Squatting as a method of self-help housing procurement in New York City has a history as old as the city itself. The idea of squatting stems from English Common Law that roughly states “he who improves upon land is entitled to it.� Until the mid nineteenth century, the entire island of Manhattan north of Down Town was littered with homesteads and squatter towns established by new immigrants and African Americans. As the City expanded northward, these settlements were razed to make room for new development. When there was no more open land for the homesteaders and squatters to inhabit, bloody conflicts arose between them and the developers.

During the Great Depression the city permitted shanty towns to develop as housing for the poor along the banks of the East River and in Central Park. The city also acquiesced when a group of unemployed people took over an empty packing plant in 1932 and made it their home. There were many such instances where unemployed people who were evicted from their homes looked towards other methods of housing in the city. Abandoned buildings were often reclaimed.

In the 1970s, when fiscal crisis hit New York City, landlords, particularly in the poorer neighborhoods such as the South Bronx, Harlem, parts of Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, abandoned their buildings because they could not afford the property taxes or the upkeep of the actual structures. Many of these abandoned building were burned by arson in order to receive insurance money, others stood derelict and became havens for drug abuse and crime. The city’s department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) seized ownership of many buildings that were in tax default but, it too, could not afford to maintain them.
The rampant real estate abandonment in New York during this time hit low income housing hardest. Entire blocks such as East Eighth Street on the Lower East Side stood empty and burned out. During the 1970s, many people who were caught up as victims of the housing crisis began to question the reasoning behind over crowding in substandard housing and the lack of availability of affordable, adequate housing. It didn’t make sense that there should be empty buildings standing unused while they were living in poor conditions or were un-housed completely (the term “homeless� didn’t exist until the Regan era). The logical solution to these people was taking over and rehabilitating these buildings and make them their homes. The process of rehabilitating abandoned buildings in an urban environment is often called urban homesteading or squatting.

The community based self help and direct action that was initiated in response to the housing crisis of the 1970s marked the beginning of the contemporary squatter movement in New York City. In those years the movement was composed of many local groups. Harlem Fight Back, The Young Lords (a Puerto Rican Liberation organization that started Operation Move-In around 1971) and ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) were active throughout the city. Inner City Press/Community on the Move operated (and still does) primarily in the South Bronx. Pueblo Nuevo is one of the largest creators of low income housing on the Lower East Side, but their buildings are not turned over to tenant co-operatives. The squatting movement on the Lower East Side is composed of smaller groups of individuals that join together to restore a buildings and make them autonomous collectives, opposed to being organized by an outside group. The process that is employed by these groups will be discussed in a forth-coming article for Urban Dialog.
Squatters use the legal tenet of adverse possession, rooted in common law, to claim a legal right to their buildings. The basics of adverse possession state that a person who openly and notoriously occupies and improves upon a piece of property for a set amount of time (usually 10 years) is entitled to ownership of that property.
After years of illegal occupations during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the city responded to the squatter movement with the Urban Homesteading program in the late 1970s. The inception of this program was an attempt, by the city, to control the rapidly growing movement. The program was discontinued in the early 1980s after having received over five thousand applications. In total, the city only granted title to twelve urban homesteads. A number of buildings were also transferred to tenant ownership through the Tenant Interim Lease Program, this program only applied to buildings that remained occupied through the landlord abandonment process, but the number of such cases were also nominal.

The squat movement transformed in the mid 1980s, as Frank Morales, a squatter advocate and organizer who lived in squats in Harlem, the Bronx and the Lower East Side explains:

In the LES in mid-eighties people from Brixton, Berlin, South Africa, Australia & Central America all came together in New York and started talking about squatting and there were 3 or 4 small groups that started taking buildings here in the LES. We all kind of got together and started, by ‘85, ‘86. At that point you could say there was alot of ideology among the groups, it was a real big part of what people were doing, there was alot of activity, people were coming through from all over the world, so you got a sense that this was a world wide movement.

Morales estimates that by the late 1980s, only a third of the squatters in the nearly 20 squats on the Lower East Side were politically oriented. The majority of the squat population was taking action out of the necessity for affordable housing, including many of those that were politically active.
During the 1980s, as real estate values began to rise, squatters all over the city began to come under more scrutiny from HPD who owned most of the buildings that were being squatted and hoped to sell them off to developers. HPD and the city took a strong anti-squat stance. Valerie Bradley of HPD states, “The city’s policy on squatting is that it’s illegal, and that it’s also unsafe, and that it’s also unfair.� It really wasn’t until the mid 1980s and early 1990s that HPD and the city started to evict squatters.
Since the that time, squatters on the Lower East Side have suffered constant harassment by the city. One of the most well established squatting communities was on East 13th St. The three buildings that had been occupied for over ten years were evicted in a military style police action that cost the city nearly $5 Million dollars. This well publicized eviction and subsequent legal action taken by the squatters received significant media coverage overshadowing a similar and more brutal eviction of a working-class homestead in the Cratonna Park section of the Bronx that left [40?] families homeless. Before the 13th Street eviction, approximately 20 young squatters were evicted from Glass House, a squatted abandoned glass factory on 10th Street and Avenue D. Many of these squatters moved into the squat that used to be known as Fifth Street.
Fifth Street Squat was on 5th Street between Avenues A and B until February 11th, 1997. The building was demolished in a police action ordered by the Mayors Office of Emergency Management (OEM). The building suffered a minor fire the day before which caused its evacuation. The squatters were never allowed back in to retrieve their belongings and the demolition was ordered before any official investigation of the suspicious fire was conducted. The demolition continued in violation of EPA regulations, two court orders and endangering the life of one squatter who had made his way back into the building in an attempt to stop its destruction. The squatters have brought a number of civil charges against the city and are attempting to press criminal charges.
Despite the harsh political climate, the squatting movement is going strong on the Lower East Side. On the same day that Fifth Street was demolished ABC No Rio, an artists’ collective on Rivington Street that is home to many community activities including Food Not Bombs settled a deal with HPD that will grant the collective the property if they can meet certain requirements. Morales said that there were squatters in the process of opening at least four new building in the area. It seems that as long as there are abandoned buildings and a demand for affordable housing, people will make the effort to squat.

Luc Sante, “New York’s Attack on Itself.� The New York Times, 6/4/95 (Sec 4, p. 15)
Frank Morales, personal interview 1 December 1996
Frank Morales & Anon Squatter, personal interviews
This process has been treated by Frank Morales “The ABCs of Squatting�, and Van kleunen
“Adverse possession is the open and hostile possession of land under claim of title to the exclusion of the true owner, which if continued for the statutory period, ripens into actual title.� (“Adverse Possession� 2 NY Jur 2d SS2.) For a more thorough discussion of adverse possession see next months issue of Urban Dialog.
Morales, personal interview