Self Help Housing: An Historical Overview of Squatting In New York City

In recent months New York City’s Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has cracked down, or tried to eradicate many of the institutions that are quintessentially “New York�. For example he has launched campaigns against jay-walking and bad driving as well as pushed to tighten regulations on Yellow Cab Drivers and enacting measures to ban street vending and other forms of expression. All of these measures followed his first term blitz-krieg efforts to evict squatters, create a slave labor work-fare force and deny city workers fare pay raises. The process of rehabilitating abandoned buildings in an urban environment is often called urban homesteading or squatting.

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 and the land was graded to make room for new development often by the squatters themselves. When there was no more open land for the homesteaders and squatters to use, 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 Manhattan packing plant in 1932 and made it their home. There were many such instances where unemployed people looked towards alternative methods of housing procurement after being evicted from their apartments. Abandoned buildings were often occupied and refurbished as temporary and even quasi-permanent housing.

A fiscal crisis hit New York City in the 1970s, landlords, particularly in the poorer neighborhoods such as the South Bronx, Harlem, parts of Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, abandoned their buildings because of shrinking profits in the face of higher property taxes and maintenance costs. Many of these abandoned buildings were burned by arsonists--often drug addicts paid by the building’s owner--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 City 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. In some neighborhoods more buildings were abandoned or burned than those that remained. During the 1970s, many people caught up as victims of the housing crisis began questioning the reasons behind over crowding in substandard housing and the lack of available, affordable, adequate housing. It seemed counter-intuitive that there were empty buildings standing unused while countless people were forced to live doubled or tripled up in poor conditions or were un-housed completely. The logical solution to many of these un-housed people was to take over and rehabilitating abandoned buildings and make them their homes.
It is interesting that the term “homeless� did not exist until the Reagan era when the housing crisis was framed in such a way as to blame the victims, the evicted, for their situation. By calling evicted people homeless, the media and politicians separated them as a class from the rest of the housed citizenry. The classification also made it much more difficult for people to recover from their situation. Once being labeled as “homeless� society looked at them very differently.

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 squatting movement in New York City. In those years the movement was composed of many local activist groups. Some larger, organized groups such as 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. On the Lower East Side, Pueblo Nuevo has been responsible for creating a substantial amount of low income housing. Unlike the other groups mentioned and many of the autonomous squatter collectives, Pueblo Nuevo’s projects did not result in tenant owned housing. For the most part, the squatting movement on the Lower East Side is composed of smaller autonomous groups of individuals that join together to rehabilitate individual buildings resulting in autonomous housing collectives.

Lower East Side squatter collectives often started with one or two people who chose a building to occupy. Their choice was usually motivated by factors such as building condition, neighbors, and ownership. Prospective squatters preferred buildings with intact roofs and stairwells for obvious reasons. Buildings that did not directly neighbor legitimately occupied ones were also more attractive because neighbors might notify the police or housing authority if there were people living in an abandoned building next door. City owned and tax-foreclosed buildings are also better because the City as rightful owner, was less likely than a private owner to take back a newly rehabilitated building from the squatters.

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Adverse Possession is a 19th century legal principal that, while recognized in U.S. common law, is no where codified in New York State, or city law. Squatters use the legal tenet of adverse possession, to claim a legal right to their buildings. The basic idea of adverse possession is 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. During the first thirty days of occupation, squatters are legally considered trespassers and can be evicted at anytime, without cause. After that period, they gain what are known as squatters’ rights, or tenants’ rights. They must be presented with a court ordered eviction notice.
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The time line of establishing a squat usually starts with approximately a month of surreptitious occupation. During this period squatters are likely to enter and exit through a back or side door. They send mail to themselves at the address to document their occupation. After a month or more, a front door is put on and the phase of open and notorious occupation begins. The squatters begin to make major renovations to the building, replacing doors and windows, patching roofs, and fixing stairs. They may connect water and sewer lines, even electricity. Many squats turn neighboring abandoned lots or back yards into community gardens to show their commitment to the community.
The living conditions in squats varies tremendously. At early stages there is usually no heat or water, let alone hot water. Often there is no electricity. Walls, ceilings and floors can be found in varying states of disrepair. The condition of individual apartments depends upon the commitment of the individual squatter. Common areas such as lobbies, stairs and hallways are usually renovated by all the squatters together. The New York Times ran an article about the posh decor in three squats on East Thirteenth Street. The larger organizations like ACORN and those mentioned above rehabilitate buildings up to the city’s building code, while many of the squats on the Lower East Side are reconstructed with materials scavenged from construction sites. Even with limited resources, many squats rival some low income housing in terms of quality.

