of everyone are social justice warriors, when all they were doing is trying to turn a profit by putting everyone around them in danger.
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).
Housing is expensive because:
1. Progressive governments making incredibly difficult and expensive to build houses, apartments, etc.
- E. g. I'm trying to build a house since SEVEN YEARS ago. Do you know what's the financial cost of having the land sitting there for 7 years? Who do you think is going to pay for that? Not me: it will be whoever buys that house.
- E. g. the 2023 Housing Law making mandatory to offer 40% of the housing a lower prices. Since construction costs are fixed and very well-known by now, who do you think is going to subsidize that 40%? Correct: the other 60%.
2. Rental prices are up, and will be even higher, because landlords have no protection against quatters and default tenants. I have suffered the problem myself: I put out for rent the apartment were I used to live until a few years ago and the tenants only paid for the first month. Then it took me 18 months to kick them out. That apartment will not for rent until the law changes. There's MILLIONS of apartments in Spain like that. Protecting the landlords (eg kicking squatters and defaulters in 2 weeks instead of 2 years) would make one million apartments available immediately, bringing prices down.
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…
Your apartment is being squatted and you're selling it at a discount, not being prepared to navigate the legal landscape. The buyers evict the squatters, fix it up and list it at a higher than market price. They do this as a commercial enterprise.
> That logic also applies to demand. Why would you buy a house if someone can waltz in and...
The clear answer is you'd buy one if you know how to handle squatters. In other words, you are well connected and have enough capital to take preventive measures described in the article.
In other words, rich can get richer by having lengthy security apparatus to protect their property. Middle class investors, who might want to buy an extra house to have a stream of income from rents gets that ladder pulled away from them.
One might believe that renting itself should not exist and making money from housing is immoral. If so, let's pull that ladder away from everyone including the rich (though that won't end well since not everyone can be a homeowner).
Criminals who were behind the bars for 20 years, just came out and have nothing to buy a house with.
Families moving to another city for 1-2 years because one of the parents found a lucrative job assignment (I literally have some extended family members in this situation).
People who declared bankruptcy recently and cannot have any assets in their name by definition.
Grad students who are in a university town only for 1-2 years (I was one and I know dozens of my classmates who were in the similar situation).
and on and on. Society is just too complex to make everyone a homeowner. Lot of people need to rent.
> Criminals who were behind the bars for 20 years, just came out and have nothing to buy a house with.
Criminals who were behind bars for 20 years, just came out and have nothing to pay rent with either. This isn't logic.
We shouldn't be releasing people from prison with no way to house themselves because that's practically guaranteed to push them back into crime. Solutions to that unavoidably involve giving them housing in some way: if your solution gives them rent, all your solution does is add landlords as middlemen and ensure that criminals never become homeowners. Giving them housing that they can work to buy is a much better solution.
> Families moving to another city for 1-2 years because one of the parents found a lucrative job assignment (I literally have some extended family members in this situation).
Why can't they buy a house for 1-2 years? Why are you assuming that housing liquidity would remain just as bad as it is now, when rentals and speculation removing liquidity from the market?
> People who declared bankruptcy recently and cannot have any assets in their name by definition.
That's... not how bankruptcy works. Many bankruptcies do not result in homeowners losing their residences, because that's obviously bad, so there are options to not do that. You may not be able to buy a new one... but maybe that should change, i.e. if you're selling your house to buy a newer one, that should be allowed, even encouraged if you're downsizing.
> Grad students who are in a university town only for 1-2 years (I was one and I know dozens of my classmates who were in the similar situation).
See previous.
> and on and on. Society is just too complex to make everyone a homeowner. Lot of people need to rent.
Well, right now your examples just sound like lots of people are forced to rent by current systems which are designed to maintain rental properties as investments.
> Well, right now your examples just sound like lots of people are forced to rent by current systems which are designed to maintain rental properties as investments.
Rather, right now your arguments seem to be based on some idealized utopia with fancy assumptions - perfect liquidity in housing market without any friction of transaction costs, perfect society with ideal treatment of prison population, perfectly rich grad students who can buy housing etc. If such things were possible, other initiatives based on ideal human nature would have succeeded as well (eg. communism).
I will flip your argument back to you - show me a place where the system is NOT designed to maintain real properties as investments.
> Rather, right now your arguments seem to be based on some idealized utopia with fancy assumptions - perfect liquidity in housing market without any friction of transaction costs, perfect society with ideal treatment of prison population, perfectly rich grad students who can buy housing etc. If such things were possible, other initiatives based on ideal human nature would have succeeded as well (eg. communism).
No, this is just a perfect solution fallacy. We don't need perfect liquidity, frictionless transactions, or rich grad students to make this work. We need no landlords and no speculative investment in housing: the rest will take care of itself, due to basic free market principles because that's massively increasing supply with a demand that's bound by population. And it doesn't have to happen perfectly, just well-enough. If you don't believe in supply and demand I'm not sure you have much grounds for accusing me of communism.
> I will flip your argument back to you - show me a place where the system is NOT designed to maintain real properties as investments.
I am truly confused how you think this is flipping my argument back at me.
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.
In Spain there are lots of empty apartments, from the bubble and IIRC are more than 2 million empty , but prices are still going up, most of the market is on the hands of foreign funds who are emptying the cities with their prices. There's a lot of speculation with housing in Spain.
Not to talk about the campaign in the media about squatting, sowing fear continuously. The supply is artificially being held by the owners.
Then the government should make it less attractive for speculators to hold those homes, e.g. by introducing taxes for empty properties.
And on the other hand they could make it more attractive for them to rent them out, e.g. by improving owner's rights.
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 such price is high enough, and nobody will suffer from this process. But with houses, there is always somebody in absolute need for it, which means that either they will accept to rent it to a price that covers extra taxes applied by the state to you (as a landlord), or they will try to squat if they can not. It's really hard to enforce the right set of disincentives that are wide enough to convince people not to "hold" but at the same time does not apply to too many people but mostly the ones that are using houses as investments.
The whole thing is complicated by being geographically unequal: for example I think even Spain is full of affordable houses, only they are not in Madrid or Barcelona or Valencia, which is where people really want to live. So if you have a second house in an unpopular town you actually have not much - thus you are not rich - and you have often an empty house (nobody wants to rent/buy it) which is an easy target for squatters, and therefore you will become "one of the poor people ruined by squatters", while othen you are somebody who accepted the narrative that using houses as investment was a good idea, both an investment house cheaply in a town that never attracted enough people, thus "lost the game" and is now also losing the house to squatters...
> 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 could cost me as much as $120k of wealth that I now possess. What percentage of home owners are going to willingly give up tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in wealth to support more equitable housing? Even for a liberal, $120k is a hell of a lot of money and it's only growing year after year under our current system. With that equity continuing to grow, maybe I have some hope of retiring in the future? That's a hell of a lot to put on an individual to ask them to support more equitable housing. Other people's suffering is their only chance to not suffer constantly until they die. And when you think in terms of not just my suffering but my family suffering, it becomes a lot easier to slip into NIMBYism.
How do you decouple primary housing from investment without fucking over literally millions of homeowners who have done the best they can under the existing rules? It's something I'm personally interested in. But I also don't want to be working until the day I die. What is the compromise that satisfies the majority of people?
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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:
I disagree. Two wrongs don’t make a right. You don’t have to put different people’s situations on to a spectrum and allow only one of them to be wrong and therefore anything the other person does is right.
It’s also disingenuous to pretend like all of the okupas are from desperate people who have no other choice, when there’s plenty of evidence that the okupas is being abused for extortion, crime, or just for fun.
If you can’t afford a home its still not justifying squatting. Just rent like everyone else in that situation the world over. At the end of the day homes aren’t priced to be impossible to afford for everyone or else they wouldn’t sell at all. You just might need a better job than the first one you can find. Afaik Spain seems to do better with producing housing to meet demand than the US or a lot of other places too.
> Consider laws restricting how many houses a person can own, or maybe an increasing property tax on each unit. These are good solutions.
So they set up a company and buy the property using the company. Pressure is always the answer, whichever tactics are used.
I understand the issue in Mallorca after visiting Mabella. Also the locals don't have to live on a holiday island, but they can elect pressure the speculators and their clients. Somehow this doesn't happen in Greece.
Until such laws are instated -if they ever are - then "theft" is very much an answer .
I'm sure smarter people than me here can come up with a good number of examples where you would agree that "condoning theft" is a good thing. Such ethical problems are never black and white.
Theft is a violation of property laws. If you recognize that property laws are in some senses arbitrary/designed to fit a purpose (which you seem to, since you are proposing changes to them) then I think you should also recognize that treating theft as a purely black and white topic does not make sense.
Not advocating for the burglary higher up the thread, still a shit thing to do so someone
I'm curious how you read that as an endorsement for that sort of behavior?
Your 'but indigenous peoples' reeks of point scoring behavior. If you wanted to explore that topic you'd be more specific. If you were engaging in good faith you might assume that I'm generally opposed to genocide. Taking an abstract point about theft and property laws to accuse me of endorsing genocide ('immoral barbarism') is not good behavior.
