Short of cash and need a place to live?

Bart has a smoke while sitting on his mattress, which is part of his 'squat-set': the bed, table and chair needed to establish a squat under Dutch law. (Nancy Durham)

In the Netherlands, you can get around it by squatting. There, occupying someone else's space — as long as it has been left vacant for 12 months — is considered a right. That's how Bart and his friends came to reside at 91 eerste Oosterparkstraat, a rundown townhouse in central Amsterdam.

I met them two days after moving day. My visit reminded me of dropping by to say hello to a new neighbour back in my more rustic university days. They were sleeping on mattresses on the floor.

Bart (who prefers not to give his last name) had stuck a few posters to the walls: We are everywhere — Resist the G8 Summit — Dissent! — clearly a fan of the anarchist style of interior design.

According to the law in Holland, just three objects are essential to declare a squat: a bed, a table and a chair. Bart and his housemates brought those things with them as they moved in.

The apartment has a broken toilet, just one of the things that must be fixed to make it liveable. (Nancy Durham)

With these utilitarian symbols, the squatter is saying, in effect, "Now, I live here. These are my things. This is my home."

Once the objects — known colloquially in Dutch as a kraak-set (squat-set) — are installed, the squatters contact the police to announce their occupation.

The place is theirs unless the owner challenges their right. To do this successfully, a landlord must prove the building was about to be lived in, renovated or demolished. While lawyers craft legal arguments, the squatters have a home for themselves, for months or even years.

Interview

Nancy Durham talks with sociologist and geographer Justus Uitermark of the University of Amsterdam.

Bart's kraak-set now also includes a stereo and vinyl record selection. The sleeve of a Dead Kennedys' album leaned against the wall while something else pounded in the background. The electricity works but there is no running water.

Bart offered coffee, apologizing that it would have to come in a dirty cup. I accepted that strong shot of percolated coffee in a stained Dixie cup with all the enthusiasm I could muster.

I asked Bart how it was going in his new home.

"I'm feeling fine, I have a house."

"Does it already feel like home?" I wondered.

The squatters struggle to get furniture up one of Amsterdam's famously narrow stairwells.(Nancy Durham)

"A little bit, getting there.… I'm going to look for a carpet or something to do with the floor and clean up all the things they've destroyed."

Squatting actions happen weekly

Bart told me there are at least two or three squatting actions every Sunday in Amsterdam — although this one was more difficult than usual.

"This one was quite a big one because it was four [town]houses at once," he said, adding that access points were also covered with metal plates, making it difficult to get inside.

"A lot of time it's just like one, or even a couple of apartments, with just a normal door, so it happens a lot."

The squatters brought saws to cut through the metal and one supporter videotaped the event. He was careful not to show the faces of those who did the actual break-in because forced entry is illegal.

The owner of the newly squatted building, the social housing corporation De Key, disputes the squatters' claim that the building has been left empty for a year.

It says some parts of it were vacant but not all, noting an Indian restaurant still open on the ground floor.

Although the law requires that De Key make 30 per cent of its housing low rent, the building on eerste Oosterparkstraat is scheduled for demolition and conversion into smart condominiums.

However, De Key says it will provide affordable housing in a different part of the neighbourhood.

Anti-squat business helps curb squatting

Squatting is on the wane in Amsterdam. At its peak in the early eighties, there were around 10,000 squatters. Today, estimates vary from a few hundred to 1,500.

Part of the reason for the decline is the rise of the anti-squat business.

If it weren't for Joost Koenders — just one anti-squat entrepreneur — 400 Dutch properties would be sitting empty, tempting squatters. And those are just the ones his company looks after.

The owners of vacant buildings give Koenders the keys and he rents the properties to tenants at bargain rates.

Squatters picnic on beans and cucumber sandwiches. (Nancy Durham)

The standard anti-squat rent is low — around 200 Euros ($300 Canadian) per month — but tenants can be evicted on two weeks' notice.

Koenders showed me around an empty office block on the outskirts of the city. We walked and walked across the sprawling ground floor — 24,000 square metres of space.

I could faintly hear jazz music playing in the distance. As we neared the end it got louder and I could see an artist in overalls at work in what surely must be Holland's largest artist's studio.

Painter Jasper Krabbe has so much space he uses a skateboard to get around.

"I have to, you know, because if I have to go and fetch some water, I'd be walking for quarter of an hour!"

Krabbe doesn't sleep here; by night the building is occupied by a half-dozen others who sleep upstairs in offices.

"This is ideal.…," he said. "It's wonderful that we can stay here and do our thing and keep an eye out for people who might want to smash a window or whatever."

The space allows him to experiment with seriously big art. "I'm planning actually of making a work of eight by 10 metres.… I can't imagine a better space in Amsterdam. It's the best spot that you could ask for."

Koenders says squatters serve a purpose.

A banner on the squat reads 'We don't need the key,' a pun on the building's owner, the social housing corporation De Key. (Nancy Durham)

"I think it's good that the system is there, the squat system, because it keeps the real estate market precise. … If squatters are not there, many owners of real estate can leave buildings empty for as long as they like and it's possible you can get a spooky kind of city and that's not good."

Squatters emerged as heroes in 1970s

Historically squatters have played another, powerful role in Holland.

In the seventies, they occupied several buildings — not far from Bart's new home — to protest against plans to build a highway through the downtown.

There were violent riots but, for many, the squatters emerged as heroes. The highway was cancelled and today in the subway below there is a memorial to them.

Sociologist Justus Uitermark points to the ceramic dedication laid in a subway floor: "It spells housing is not a privilege: it's a right."

"The rebels were exceptionally successful … and they are still commemorated, also by the present politicians, as heroes who saved the inner city from the modernizers."

Squatting worldwide

There aren't that many Dutch squatters: more than anything, arguably, they represent an idea. In reality, the squatters' movement worldwide is vast and desperate, born of terrible necessity.

Today on the planet, according to Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, there are a billion squatters — that's one in six people. Neuwirth predicts the number will double by 2030 and that by 2050, more than one in three of us will be squatters

Anna Maria Tremonti interviewed Neuwirth on CBC Radio's The Current in 2005. He explained that squatting is very different in the developing world compared to the Netherlands or Canada. Shadow Cities chronicles his experiences in Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, Nairobi and Istanbul.

Mode toward squatters changing

Squatters may be revered by some but Uitermark senses a changing mood.

"There's a very strong backlash against deviancy so the common sense notion that you should keep your hands off other people's property is really gaining ground and people now really believe that. And they think that idealism of the revolutionary type is a thing of the past."

It's certainly not the past for Uitermark — he teaches at the University of Amsterdam but lives with a group in a squat. [See sidebar.]

I asked Bart whether he thinks squatting is dying in Holland.

"No, no. There's a slogan in Dutch saying you can't evict ideas. Squatting continues and, yes, they can kick me out of this house but then I'll go to the next one."

"What's the best you can hope for?"

"That we can stay here and that this place stays a social renting place and does not get destroyed for yuppies."

[an error occurred while processing this directive]