Margaret Thatcher<\/a> came in, she starved all the money from the local authorities and they had to sell their houses. The only money that they could spend on housing was for big housing estates. As soon as the tenant moved out, the place became derelict and the council wouldn\u2019t re-house people in them and they sold them. But the trouble was the council had to sell them, but then the money didn\u2019t go back to the council who built them, they had to go to the central government. So all of the councils were pissed off and they weren\u2019t even bothered about selling them, they sold them in job lots auctions. We knew that places wouldn\u2019t be up for auction for a\u00a0year or two years so there was no conflict. We never squatted in someone\u2019s place.\u00a0<\/p>\nIf anything you were doing them a\u00a0favour, because you were keeping these buildings from getting into a\u00a0complete state of disrepair.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Exactly.<\/p>\n
Without squatting, I\u00a0think a\u00a0lot of these lovely buildings, these Victorian and Edwardian houses wouldn\u2019t exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We saved streets, we squatted Sutton House, a\u00a0National Trust house in Hackney. That would have probably been knocked down if it wasn\u2019t squatted. There\u2019s so many wonderful places we\u2019ve saved from squatting. Mostly when the council came, they came with bailiffs. It was always an immense hassle with them, and it\u2019s a\u00a0horrible feeling being evicted when you have absolutely no idea where you\u2019re going next. The major downside to that life is that you never feel as though you have a\u00a0permanent, safe place to live. It would have been so nice if the council had just said, \u200b\u201cWe\u2019ve got this short-life property, so here is a\u00a0proper tenancy and you can stay there permanently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did you ever remain in the squat and eventually gain a\u00a0legal tenancy? Or would you know anyone who\u00a0did?\u00a0<\/p>\n
On our street, there were three houses that had been squatted for longer than 12\u00a0years [the length of time needed for adverse possession] and across the two squatted streets as a\u00a0whole, people actually managed to keep their homes. In the very last house we occupied, the council came to evict us, but they got the paperwork wrong, as they pretty much did all the time, and the bailiffs never even turned up. Because of that mistake, the council essentially told us we might as well stay, granting us a\u00a0license that allowed us to remain until they wanted us gone again. While that technically made us license holders once, it was actually no different in reality, and I\u00a0never personally managed to own a\u00a0property in those 12\u00a0years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite that, we ultimately won the battle to save the whole neighbourhood, keeping two full streets and about 25 houses that successfully turned into a\u00a0housing cooperative. That cooperative on Ellingfort Road and London Lane, right by London Fields, is where all my friends and their children still live today, completely secure with affordable rents. Today, they have proper tenancies where they can\u2019t be evicted, because we managed to buy all the houses through a\u00a0housing association and then paid back the borrowed money entirely through the residents\u2019 rents. They\u2019re like 100-year mortgages, which has worked out incredibly well for keeping our community intact. If we hadn\u2019t done it, we would have faced the same fate as all the other squats and communities nearby where everyone was evicted. The houses were turned into flats, and the people were forced to move out of London entirely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What were the downsides?\u00a0 Looking back now I\u00a0look through rose-tinted glasses \u2013 they\u2019re beautiful, they\u2019re colourful with beautiful…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,35131,8363,32020,16819,35129,10442,1745,35126,20641,35128,16817,35125,35130,1179,35127],"class_list":["post-78776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-britain","tag-chats","tag-community","tag-creative","tag-documenting","tag-edges","tag-freedom","tag-hackney","tag-hunter","tag-living","tag-londons","tag-spent","tag-squat","tag-vibrant","tag-white","tag-years"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116881733864800240","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}