I didn't read it as an endorsement of theft, but defining theft as malum prohibitum, contingent on a time, place and legal system, is a flawed argument. Laws can be wrong. But the fact that a bad law or an unjust system bans theft does not make theft ok. Lots of bad laws enable theft (e.g. those enacted as post-justification for land theft), which also doesn't make it ok. No bad law can sanctify what is morally and universally wrong, and no rebellion against a bad law can sanctify it either. When we say a law is bad we mean: There is a larger moral framework in which it is unjust. Therefore the same is true in resisting bad laws: Resistance can't justify morally repugnant behavior. That was the point I was trying to make.
I didn't pick indigenous land theft to score points, but only because it's the most obvious example of some type of unregulated theft still being universally recognizable as wrong - and it's frequently brought up by many of the same people who make the case that other types of theft are in the service of justice.
Well HN's favored solution seems to be not caring that people are homeless until they start scaring rich people, at which point you lock them up in "mental health" institutions that are less about helping them and more about keeping them away from rich people.
My solution is not letting people own homes they don't live in, but that's going to crash a lot of rich people's investments, so we can't have that. Making sure the rich get richer is apparently more important than meeting citizens' basic needs.
So frankly, theft is the best answer currently available. I'd prefer they stole from the people actually causing the problem, the rich who buy up housing and make it unaffordable. But when they don't, maybe the middle class being stolen from shouldn't be so confused about why that's happening.
Ultimately I'm not sure why you don't have the same moral outrage about rich people buying up people's basic needs and holding them for ransom so they can get richer, as you do about poor people stealing to meet their basic needs.
I think people angry about squatters are thinking that squatters are squatting for political reasons, because for people angry about squatters, this is a political issue.
For squatters, this isn't primarily a political issue, it's primarily a survival issue.
Squatting in the summer house of a CEO does solve your survival need for shelter, but it leaves a bunch of your other survival needs unmet because you're far away from, for example, grocery stores, and don't have the resources that the CEO has to have staff deliver and prepare your food. So I'd guess that's why squatters aren't targeting these properties.
The narrative that squatters are being disingenuous about their political beliefs because they squat the wrong homes is really just a tool to paint squatters as disingenuous political activists. The reality is that while squatters might hold political beliefs, few people would choose to squat if they had other housing options. It's not a secure housing situation. Most squatters are squatting out of necessity not political motivations.
> So I'd guess that's why squatters aren't targeting these properties.
The primary reason they won't target homes of the rich or well connected is because they can afford to be in areas with private security that will make any squatting attempts a complete non-starter.
Thus squatters can only harm the middle class homeowner who can't afford such protection measures.
> 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 different than your homeless. I don't know why that'd be the case. The same people with the same political ideologies blame the cause of it on the same things, in both places, at least.
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 of their own. I can understand why people would not be interested in the former but would accept the latter.
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.
Maybe the shelter comes with strings attached, like no booze on the premisses. This is a nonstarter for people living on the street where they can freely drink booze.
"We offered housing to people with complex pyscho-social circumstances on the condition that they will stop having those circumstances. And yet they continued to have them - this was unacceptable."
At least here in France, the "housing" they offer is just a mattress in a huge room with no intimacy and dangerous people around. Most homeless people are skeptical at first, but after getting robbed/assaulted they certainly will refuse temporary housing for the rest of their life.
If the authorities really cared about the homeless, they would requisition empty dwellings and assign them individually so people have a proper home to rebuild their life.
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 games or meeting with the other developers working on the same game. The rule says that if the game developer leaves his office and fails to hire a security guard to watch the property, then 72 hours after the game developer's departure, anyone (including career criminals) have a legal right to take over the office (even if the developer's office is his home). Wouldn't that curtail -- possibly severely -- the quantity and the quality of new games developed in whatever jurisdiction the rule applies to? Or at least raise the price of games (to cover the cost of the security guards and to compensate developers for the hassle) with the result that some of the consumers who used to be able to afford to buy video games are now priced out of the market?
> 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.
> 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?
Yes, actually, that did occur to me, and when I put any thought into it at all I realized it made no sense whatsoever.
Owning things is not performing any function whatsoever. Landlords are leeches on society who remove much-needed resources and provide nothing.
Before you make the tired "but they provide homes" argument: no, builders provide homes.
Before you make the tired "but they make repairs" argument: that's a handyman, and a handyman generally does a better job and is not paid anywhere near as much as a landlord.
Before you make the tired "but not everyone can own homes" argument: the reason not everyone can buy homes is that our entire housing structure is based around making short-term home ownership and home ownership for cheaper than rent impossible. If you remove landlords from the equation, those incentives go away.
> 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 games or meeting with the other developers working on the same game. The rule says that if the game developer leaves his office and fails to hire a security guard to watch the property, then 72 hours after the game developer's departure, anyone (including career criminals) have a legal right to take over the office (even if the developer's office is his home). Wouldn't that curtail -- possibly severely -- the quantity and the quality of new games developed in whatever jurisdiction the rule applies to? Or at least raise the price of games (to cover the cost of the security guards and to compensate developers for the hassle) with the result that some of the consumers who used to be able to afford to buy video games are now priced out of the market?
We have an actual reality we can talk about, we don't need bizarre hypothetical scenarios.
Nobody is saying that squatting is the solution we want. What I am saying is that if you refuse to address the actual problem, i.e. you refuse to get rid of landlords, then you can't be surprised when people whose disfranchisement you support decide to find solutions you don't like.
> > What is it about this issue that makes so many people wish to treat landlords harshly?
> Compassion.
I don't feel like that's the true motivation. Where is the compassion for the middle class worker who can just barely afford some house, just to have it stolen (see parallel threads in this discussion for accounts of that happening) then?
If it was actually compassion, we'd be advocating for the government to provide adequate services to all homeless, paid for by taxes with progressive taxation so the rich also pay into the solution.
> compared to how they see the people with a lot
As noted in parallel comments, the people with a lot are immune from having their property stolen/squatted because they can afford private security measures that make this impossible. The victims here can only be middle class property owners who can't afford private security to watch their property 24x7.
> If it was actually compassion, we'd be advocating for the government to provide adequate services to all homeless, paid for by taxes with progressive taxation so the rich also pay into the solution.
I think that is the solution which pretty much everyone who has compassion for the squatters is advocating for. I'm comfortable saying that almost nobody thinks squatting is a good solution to this problem.
The problem is, providing adequate services to all homeless, paid for by taxes with progressive taxation so the rich also pay into the solution, has to happen first, before you get rid of squatting protections. Because otherwise you're just taking away the bad solution and leaving no solution, for the people most harmed by the current situation. And mysteriously once the squatting protections are gone and property owners' problem is solved, homelessness stops being a conversation until the next time it causes a problem for a rich person.
You're noticeably vague on what you think "adequate services" means. I refuse to be that vague. There is one, and only one, solution to homelessness: homes. Not shelters, homes. Not mental health services (though that would be good, too), homes. Homes: places where you can have privacy and security and pets and the right to decide who gets to enter the space. Services that do not result in homeless people being in homes are not adequate.
Until I see a real solution to homelessness implemented I'm really not interested in solving the problems homelessness causes for better-off people. Solve homelessness, and those problems will likely go away on their own; if not we can talk about it then. But until then, I'm quite okay with society dealing with the ugly consequences of its ugly failure to provide homes for its people.
> But until then, I'm quite okay with society dealing with the ugly consequences of its ugly failure to provide homes for its people.
This ignores a fundamental characteristic of human nature. If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over.
While I don't know anything about the legislative process in Spain, I guess it is not too different from elsewhere, so you probably need broad support from the masses (middle class) to make big changes.
We already established (elsewhere in this discussion) that the rich don't feel any impact from squatting. They have private security forces, so it is a non-issue to them.
So if we want the government to provide for adequate services, middle class support is needed. If we allow all middle-class property to be stolen by squatters, there will be zero support from the middle class to provide any help to the thieves. Like it or not, basic human nature.
> This ignores a fundamental characteristic of human nature. If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over.
This is a totally naive approach. I have 0 hope that the rich will "help us out" no matter what we do--rich people don't become rich by being generous. Either we use our majority to make them be productive members of society and pay their fair share, or we get nothing from them. This idea that we're going to concede to them on a few issues and they'll suddenly stop hoarding resources is a total fantasy.
> We already established (elsewhere in this discussion) that the rich don't feel any impact from squatting. They have private security forces, so it is a non-issue to them.
I disagree. The middle class has largely been disfranchised from owning the homes they live in, so the idea that there's some massive section of the middle class that owns second homes they leave empty doesn't hold much water. The people you're talking about aren't middle class.
> So if we want the government to provide for adequate services, middle class support is needed. If we allow all middle-class property to be stolen by squatters, there will be zero support from the middle class to provide any help to the thieves. Like it or not, basic human nature.
Thank you for the strategic advice, but no thanks. This strategic advice you're giving sounds suspiciously like you trying to represent rich people as middle class, and represent rich people's goal of enforcing property rights as a step toward achieving goals that you don't even support. That may not be your intent--for all I know, you completely support the progressive taxation and regulation of landlordism necessary to provide (free) homes for the homeless. But if that's the case I think you're being naive: the promise that if we just give the rich people what they want they'll magically become generous and start giving back has been part of the conversation for decades, and those promises are never kept.
> > If you want people to help you out, you can't screw them over.
> This is a totally naive approach.
I would've thought this was the entirely uncontroversial part of my premise!
Are you seriously saying that you feel the way to get people to help your cause is to screw them over?
We're going to fundamentally disagree there. The whole premise of politics is to find ways to make alliances to achieve goals. If you make most people hate your cause, you won't get very far.