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 program offered buildings to individuals and groups of people willing to rehabilitate them for a nominal price. Under the program, the homesteaders were often given tax abatements and other forms of financial assistance. The inception of this program was an attempt, by the city, to control the rapidly growing squatter movement. In just a few short years, the City received over five thousand applications for the program and it was discontinued in the early 1980s. In total, the city only granted building titles to twelve groups of urban homesteaders. The reason for termination of the program can only be imagined, but it was most likely because the city was uneasy about giving away thousands of buildings as the real estate market was beginning to bounce back in the economic boom of the 1980s.
A number of buildings were also transferred to tenant ownership through the Tenant Interim Lease Program. This program only applied to buildings in which tenants’ occupation continued through the landlord’s abandonment process. For example a landlord stopped paying taxes and the city foreclosed on the building before any tenants left. Very few buildings have been transferred through this program, however the program still exists and occasionally buildings still go through this process and become tenant-cooperatives.

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 three or four 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 twenty 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.
This transformation was probably sparked by the age of the movement. People had been squatting buildings since the early 1970s and began to assert that it was their right. The City seemed to recognize that right with the Urban Homesteading Program, but then took it away without explanation and without any other solution to the housing crisis. The City’s neglect of the housing problem, combined with the international support that Morales talked about helped to galvanize the movement. Foreign activists were attracted to the Lower East Side because of its activist history. It had always been the entry way for immigrants and had taken on an anti-establishment culture during the 1960s.
As real estate values began to rise in the 1980s, squatters all over the city began to come under more scrutiny from HPD who owned most of the squatted buildings. This pressure was particularly strong on the Lower East Side where many developers hoped to cash in on the gentrification movement that started to push east of Avenue A by the late 1980s. 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 was not until the mid 1980s and early 1990s that HPD and the city started to evict squatters.
Since then, 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 Street. The five buildings that had been occupied for over ten years were evicted in a military style police action in the pre-dawn hours of May 31st, 1995 that cost the city nearly $5 Million dollars. This well-publicized eviction and the subsequent legal action taken by the squatters received significant media coverage overshadowing a similar and more brutal eviction in the Bronx. A working-class homestead in the Crotona Park section of the Bronx was demolished in another early morning military style police action that left forty unsuspecting immigrant families homeless. The homesteaders had hoped to negotiate with HPD and had prepared a breakfast in front of the building they had renovated to code. Police arrived in riot gear followed by wrecking balls and bulldozers. By that night, their building and all their possessions were destroyed.
It is easy to generate anti squatter sentiment towards a bunch of artists, musicians and anarchists such as those living on the Thirteenth Street. That is what the City did, created an “us� (those who pay rent) and a “them� (those who do not want to pay rent). The City took the stance that all squatters are people who do not want to pay rent, never recognizing squatters as individuals who cannot afford to pay rent. It would be difficult to say that forty working class immigrant families were squatting because they did not want to pay rent, much more difficult than assigning that motivation to sixty some-odd artists and “bohemians� living in the East Village. So the city focused on the eviction of Thirteenth Street and so did the media, and the Crotona Park homestead was viewed as par of the same package.
Before the Thirteenth Street eviction, approximately twenty young squatters were evicted from Glass House, a squatted abandoned glass factory on East Tenth Street and Avenue D. Many of these squatters moved into the squat known as Fifth Street. The Fifth Street Squat was on East Fifth 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 had 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, and two court orders to stay the demolition. The action also endanger the life of one squatter who had made his way back into the building in an attempt to stop its destruction and save some of the pet animals that had not been evacuated. Ultimately, five neighborhood residents were hospitalized for respiratory problems caused by dust from the demolition. The squatters have brought a number of civil charges against the city and attempted to press criminal charges of attempted murder and theft.
Before the destruction of the Fifth Street Squat, the collective that lived in the building had been a driving force in cleaning up the block. They were instrumental in creating the Fifth Street Block Association. The squatters got the drug dealers and users off the block and created a garden and community center that hosted many community events. The building had recently been transferred to the control of Asian Americans For Equality (AAFE) a non-profit developer. AFFE had received a $600 thousand grant to renovate the building for low income housing, but tried to back out when they realized that there were people living there. Since the demolition of the building and an abandoned one next door, the lots have remained empty and have become strewn with trash.
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. They must raise money for its renovation and the people who live there must move. The entire building is to be used for community and art activities. Additionally, 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.

End Notes
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
“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