> the promise that if we just give the rich people what they want they'll magically become generous and start giving back has been part of the conversation for decades, and those promises are never kept.
Of course. That's just a variant of trickle-down economics, which is nonsense. The rich will keep it all very happily and never give anything back.
> The people you're talking about aren't middle class.
And yet, they must be. The actual rich are immune from house occupations. Their houses are either in private enclaves where you can't possibly get in, or in the case of standalone houses they have private security coverage where you can't possibly get in.
This is how it is in the US. I realize the article is about Spain, so perhaps the very rich act different in Spain and they just let their multiple properties sit unguarded for long times.
> Are you seriously saying that you feel the way to get people to help your cause is to screw them over?
No, I'm saying that we don't need rich people to help our cause, because non-rich people are the super majority.
> And yet, they must be. The actual rich are immune from house occupations. Their houses are either in private enclaves where you can't possibly get in, or in the case of standalone houses they have private security coverage where you can't possibly get in.
There's a lot of rich between "private enclave with security force" and middle class that can't afford a second home to sit empty that you're ignoring.
Sure, multibillionaires are above it all. But I think you're drastically underestimating how rich one has to be to have even one empty home. If you own the home you live in you're already on the upper side of middle class. And if someone breaks into the house you live in, there's no place in the world where that person has legal protections.
> No, I'm saying that we don't need rich people to help our cause, because non-rich people are the super majority.
So, we agree on that.
We just have different perceptions of who "the rich" are.
A software engineer making $100K/yr (in a low cost of living part of the US, not in silicon valley) is not "the rich", but these people often have multiple apartments. I know first hand since many my of my friends are in this demographic.
> Sure, multibillionaires are above it all.
It doesn't take a multibillionaire to own more than one house/apt. It just takes a middle class income person in many parts of the country.
> And if someone breaks into the house you live in, there's no place in the world where that person has legal protections.
Ended up watching a few news reports from Spain to understand these home invasions better.
Here's one example where an 80 year old woman left the house she was actively living in for only two days to visit her son elsewhere. After coming back two days later the house had been invaded. The police say they can't do anything. That they supposedly have to wait 24 hours (then changed to 48 hours) and start a judicial process. Even though this was her primary residence and was only gone two days.
> I don't feel like that's the true motivation. Where is the compassion for the middle class worker who can just barely afford some house, just to have it stolen (see parallel threads in this discussion for accounts of that happening) then?
If you have someone trying to break into the house you live and stay in, you don't call them "okupas", it's trespassing/breaking and entering. One quick police call and you'll get help to have them thrown out.
The squatting/"okupas" thing is about occupying otherwise vacant properties.
Being offered one night in a shelter that won't let you and your wife sleep in the same room is not a good faith example of being offered housing. It's not at all surprising that people prefer living on the streets to sleeping in a crappy shelter.
> > 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.
Shelters aren't homes.
Can they store their things there and reasonably expect they won't be stolen? Can they have pets? Can they have privacy?
Would you stay in a homeless shelter? I mean, come on. The fact that anyone at all says yes to staying in these places shows just how bad staying on the streets is.
> Well HN's favored solution seems to be not caring that people are homeless (...)
I think you're not realizing that "homeless" and "okupas" are completely separate problems, and "okupas" in Spain are typically criminal organizations dedicated to pulling extortion schemes.
I'm talking about lawyer-types riding in BMWs which get a hold of indigents to invade a space, and proceed to demand "compensation" from property owners to "convince" said indigents to walk out.
This is not new or rare. It's a Spanish twist on the old protection rackets, and one which only exists because useful idiots convinced themselves that siding with organized crime networks is somehow benefiting society.
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.
My logic is more, "If some people can't have one home, then other people shouldn't be amassing multiple homes."
Toddler logic is pretending you don't understand what I'm saying.
And to be clear: I own a home, and I'm not squatting. It's just I have a sense of basic empathy too.
> 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.
"Energy spent trying to not be homeless would be better spent... being homeless!"
Let me be abundantly clear: this is a political conversation for you, it's a survival need for them. Demanding that people remain homeless while they fight for justice by rules that are made by people like you who clearly neither understand nor care about homeless people is absurd.
I mean let's be serious, when do you think this will be solved? This problem has been going on for decades, and we cannot even get people like you to agree that the solution to homelessness is homes. People like you don't have solutions and you oppose every solution that would actually solve the problem. And people like you make the rules. So you can't be surprised when the people you're screwing over don't care about your rules.
I mean, supporting new housing construction is great, but how are you going to prevent investment capital from just snapping up all the new inventory and continuing to jack up the rent? Houses are sitting empty now, because it's profitable for them to be sitting empty. This isn't going to stop until we end landlords. But let me guess--you oppose that, too?
So yeah--we should implement a real solution to homelessness. But given we aren't going to any time soon, you can't be too surprised when people don't follow the your rules just because you make the same broken promise that if they just do things the right way solutions will surely come.
> Even here on HN there are comments trying to downplay the issue by portraying the victims as mostly wealthy or landlords, which are presumably acceptable victims to people who like these kind of narratives.
After skimming some of the comments here I'd even go so far as to say that it's the majority of the comments here.
Im amazed your friend didnt come up with a swift solution, and what would the squatters do? call police and say they were squatting? show their rental agreement??
Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about. The "swift" solution would send you to jail in mere hours. You're presumed guilty. Yes, it defies any logic, but that's the way that it is.
My mom's husband had rented his previous flat (to complement his pension) to two women. They were working, very "normal" persons, and the contract specified that no other person could live there. One of them started dating a man and, a year later, there were three, then four (a child) living there. Then the other woman left (the guy was violent) and then the mother and her child had to flee too.
So my mom's husband had a guy that he never had any agreement with, living in his property, not paying rent, and not paying utilities. Now the law forbids to cut the utilities so you have to pay utilities for him. I think at the time (five years ago) it was still possible to cut. But the guy didn't care. After a year and a hell in courts, the flat was free again but a complete mess, broken furniture, mountains of junk. To weeks were needed just to clean, then paint, fixing doors, plumbing, etc.
He sold it ASAP. Now, I don't wonder why there's so little housing for rent.
What stops you from showing up with a locksmith and a few hired security paid to just throw their stuff out of the house onto the street and then change the locks? Thats how they do it in the US.
If the squatter is allowed to break in while you're not home and change the locks, why can't the owner wait for them to be out and also break in and change the locks?
Does the law specifically say that breaking in is allowed by anyone except the legitimate owner?
so you're saying if i book a flight to spain tomorow, find someone who has JUST moved into a house, perhaps scouting for moving trucks, scream loudly, call police and say they threw me out by force, the guy just moving into his new house will be hauled away to jail and presumed guilty? no, that is not how it is.
what will happen is, police will come, you are in your house, some idiot claims to have legal right to the house, he cannot present SHIT, and at worst he will file some police report about you throwing him out, of which you might be fined.
> call police and say they threw me out by force, the guy just moving into his new house will be hauled away to jail and presumed guilty? no, that is not how it is.
That’s silly. You have scope out the place with your friends, and then wait till they leave for the weekend somewhere then break in and change the locks.
He might be hauled away if you manage to provoke him to hurt you, or cut your electricity, water. There is this idea that the squatters are all ignorant people. A lot are quite well educated on the legal aspects of the operation, have accomplices, and know exactly what to say and act when confronted.
They may be begging for it, but the law is on their side so they have nothing to fear from it. If they go to the police you'll end up in jail and I'll still be in your house.
how exactly does that work? you went into my house, I throw you out, you call police and they come and haul me away? what stops me from calling the police on random guys claiming they threw me out? what will you say when police comes? "I was trying to steal his house and he threw me out"?
im not saying to beat the squatter to a bloody pulp, im just saying, you go in, they are evicted, end of story
When the police come the squatter says that they are illegal tenant that has been living there can you beat them up and threw them out. They say that you were renting them a room or some nonsense like that.
In California the courts hold squatters innocent until proven guilty through a lengthy legal process. Meanwhile you are charged for with no delay because it is illegal to beat someone even if they are squatting in your house.
I don't like it, but this is the situation when the law is on the squatters side.
we were talking about spain I think, but either way, I didnt say beat up, but then,
what stops me from going outside a random house, call police, and have the residents hauled away saying EXACTLY what you just said?
and IF what you say is true, I would think that any squatter trying such a thing would be suicidal, because IF this is the outcome that would happen, perhaps residents might consider a slightly different solution
> you went into my house, I throw you out, you call police and they come and haul me away?
It’s just as ridiculous as it sounds. Unless they agree to leave, throwing them out will look like an assault. They’ll call the cops first and good luck going through a 3 year court process while the squatters live in and trash your place. And you better not turn the electricity or water off! They’ll complain as having have medical and sanitary needs and you put their lives in danger.
Yeah. Reminds me of a funny one in France where a stolen car had a tracker and it's location, behind a garage door, was known. But the police was saying: "Nothing can be done".
Turns out: the owner of the car had a friend who was a farmer. He came up with a tractor and ripped the garage door apart.
That was his definition of "nothing can be done".
If motherfuckers play dirty, play dirty with the motherfuckers.
my brother had a motorcycle stolen, and police didnt do shit. Eventually my brother managed to find out who stole it, and police still did not want to come. Turns out the thief also had some problems(owing money) with hells angels. A deal was struck with the fine angels, and the location of the perp was exchanged with (later that day) a recovered motorcycle. He was told the guy probably wouldnt be stealing motorcycles for a while :)
well yeah, the regime is 100% out of control. Also, it was a pretty short negotiation, pretty much like: "yo, i give you location, i get my property??" "deal."
> It’s more fun to imagine these people as noble warriors against an unjust society, rather than seem them as people abusing the laws for personal gain at the expense of random victims.
Allow me to present a third option: maybe these people aren't noble warriors, they're just victims of an unjust society trying to meet their basic human need for housing. People like your friend are certainly unjustly harmed in this situation, but the people who don't even have their basic needs met are far more harmed.
If you don’t have your basic needs met there are options beyond squatting and exploiting laws surrounding it. I’m sure Spain has public services that are much better than the US if the train network is any proxy for effective governance. There’s presumably training opportunities to upskill both formal and informal. All this to say the person who is squatting is probably not someone who lacks any other option but someone who is exploiting a condition and potentially tied to organized crime to boot.
> If you don’t have your basic needs met there are options beyond squatting and exploiting laws surrounding it.
Links?
> I’m sure Spain has public services that are much better than the US if the train network is any proxy for effective governance.
Maybe you should be less sure.
> There’s presumably training opportunities to upskill both formal and informal.
Just because something can be presumed does not mean one should presume it.
> All this to say the person who is squatting is probably not someone who lacks any other option but someone who is exploiting a condition and potentially tied to organized crime to boot.
Seems like what you think is probable isn't based in much evidence.
If we want to do away with the godly rights of property owners and let people keep whatever they can take and defend, I am deeply in support of this plan, but I can't imagine it shakes out how the squatters like to think it would.
We'd just be taking the scenic route to roughly what we have, except I'm short a bunch of ammo.
> Yeah, it would be shocking to those who are used to the godly rights of the property owners on their property like in the US.
The story you’re replying to happened in the United States.
There was nothing noble about it. The squatters stole someone’s house and prevented them from occupying it. This wasn’t noble squatters versus evil landlords leaving houses empty. My friend literally bought a house for his family and someone squatted in it before he could move in.
Amazing that such a comment would come along and prove the point I was making: Some people can look an obvious injustice dead on, ignore the details, inject their own imagined narrative with victim and perpetrator reversed, and claim moral superiority for the perpetrator.
> The story you’re replying to happened in the United States.
I haven't seen any indicator of that at the time. Your comment does not mention anything in it about the US. Everyone is reading as if it happened in Spain. I don't even know whether occupying is possible in the US, bar a few specific states in certain conditions.
Regardless, it could have happened in Spain, and this is a topic related to Spain, my earlier comment still serves to make a statement in relation to the actual topic at hand.
> 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 to the empty house, changed the locks, and started occupying it.
Was this the person's primary residence that they were planning to live in? Or a property that they intended to flip or rent out? Makes a big difference in how the courts would see it.
> Even here on HN there are comments trying to downplay the issue by portraying the victims as mostly wealthy or landlords, which are presumably acceptable victims to people who like these kind of narratives.
I mean, if you can afford to purchase more than one property in order to gain financially from that second purchase, you are wealthy by most standards in this country.
> Or a property that they intended to flip or rent out? Makes a big difference in how the courts would see it.
Are you implying that there is something morally wrong about purchasing a rundown (apparently barely liveable) property, renovating it and selling or renting it? How do you expect the supply of housing to increase (and prices to go down in turn) if you disincentive such behaviour? Seems rather absurd...
It's besides the point what I think is morally wrong or right.
There is a legal difference between "occupying" someone's primary residence, and occupying other types of properties. The first isn't considered "occupying" here but rather "breaking and entering", and the local police are very quick at acting on those types of crimes, especially if the criminals are still inside the property.
No. It doesn't matter whether it is a primary residence, secondary residence, or an investment property. It is the property of someone else. Without permission, opening the door or window and going into it is breaking and entering.
And do not try to argue that breaking, entering, and squatting somehow reduces the housing shortage — the effect is the exact opposite. With insecure property access and rights, people will be LESS likely to invest in fixing up unliveable places. Just think for a second: with solid property rights, it can be an enjoyable practice to invest in and improve a run-down property to a rent-able or sell-able state. But if you are 50% likely to lose your investment and get a massive headache, you'll just go do something else, and let it rot, so no one can use it. Multiply this 100k times, and you have 100k fewer units on the market, just falling into dust.
Or the owners of those 100k units that are just left to rot can accept that their "investment" can't (and shouldn't) make them money faster than inflation, and lower the asking price.
The scenario you describe only exists because the number of "investors" buying up properties to flip and turn a profit vastly outnumbers the number people looking to buy their personal residence, and have the skills and disposition to fix it up themselves.
And judging by the build quality of a lot of flipped properties, the investors don't have the skills or disposition either.
I think we are conflating Private Equity, small-time house-fixer-flippers, and vacation homes.
I think we agree that the PE crowd can rot in hell — they're buying properties to standardize, corner the market, and charge extractive artificially-inflated 'market' rents. They won't be idle long, and I don't think squatting is the fix for that.
I'm quite sure that the PE companies are the primary driver here, not small-time fix-and-flip investors. PE firms are taking the houses off the market for good.
The small-time fix-&-flip people take houses off the market for only a short time, and upgrade the property. If they take too long, they WILL lose money, which is also why even if squatters do zero damage (never heard of it happening), the mere delay can cause it to be unprofitable.
Getting PE out of the market WILL reduce the competition and bring down prices. The same is not true for small time fix-&-flip investors.
The small-time fixer-flippers are taking a risk. Their properties may or may not increase in value at all, even with improvements. The goal is to add value greater than the cost of the improvements. From the people I know who have done it, this is mostly accomplished by sweat equity, i.e., they do a lot of the work themselves, hiring trades only where necessary, as if it is all full-price trade work, it will NOT be profitable. If you think that individual enterprising people adding value, including bringing non-viable housing stock back to market viability —AT THEIR OWN RISK— is somehow bad, we should make a regulatory or tax policy against it. Making random people subject to arbitrary effective confiscation at the whims of random squatters is not fair to anyone.
Same for vacation homes. If you think it bad policy that they exist, then enact new tax or regulatory schemes.
Making random people subject to random confiscation and expense will not get the results you want. It will get people even more strongly motivated to be angry at squatters.
Don't misunderstand me, I think squatting is a bad thing.
But its worth understanding why it happens, and a major factor is that home costs, to buy or rent, are out of control, which lowers the perceived ethical barrier to doing so.
There will always be that weird self-interested-self-described-"anarchist" who has convinced themselves that "property is oppression" because they don't want to pay for stuff. I'm not proposing anything to address that guy. I'm saying we should do what we can to prevent people from agreeing with that guy in the first place.
And one of the ways to dissuade people from agreeing with the professional squatter is by discouraging the PE-driven fix-and-flip (which is distinct from the small-time fix-and-flip, but only early in the development of that business. Eventually, you're successful enough that it makes more sense to buy cheap, in cash and without financing, hire others to fix at your leisure, and rent. That's the transition from labor-class to capital-holding class).
You can upgrade from trespassing to B&E by gently pushing an unlocked door to gain access so I think the term is a little loaded here, considering you are trying to claim moral equivalence between 1) entering someones home for burglary or to actively displace the residents and 2) squatting a vacant and unused building
For 2), how do you tell the difference between a building that is truly abandoned, and one that has just been bought and the new owner is in the process of arranging to repair and upgrade it?
Unless you are going to setup surveillance and track every footprint, there is a LOT of process before the hammers start swinging.
I didn't say abandoned, I said vacant and unused. The biggest difference between the two examples is that one included home invasion. Not any qualification for authentic, artisanal squatting
This is still the same issue. Simply saying a building is "vacant and unused" and is therefor qualified for confiscation (which is effectively what squatting is), would be a travesty.
I owned a house that was "vacant and unused" for many months before I could sell it. I moved in with my wife-to-be, and it turned out to be right at the housing market crash. Sale fell through, zero interest for months, so we took it off the market and invested in some upgrades. There were many months where there was zero activity, except for intermittently mowing the lawn or clearing the snow. Eventually, we made some upgrades, put it back on the market and sold it.
Had someone squatted in that house, especially with the typical trashing of the place, we would have lost both houses and been affected for decades.
Yet you are saying this would be OK for someone to just move in because we're having a hard time getting it sold? Seriously? (if so, my response to your lack of knowledge about how things actually work and your lack of ethics is unprintable in polite society)
Please re-read the last couple comments, I feel that I was quite specific and clear about the distinction I made to the point that I am having trouble reading you as acting in good faith.
My prior point was about emotionally manipulative language, which is what I see on display here with you trying to hold me accountable for a hypothetical. Please do not do that, it is very frustrating, I don't ask you why you beat your wife so don't ask me to justify squatting as morally acceptable.
Or, to put it another way, I'm literally saying that we shouldn't use the same language to describe home invasion (behavior that can get you lawfully killed in some places), to describe squatting, because it is emotionally and intellectually dishonest.
I agree that we may be having a problem of definitions, and we may be like the blind men discussing different parts of the elephant.
I am definitely discussing in good faith, as I'm seeing situations where relatively ordinary people have second homes, are in transition, or indeed are trying to add value to a property to resell, and are entirely unfairly losing the right to enjoy their property, and being saddled with the costs of evicting a squatter and repairing their damage.
In particular, at what point is a building "vacant" and at what point is it "unused"? More specifically, at what point do these get to the level where they should be subject to what is effectively confiscation by squatting?
Would you consider that the house I moved out of, but didn't sell during a market downturn and before making upgrades, which was vacant for more than a half year, be "unused" enough that I should have been subject to the whims of squatters? What about if that caused my wife and I to also lose our newer primary residence?
What about seasonal vacation homes? I know people who have them, purchased long ago, with kit houses, and are closed and inaccessible during the winter, but are used extensively other seasons, when extended families and friends travel from across the continent to use the places. Are those sufficiently vacant and unused?
I'll agree that a case may be made for places that are truly abandoned and unused. I might even agree that a 'no-harm-no-foul' rule could work, as in if the squatters may enjoy it and must leave when asked and leave no trace of their presence, it'd be OK/legal.
But I certainly disagree that granting squatters rights to either of the owners-in-transition or seasonal-homes examples is reasonable.
So, please provide more clarity on exactly what you think should be the boundaries.
> people will be LESS likely to invest in fixing up unliveable places.
Someone's still paying for the house flipping. By definition the flipper makes a margin between what they paid, the repairs, and the price they get at the end.
So why should we encourage house flipping instead of having howners buy the damaged property and pay for a renovation company ? Housing wise the end result is the same, minus the flipping.
If your argument is that the buyer converted a 4 person house into a 20 doors appartment, that's a better proposition, but they're also in a much more protected position and won't be bogged down by squating laws.
Of course they are - even in the case of 'flipping', they are at least working to add value. Barring complete incompetence, the repaired and upgraded place is MORE valuable.
>>By definition the flipper makes a margin between what they paid, the repairs, and the price they get at the end.
NO; there is nothing 'by definition' about it. While investors all desire to make a profit, many actually lose money, either due to poor planning and/or execution of upgrades or just ill-timed market downturns. The RISK of loss is reason to justify a profit. Moreover, SQUATTERS ADD ANOTHER RISK that almost guarantees a loss — even if they do zero damage and somehow the costly eviction process is free, the loss of time itself costs money.
>>So why should we encourage house flipping instead of having howners buy the damaged property and pay for a renovation company ? Housing wise the end result is the same, minus the flipping.
YES, I agree, this would be better. However, the result is not necessarily the same. While many flippers have poor or overly trendy tastes so that their upgrades don't add value, individual homeowners are even more unskilled. Plus, people upgrading buildings for a first or second living bring advantages and economies of scale, including buying materials at trade and/or bulk prices vs retail prices, ability to employ workers more efficiently across multiple properties at once, etc. OTOH, the homeowners have the advantage of caring more because they'll live there.
But notice, BOTH of these are ONLY MADE WORSE option by squatters. An investor may take a loss on one of a bunch of properties due to a squatter. But a homeowner who buys a run-down home to upgrade and move into, can be bankrupted by a squatter. Now, you have two homeless families, no just one.
There is simply no justification for giving people the right to steal other's property just by breaking and entering.
If we want to make a process, perhaps akin to found valuables, whereby someone can claim a property, and the previous owner must show that s/he is actively working to upgrade it, I could support that.
I might even support some kind of people can move in, but must cause no damage and move out when caught; a kind of 'no harm — no foul' rule could be reasonable. But, just "gee that looks empty, let's move in, and we have rights greater than the owner!", is a hard NO.
> economies of scale, including buying materials at trade and/or bulk prices vs retail prices, ability to employ workers more efficiently across multiple properties at once, etc.
You're arguing for having professional home renovators, that works the same if the house is flipped or not. So let's choose not.
> squatters
You're protected from squatters when it's your primary residency. You make it sound like you'd go buy some groceries and when you're back at home your house is occupied with no recourse. No.
It only becomes a legal quagmire when you're flipping properties, it was your winter vacation house, or you're actually spending your life in the Bahamas. Nobody's having issues while their house is actively renovated and they move in as soon as it's finished.
>>you're flipping properties, it was your winter vacation house, or you're actually spending your life in the Bahamas
So, you are saying that people who do any of those things should be subject to arbitrary confiscation of their property or rights to it?
NO, that is absurd and obscene. Everyone who has a second property is not wealthy to the point where it doesn't matter. I know many people who have remote properties that they visit intermittently or seasonally, who struggled to earn and invest enough to make it possible and have spent decades working on and improving the property. In some cases, the value has increased greatly, and in others, it's still just a remote camp on a remote wild spot.
Under what ethical reasoning should they be deprived of their property? Particularly, that they should be deprived of it randomly and at the whim of squatters? (e.g., if society decides that no one should be allowed to own a second property, then we should pass laws to outlaw and/or tax them out of existence in an organized way; there's no justification for arbitrary taking)
EDIT, add:
>>You're arguing for having professional home renovators,
No, this does not necessarily mean professionals, it means anyone doing it repeatedly or at scale, including a lot of semi-pros. Professionals and trades are often involved. And once you do it a few times (I know people who have done some), you do get economies, efficiencies, and knowledge that makes things both more economical and have better outcomes than the average homeowner/first-timer can do. I still don't see the argument against flipping a house (except for bad jobs, which homeowners can also do), and certainly none that says anyone should be subject to arbitrary confiscation by squatters
> Under what ethical reasoning should they be deprived of their property ?
Ask the Spanish government ?
Otherwise most countries have adverse possession laws, the only difference being how drastic the requirements are. Spain just decided to lower the bar that much.
There is a genuine difference though, as in, the law in Spain treats the two scenarios differently.
I'm not sure where the GP's situation took place but given the article is about Spain the person you're replying to could probably be forgiven for thinking it was there
By incentivizing people renovating, then living in, the rundown house they bought, instead of seeing that option as equally valuable as just selling/renting the house? Its one thing to produce more housing, its another to somehow magically produce more housing in such a way that does not devalue the other resources. Step 1 is to disincentivize speculative/rent-seeking home purchases.
Its been said a couple times in sibling comments, but the problem comes down to the fact that people are buying houses as investments, and not as houses.
In most of Europe, the US and Canada, the cost of home ownership grossly exceeds the median income, to the extent that lending is almost always necessary. Thus owning a second home is always the realm of the wealthy, even if they are still ultimately laborers. Buying that second home is often the first step from the labor class to the capitol-holding class.
Its frustrating that the housing crisis is often described in terms of Marxist dialectic, but the crisis often feels lab-grown to illustrate the flaws of (literal) rent-seeking behavior by the capitol-holding class.
Hard like the people that got it cheap? Or hard like the people that inherited such things?
I guess you can fuck off to the sticks, but I'm not sure that works as a defense for a society that has made an element of participation contingent on absurd expense or debt. Does 'work hard' feel good when the thing you purchase with your labor is expensive in order to service the desires of the wealthy?
I'm not going to say our current setup is indentured servitude or serfdom, it clearly isn't and social mobility and changing your station are possible and even commonplace. I will say that our current system has resulted in a large class of people whose productive excess is routinely paid to a small group for the benefit of being allowed access to a residence (they don't provide other services or benefits, they don't actually labor to produce the house as a finished good).
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 be destroyed.
For most of our history humans did not have to pay for a piece of land to put up some yurt or hut and live there.
How is the current system not strong taking whatever they can? Private property is just a legitimized theft, because it leaves some people without access to land or natural resources that is required for survival.
It's not true that without private property you get state slavery or a strongman situation, you may check Zapatistas, they are rebels that created a stateless society of 300 000 in Chiapas, Mexico without private property with structure that is based on decentralized, horizontal, federated institutions.
Anarchism is not a misguided ideology, it's a product of highest levels of freethought that inspired many people to fight for liberation from oppression and for a world where every human can develop the the heights of one's potential.
That is an ahistorical perspective. For most of human history, you could be killed for putting a yurt or hut in someone else's land.
Even chimps will kill others for infringing on territory.
There were breif periods where humans entered virgin land, but these people migrated because other land and resources were spoken for.
>Private property is just a legitimized theft, because it leaves some people without access to land or natural resources that is required for survival.
This is reverse reasoning. people lacking resources doesn't imply it was stolen from them. The alternative is that they simply didn't start with any.
Rights don't derive from wants or needs.
My wanting a pony does not give me a natural right to a pony. My hunger does not give me a natural right to food
>It's not true that without private property you get state slavery or a strongman situation, you may check Zapatistas
The zapititistas did not acquire all their land, people, and resources through free choice, nor were people free to stop collaborating if they chose.
> That is an ahistorical perspective. For most of human history, you could be killed for putting a yurt or hut in someone else's land. Even chimps will kill others for infringing on territory.
I don't agree with you, there are books such as The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity that counter your rhetoric. Private property norms did not exist for most of human history.
> Even chimps will kill others for infringing on territory.
On the other hand Bonobo is not so territorial and is too one of the species that is the closest to us.
>This is reverse reasoning. people lacking resources doesn't imply it was stolen from them. The alternative is that they simply didn't start with any.
Why then some people usurp land and natural resources and not let others use them?
> Rights don't derive from wants or needs.
From what they derive? If you agree that there is no natural rights, then how do you justify private property rights?
> The zapititistas did not acquire all their land, people, and resources through free choice, nor were people free to stop collaborating if they chose.
Bonobos are not pacifist. There is less violence within the troop, but they will still kill and maim, especially in the case of territorial disputes.
Groups of humans have always organized for Mutual Aid, but it has never been unilateral or not subject to the approval of the group.
Norms around private property are different across time and depend on the level of abundance. At no point could a strange human come and take your possessions huts, or food without permission.
In general, I'm getting the impression from your comment that you have some overly idealistic beliefs, and that you're perhaps unwilling to engage honestly with ideas that are counter to your own, but in any case..
Re: The Dawn of Everything
You're saying you don't agree with him because of a book you read - but that book has legitimate historians making some pretty bold criticisms: "cherry-picked and selectively presented examples", "perilously close to scholarly malpractice."
There is some positive feedback as well, but in general, if a book claiming to be historical elicits this kind polarization, it's probably not something to base a strong belief on.
I'm also not quite sure why you would find it hard to agree with the notion that, throughout history, humans have been protective of their territory. The list of examples you could point to for this is unending.
> Why then some people usurp land and natural resources and not let others use them?
You're question here doesn't really do accomplish anything re: property somehow being theft. I would suggest that "the reason" some people aquire land and don't let others use it can simply be because they don't want to. Sometimes the answer is that it's not financially viable to share it. Sometimes the answer is that they fear the destruction of the land or resource if they just open it up to anyone. Any of these reasons is sufficient, because they don't actually need a reason.
> If you agree that there is no natural rights, then how do you justify private property rights?
To start, the other guy never claimed private property was a natural right. The rights we have emerged from people wanting to self organize for their mutual benefit. They needed to agree on some fundamental protections that enable an actual net benefit of their organized society, and giving people rights to own and protect their property is generally needed for people to feel confident that effort they put in to improve the land is effort they will be rewarded for. It's a nice idea that people will improve land for the good of humanity, but in reality, people are not motivated by that enough to overcome the people who would abuse that system by "free-loading". It should tell you something that private property + property rights have consistently emerged, whenever people have tried to put together a society.
> Please share your sources for this statement
I admittedly didn't know much about this, but on some cursory research, it seems pretty obvious to me that this was not an entirely "free choice" based movement..
"Rebels wore ski masks and used furniture and other office materials to barricade themselves inside of buildings once they had taken them over.[11] During the occupation of the city, rebels also painted pro-Zapatista statements on the walls of buildings.[12] While raiding San Cristóbal de las Casas, the Zapatistas released 230 predominantly Indigenous prisoners from jail and also demolished land records in protest"
> In general, I'm getting the impression from your comment that you have some overly idealistic beliefs, and that you're perhaps unwilling to engage honestly with ideas that are counter to your own, but in any case..
I like precise logical argumentation, that's not idealism, I don't make any unnecessary assumptions
> I'm also not quite sure why you would find it hard to agree with the notion that, throughout history, humans have been protective of their territory. The list of examples you could point to for this is unending.
Oh, that's very simple, for most of human history humans lived as hunter gatherers and they did not have private property or rent relations.
>To start, the other guy never claimed private property was a natural right. The rights we have emerged from people wanting to self organize for their mutual benefit.
No, there was an enclosure of commons that happened to exploit farmers as factory workers. Those rights were always about naturalizing oppressive human relations.
>It should tell you something that private property + property rights have consistently emerged, whenever people have tried to put together a society.
This is not true, many civilizations were against private property rights and private property rights were never universal, they are even not universal in this worlds, even if they exist in most places around the world.
>I admittedly didn't know much about this, but on some cursory research, it seems pretty obvious to me that this was not an entirely "free choice" based movement..
No one is coerced to join those rebels. And rebels are rebelling against unjust genocide of Indigenous Americans among others.
That's not quite how your comments elsewhere in this thread read lol
> This is not true, many civilizations were against private property rights and private property rights were never universal
Wanna name a couple of those civilizations that didn't have property rights that managed to thrive and grow beyond a population of like 10,000? If you're going to point towards something like Greenland or China where land is owned exclusively by the state and leased out.. that's the same thing as private property rights, the people who lease that land out have rights with respect to that land. Countries literally can not exist without property rights, and if you're gonna say "yea and countries shouldn't exist it's all just made up borders anyway, mann..." then you're username is incredibly fitting lmao
I also never said that these rights were universal, just that they show up. A lot. And if you want to claim that reason is because of some oppression, go for it. I happen to think this is wrong, and the fact that basically every time these rights are revoked things go to shit tells me that's because they exist for a reason. See
> No one is coerced to join those rebels.
Brother, they showed up with guns and took over buildings by force; they destroyed the land records for everyone, not just their specific "members" - if that's not coercion, what is? Please recognize that you may just be enamored with the ideals of what the group said on paper, and are therefore rationalizing their extremist actions that end up being counterproductive to any positive goals.
>Brother, they showed up with guns and took over buildings by force; they destroyed the land records for everyone, not just their specific "members" - if that's not coercion, what is?
What do you think about genocide of Indigenous Americans? Is it okay? Or can they defend themselves?
For most of human history, people fought over the right for members of their group to put up a hut or yurt on a piece of land. And/Or some other, more powerful group would come and take whatever they wanted, including sex and slaves, from other, weaker groups of humans.
Now you have a group (or multiple groups) of people that will use violence to prevent people from doing the things that they feel are wrong. Probably they'll decide on what those things that are worth using violence to prevent are, and probably they'll write them down so that everyone is on the same page. If they don't do that, then they are using violence for arbitrary and undefined reasons, which most people don't want. I think I see where this is going...
What is the vision for this scenario that doesn't just turn into new groups taking power and enforcing their rules?
The most important difference is everyone could create such a group without main authority monopolizing violence. Some would try to recreate current authoritarian relations, while others would oppose them.
It's a nice thought, many small bands of people each doing their own thing. But I don't see why people think it would turn out differently than it has turned out before, which is some groups becoming large and powerful enough that they push out, destroy, or absorb other groups, until they become large and powerful enough that they're just called government.
> Yeah, so indeed it's important to organize self-defense groups that can help you not get hurt or enslaved.
Did you realize you just came up with the system you were opposing?
We can organize into some groups, let's call them countries, with an organized self-defense groups, we can call them police and military, to prevent our yurts from being stolen.
> For most of our history humans did not have to pay for a piece of land to put up some yurt or hut and live there.
In those same times, anyone that wandered by who was stronger could simply kill them and take over the yurt, until someone stronger showed and killed them in turn.
Not a great way to live, and not a very long life.
Yeah, Zapatistas have much higher standard of living than other people that live in Chiapas, which is impressive. You have to always consider local conditions and if you can see that certain ideas help some part of some territory develop better then alternatives then it's a strong argument for them. Especially considering that rebels are fighting against colonially motivated genocide.
> Yeah, Zapatistas have much higher standard of living than other people that live in Chiapas, which is impressive.
Of course, the corrupt ruling bandits always enjoy a higher standard of living than their subjects. The same story in every anarchist and communist society.
Zapatistas are organized Indigenous Americans, they are fighting against genocide. Why for you people who fight for their own survival are bandits? Do you think that people who were committing the genocide are fine? Do you approve of genocide of Indigenous Americans? If so, then that's disgusting.
"For most of our history humans did not have to pay for a piece of land to put up some yurt or hut and live there."
You can still put up your yurt or hut in many places of the Earth, probably including Chiapas, but it seems that more people want to live in London, Munich, Tokio or Barcelona.
Show me a place with a stateless society and without private property that actually attracts nontrivial amounts of people. You speak of such places highly and reverently, but for all their highest level of freethought, they don't seem to compete well with traditional urban centers of the capitalist world.
When voting with their feet, people mostly move to wealthy countries that protect personal property, not away from them.
>I'm pretty sure they're talking about real property. Land and improvements. Not the strong taking away everything you have.
An individual has to be very careful not to create any real property value or improvements, otherwise it will be taken from you.
Conceptually there are lots of solutions to managing this problem. Historically, they rely on a state institution that goes around stripping people of what they create, forcing people to create things they don't own.
Communism almost always devolves into totalitarianism for this reason.
You can create value in the 99% of the world that isn't attached to your house.
Also a more conservative set of rules, like the limits I was talking about, would still let you own a house and upgrade it a lot in a way that you fully own.
> There are so many better ways to solve this problem than putting a cap on value creation.
Does "value creation" here specifically mean adding more living space?
Only a very tiny fraction of homeowner construction projects would be an issue. And if you want to do something like build a third house on your property, a rule like that would say "go ahead, but then you have to sell it when you're done". You can create tons of value and profit from it, you just can't own three houses.
Lets assume this rule is only about living spaces, and not other assets and infrastructure.
I like building and improving houses. I have one in the bay area I work to improve.
I have built a mountain home in the Sierra Nevada, and am working on a desert home in Nevada. These take nothing away from anyone. They were empty land surrounded by more empty parcels before I did something with them.
There is no shortage of land and nothing is stopping someone else from doing the same. When I die, they will probably be sold off, and there will be more options. until then, nobody is worse off. I have thought about renting them out, which is still better than if they never existed.
Who am I hurting, and why should I be forced to sell?
If there was a law I couldnt own three houses, I simply wouldnt build them.
There could be an exception for houses in the middle of nowhere.
But also in economic terms, if that house is in a zero-demand area and won't be on the market for decades, then it would be better if you don't build it, and instead either spend that money elsewhere or invest it.
Who cares about economic terms? It is my money, and I will light it on fire if I want to.
Furthermore, sweat equity is real. You can put sweat, blood, and 100k of materials into something and have an 300k asset. It doesnt matter if a desert lot was dirt cheap.
I find it funny when people forget you can create value yourself instead of passively investing in someone else who creates it.
> Who cares about economic terms? It is my money, and I will light it on fire if I want to.
You're the one that brought up value creation, not me.
If it's a "who cares" when it goes against how you want to spend, then it's also a "who cares" when it aligns with how you want to spend.
> Furthermore, sweat equity is real. You can put sweat, blood, and 100k of materials into something and have an 300k asset. It doesnt matter if a desert lot was dirt cheap.
> I find it funny when people forget you can create value yourself instead of passively investing in someone else who creates it.
A house nobody else wants has a value of zero dollars, and you didn't create value.
If that house is worth 300k, then I misunderstood your earlier description.
But this kind of situation is not what normally happens. Whether it's allowed or not doesn't really matter. The important case is what happens when people build/buy in areas with more than negligible demand.
Strange, for me owning a property is slavery, being pinned to a single location. I'm retired now, looking back, I was free, happy and productive in the years that I was renting and unhappy while owning.
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.
How can that be worse than "there are millions of unoccupied places, most housing belongs to the same people who don't need it, and yet there are millions living in the street"
Most houses are owned by people who do not work for it. It's the rent from their other houses that give them even more money, effectively doing nothing. Let's not think those people deserve our praise for their parasitism.
> Refusing to pay for a place to live is simply theft and entitlement.
Holding other people's basic survival need for ransom is simply theft and entitlement.
What makes you think that people are going through all the complexity of squatting if they have the options of paying for a place to live?
> If you abolish property rights, your two options are state slavery or anarchy where the strong take whatever they can.
Anarchy where the strong (rich) take whatever they can is the situation we have now. Property rights as they currently exist are that rich people have property rights and nobody else does.
Unless you start talking solutions to homelessness, it starts to sound like you just don't care about the homeless and you're only interested in maintaining the power that exists.
If posting in favor of imprisoning the homeless is acceptable to you, but pointing out how awful that is, isn't, then I'm just not that interested in what's acceptable to you.
> If posting in favor of imprisoning the homeless is acceptable to you, but pointing out how awful that is, isn't
You know very well that the problem isn't your opinion but the way that you're expressing it, and your incredibly hostile treatment of other users.
HN is a platform for thoughtful discussion of interesting ideas and topics, not advocacy and emotional outbursts. Your kind of behavior isn't wanted here.
This kind of thing is not ok here—it's not what HN is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules from now on, we'd appreciate it.
I understand moderating discussion is extremely hard. I understand that it seems fair at face value for you to just enforce politeness and not enforce ideologies, but that's not actually possible. You are taking a side here, if you decide to censor me, and not the ideologies I'm arguing against.
I am not perfect and I should have been a bit more polite in some of the posts you link.
People post absolutely reprehensible opinions on this site, and a rational, reasonable response to those opinions is not politeness. The startup community is supportive of and participates in a lot of extremely harmful practices, and believes a lot of harmful ideologies. If espousing ideologies that are literally killing people is allowed by the guidelines, but pointing out how horrific those ideologies are isn't allowed by the guidelines, then the guidelines are effectively supporting those ideologies.
Take for example this post which you linked (I'm linking the post it was responding to):
The above post I 100% stand by. I think I said that about as politely as I think is possible; any more polite would be miscommunication.
If you consider that post a problem, I understand, but I'm not going to comply with that. If that's the case, please just delete my account and all my posts, and I won't attempt to create another account. I'd rather not be associated with a site that's protects reprehensible ideologies in the name of politeness.
(1) plenty of HN users post comments from plenty of ideological positions without breaking the site guidelines and (therefore) without getting moderated; and
(2) users breaking the site guidelines from all different ideological positions do get moderated.
That doesn't fit with "you're taking a side". In my experience the causality goes the other way: when people get moderated they have a strong tendency to jump to "the mods are against my side" rather than look at how their posts are breaking the rules and/or go against the intended spirit of the site. In other words it's not "I got moderated because you're taking a side", it's "you must be taking a side, because I got moderated". So it's probably worth adding:
(3) The users who jump to "you're taking a side" are distributed across all the ideologies.
There are also users of every ideological view making the case "my ideology is special; it requires me to break the rules, otherwise it cannot properly be communicated". This is disproven by all their co-ideologists who have no trouble communicating similar views without that.
I agree with you that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40136616 was not as bad as your other three comments I listed, but it still used the "people like you" trope, which is a flamewar + personal attack combo that leads to forum hell.
I don't believe you need personal attack, clichés of internet aggression, etc., to make your case for what you believe in. On the contrary, these things cheapen your position. Morever, they are fungible across all the ideologies—that is,
(4) commenters who resort to breaking the site guidelines resemble each another far more than they resemble anyone else. Ideology is not the high-order bit here.
By the way, I don't identify with your word "politeness". Enforcing politeness in not at all what we're after, and in that sense I agree with you, though I think you're misassessing what we do as mods. Politeness is profoundly uninspiring as a value, and I'd find it profoundly demotivating if that were the principle. But it's not.
The HN guidelines used to say "Be civil", but we changed that years ago to "Be kind", because civility (which I take to be close to politeness) doesn't go deep enough to capture what we want here. Kindness is a far better word. We want people to be in good relational connection with each other, even when they disagree about a topic. That's an ideal, of course, but it's the right ideal for HN, because it's needed in order to optimize for curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
Perhaps then, the crux of your and my disagreement is that I do not think you are successfully optimizing for kindness. I believe that you intend to optimize for kindness, but you're not, you're optimizing for politeness.
You'll note that increasingly my posts here are on homelessness. There are nearly 600,000 homeless in the US alone, many of whom will die from homelessness-related problems. Many posts on this site both spread misinformation about that problem, and argue against any and all real solutions to that problem. That isn't kind, but it isn't moderated. And treating those comments as if they are not reprehensible, might be kind to the poster, but it's unkind to the 600,000 homeless in the country where a lot of HN users live.
Kindness isn't a simple thing: sometimes kindness to one person needs to be balanced with kindness to other people.
Kindness, as I understand it, has to do with how you treat the people you personally come into contact with. On HN, that means how you relate to other users.
I get that you're using the word differently and that's fine, as long as we understand what each other means by it. It seems like you're defining your political position (on homelessness in this case) as 'kind' while the opposing position is 'unkind'. Presumably someone of the opposite view might take issue with that, but I don't.
Since it's in your interest to argue for your views in a way that is personally kind to the people you're arguing with, I don't see any tradeoff between our two usages.
I support cheap and affordable housing. I support charity for people that are honest members of society.
I think unrepentant thieves need to be incarcerated, not because they deserve a housing, but to protect innocent people from their destructive Behavior.
>Quoting so you can't retract. I don't think you'll find much agreement there.
I think you'll find that you are in the minority. Look at laws for felony theft. I think most people would like even harsher penalties people that steal assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. All it takes is seeing it once and people swing very quickly against this kind of behavior.
You being hungry does not entitle you to my dinner. You being horny does not entitle you to my body. You being cold does not entitle you to my shelter.
> I think you'll find that you are in the minority. Look at laws for felony theft.
I think the laws for felony theft as compared to the laws for murder and rape are pretty solid evidence that rape and murder are considered more serious crimes than theft. And that's setting aside that there are plenty of theft laws that are even less serious than felony theft. In cases where people are stealing to meet their basic needs such as food or housing, it's not uncommon for perpetrators to receive lenient sentences including probation with no prison time.
What's your argument for landlordism not being theft? Shouldn't those people get a job too? Or is theft only a crime when poor people do it?
> What's your argument for landlordism not being theft? Shouldn't those people get a job too? Or is theft only a crime when poor people do it?
It is very simple. Theft is when you take something from someone without voluntary agreement. renters and landlords enter voluntary agreement. If a landlord has a job or not seems irrelevant. They didn't steal anything from anyone. Everything they have, they obtained through mutually consensual exchange.
How do you think landlordism could be considered theft? Is it just because people need/want shelter that they have?
Is a farmer who grows food a thief because people need food to live?
Is a doctor a thief because you die without surgery?
Is a mechanic a thief because your car needs repair?
In my mind, lacking, wanting, or even needing something does not mean that everyone who has it and charges you is a thief.
> It is very simple. Theft is when you take something from someone without voluntary agreement. renters and landlords enter voluntary agreement. If a landlord has a job or not seems irrelevant. They didn't steal anything from anyone. Everything they have, they obtained through mutually consensual exchange.
Wrong. The vast majority of people don't voluntarily agree to rent, they are coerced. "Pay rent or be homeless" is pretty powerful coercion.
> How do you think landlordism could be considered theft? Is it just because people need/want shelter that they have?
Stop this "need/want" nonsense. I think we can agree that homes are firmly a human need. People being mad that landlords are driving up housing prices for personal gain isn't just whining that people aren't getting what they want. People need homes.
It's theft because people who already have a lot of money, are buying up things that people need, so they can hold them for ransom. Owning things so that others can't own them isn't a benefit to society, and landlords do not provide services (before you trot out the maintenance argument--compare the prices of a handyman to rent). They're just leaches.
> Is a farmer who grows food a thief because people need food to live?
A farmer grows food, like a builder builds houses.
The landlord equivalent for food would be if someone decided to buy up all the world's food and jack up the price, letting people starve to death despite an excess of food rather than compromising their profit model. And that would be murder, not theft.
> Is a doctor a thief because you die without surgery?
Surgery, unlike a food or house, is a service, not a product.
Unlike a landlord, doctors performing surgery is actually doing work. And while the prices of medical care are high in the US to the point that people are dying rather than seeking preventive care, that's largely a function of rent-seeking healthcare companies, not doctors. And that's pretty equivalent to murder, too.
Hospitals are in fact required to provide surgery if failure to do so would result in the death of the patient.
> Is a mechanic a thief because your car needs repair?
Is a car a human need? In some places, maybe, but that's a problem of a society that doesn't provide other forms of transport.
Really, though, I'm less interested in defining landlordism=theft. We shouldn't need to prove it fits your arbitrary definition of theft to say it's wrong: if you don't get that causing homelessness for personal gain is wrong, your moral compass is pretty fundamentally broken.
>Really, though, I'm less interested in defining landlordism=theft. We shouldn't need to prove it fits your arbitrary definition of theft to say it's wrong: if you don't get that causing homelessness for personal gain is wrong, your moral compass is pretty fundamentally broken.
I think landlords prevent more homelessness than they create. Homes dont magically pop into existence. They are built for sale. I think people pushed into homelessness has little to do with profit seeking landlords. No landlords means nobody gets housing that cant afford to own
You seem to be freely conflating homelessness with regular people paying rent. This is misleading debate tactic to advance the entitlement of renters.
People who can pay rent, but want another's possession for cheaper, is simple entitlement.
Homelessness is a social and legal choice to make cheap housing illegal, or not provide social housing for those that do not work. This is orthognal to landlords. Someone with a vacation home or airBNB isnt the bottleneck keeping junkie bob from having a shelter.
I think pinning it on landlords is childish. You can help junkie bob and choose not to, because you dont want them in your house, or to pay for their shelter. Blaming landlords is simply a way for people to say it isnt their problem or responsibility.
Yes, builders build them. Landlords don't create homes. Landlords take them out of the market so that they can't be bought by people seeking to buy them and live in them.
> You seem to be freely conflating homelessness with regular people paying rent.
You seem to be freely conflating removing a house from the free market with providing one.
> No landlords means nobody gets housing that cant afford to own
Landlords mean that the vast majority of people cannot afford to own, and increasingly nobody can afford to rent either.
> Homelessness is a social and legal choice to make cheap housing illegal, or not provide social housing for those that do not work. This is orthognal to landlords. Someone with a vacation home or airBNB isnt the bottleneck keeping junkie bob from having a shelter.
1. Many homeless cannot work. Perhaps they could have worked when they became homeless, but being homeless quickly makes one unemployable.
2. The social/legal choice to make cheap housing illegal is driven by people trying to keep up the values of their vacation homes and airBNBs.
3. If you were homeless you'd have very good reasons to be a junkie too. The scorn you have for people less fortunate than yourself is horrifying.
> I think pinning it on landlords is childish.
I think not pinning it on landlords is willfully ignorant of basic economics in favor of an ideology that likely benefits you.
> You can help junkie bob and choose not to, because you dont want them in your house, or to pay for their shelter.
1. I don't own a home I don't live in, and the home is really not large enough for more than one person. Claiming that someone doesn't care about the homeless because they don't let homeless people live in their home is an intentionally ridiculous bar to set.
2. As for paying for their shelter, the amount of money I donate to housing-related charities varies based on how much I make (I have to live too) but I've donated around $1k so far to housing-related charities. I'm not making a lot of money right now, or it would be more. I also donate my time at a homeless shelter (mostly cleaning and moving stuff, I'm not there enough to do more involved tasks).
3. All this is beside the point that this is a childish ad hominem argument you're making. Not everyone is in a position to help the homeless--many are on the verge of homelessness themselves. Claiming we have to be actively helping the homeless to have an opinion is absurd. Is there any issue you care about, and do make any sacrifice as extreme as letting someone live in your house for that issue? Or do you just not care about anyone but yourself?
Do they actually? Would they allow the previous homeowner to come live with them? Usually they seem intent on kicking/keeping the previous homeowner out, which is enforcement of their own property rights.
Well, let's play it out. A squatter steals an owner's property while they're away on a Summer-long vacation. Later, the squatter spends some temporary time away from the property. During this time, another squatter comes along and steals the property from them. And so on. How does this not just lead to an unending string of lawlessness. Further, why would anyone invest in building and maintaining housing when their property can just be stolen from them without consequence? We'll be back to straw huts in no time. Claiming that renting housing is "oppressive" is absurd in the extreme. It is an arrangement of mutual benefit that is done voluntarily. It provides flexibility, mobility, and access that home ownership doesn't. In fact, the ability to invest in housing increases access to housing, not the other way around. No one is arguing that we should eliminate tenant protections against arbitrary eviction or unfair treatment. We should simply have sane protections for property ownership. There is no circumstances in which the theft of property is a smart or sane solution.
> neo-fascist
Your turn. How is pointing out that people have been seduced by a worldview that is neither fact based nor logical "neo-fascist".
> A squatter steals an owner's property while they're away on a Summer-long vacation
Realistically, if this would happen in real life (which isn't very common, compared to proper "occupations", which this is not), the police would kick them out quickly, as it's the owner's primary resident.
No one is arguing for squatters right for other's primary residence. The division comes when you start talking about properties that are bought/owned for the sole purpose of speculation.
There’s someone in this thread arguing exactly for squatters right for another’s primary residence, barring their ability to organize some kind self defense. Didn’t sound great
As always, there are extremists on both sides, that's no lie.
Generally, most people aren't so extreme as to say private ownership shouldn't exist at all. At least from most of the people I interact with here in Barcelona.
Besides what people think is right/wrong, the police does help you (quickly) to throw out people that try to invade your residence that you actively live in.
No, you just claimed one comment ago that "no one is arguing" that. Don't make those kinds of assertions in a situation when you know full well someone in this very thread is likely to do it.
Calling people you disagree with extremists is just an insult and it's not nice. It's rude. There is nothing extremists about fighting for a world where no one is oppressed and everyone can develop to the heights of one's potential.
The criterion of abandonment of private property I think should differ based on the local customs and on the type of private property, so for houses for example maybe it should be a year or 2 of you not living there before your house is considered abandoned and someone can live there. For for example mines I think they should be considered abandoned and ready for someone else to use much faster.
The main problem of private property is that it leaves some people without access to a place to live or means to subsist on, so they either have to die of hunger or agree to get exploited. This makes this concept oppressive.
> Your turn. How is pointing out that people have been seduced by a worldview that is neither fact based nor logical "neo-fascist".
I explained above why is such a worldview logical, if you have some issues please answer. On the other hand utilizing such dehumanizing rhetoric like "infection by a mind virus" is not acceptable and is typical of people aligned politically with far-right, such as Elon Musk, who is among the most popular users of this term.
How dare you use "dehumanizing" rhetoric against me, you far-right neo-fascist! That's rude!
The thing about hypocrisy is that it reveals that you think you are superior to others and therefore entitled to rule over them using whatever means necessary, including dishonesty and, ultimately, force. It is the definition of anti-social and is considered unacceptable in society for good reason.
The mind is much like a computer: garbage in, garbage out. You have essentially been mis- (or mal-) programmed. If you were to free your mind of these destructive ideas, you could live a freer, happier life and contribute to society instead of trying to destroy it. Make the choice if you still can, for the longer you hold on to evil, the stronger its grasp on you.
I don't agree with you, I don't think you discuss in a good faith. You seem to write in a very emotional state, which possibly does not make you stable enough to engage in a coherent discussion.
I think everyone should have an opportunity to develop to the heights of one's potential and I think no one should be oppressed and exploited. I don't agree with you that I am anti-social or I have destructive ideas. Moreover, I am a very happy person, I consider myself completely satisfied with my personal life and that's why I am willing to engage in a fight for other people's opportunity to develop, even if they were unlucky in their life and they didn't have access to those opportunities. I am fine with propagating a complete deconstruction of norms very strongly naturalized in our current society if I find them justifying oppression and exploitation.
> A lot of squatters want to abolish the possibility of someone having to pay rent to another person to have a place to live
That's exactly how you end up with no new or maintained housing, utilities and other services. How do you imagine system like that working besides a totalitarian government directly taking over all private property and rationing housing? (I assure the housing situation in Spain is not even remotely as bad as it was in the USSR).
> don't have a logical counter-argument.
Trying to form logical arguments that refute completely absurd and irrational ones is not particularly productive...
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 to the empty house, changed the locks, and started occupying it.
I remember being shocked that someone could do this and be protected under the law. He had to follow a formal eviction process, even though they broke into his house and never had any agreement. The perpetrators were known to the police as professional squatters and they advised him on all the things to avoid doing so they wouldn’t countersue him, which was mind blowing.
Even weirder was to watch the reaction on his social media when he posted the story. A lot of people, including many of his friends, jumped to defending squatter’s rights or trying to make some broader point about inequality.
There’s something about squatting that appeals to people who think it’s always a RobinHood situation: Stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. It’s more fun to imagine these people as noble warriors against an unjust society, rather than seem them as people abusing the laws for personal gain at the expense of random victims. Even here on HN there are comments trying to downplay the issue by portraying the victims as mostly wealthy or landlords, which are presumably acceptable victims to people who like these kind of narratives.