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by cracell 1635 days ago
What sort of legislative changes would you like to see to address this?
2 comments

An actual proposal would be Georgism:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-is-...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-par...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-par...

A quick summary from wikipedia of Georgism:

> Georgism (known historically as the single tax movement) is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land – including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations – should belong equally to all members of society.

Here rent and land are given precise definitions.

Personally I found the blogs above a very interesting read (or listening).

also available in podcast form

https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/your-book-review-progress-and-...

https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/does-georgism-work-is-land-rea...

https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/does-georgism-work-part-2-can-...

https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/does-georgism-work-part-3-can-...

Depends on the local context. Here in France the legislation is already very clear that the right to housing is just as important as the right to private property, and there's legal provisions for "requisition" of empty dwellings. If you reside in a place that was one someone else's home (domicile) for more than 48h hours, it's supposedly your home and you can only be evicted by court order. The problem is the armed psychopaths (cops) will often evict you illegally, and judges will prioritize private property over human life.

There's many legal approaches to the problem: fine landlords huge amounts when they have unused space (or when they don't have enough people per square meters, such as when they employ "anti-squat" security agencies), requisition without compensation all empty dwellings in order to house everyone (with public money paying for repairs if needed), forcing by law landlords to lease their empty dwellings for a reasonable price... Or simply decriminalize squatting uninhabited dwellings: if the police stops hunting down people looking for a house in order to jail them, there will be considerably less homeless people from one month to the next.

It takes quite a lot of resources (security doors, guards, alarms, police) in order to ensure people stay homeless. The problem is by framing housing as a "crisis" (which is an invention, as the statistics show), we're shooting tons of money at not fixing the problem: homeless shelters are famously unsafe and indecent, and don't even get me started on government subsidies for hotel owners (via the 115 programs) to make business out of misery while providing terrible living conditions. In this case, i believe "less is more".

In this case there was moratorium. By my fair understanding is that at first point when rent was late, the process should have been able to be started. And then the moment the moratorium ended it should be absolutely possible to throw out the property thieves. After all they have had very very very long time to find alternate housing.
The only property thieves are the people who claim to be owners of a place they don't reside in.
So you would be entirely happy for someone else to take over your house when you are on holiday?
That's not what squatting is about, and that's not what i meant (you're building a strawman argument). I was arguing that "property" is an imaginary construct and cannot be "stolen", except in the sense that some person will evict you from your residence due to Nation-State-enforced belief in this piece of paper.

Of course personal possessions can and should be protected and there are in fact regulations (even in places where squatting is legal) protecting your residence against burglary or people coming to live in your place. This is a well-defined problem that has nothing to do with private property as we anarchists understand it.

Private property is precisely the institutional system that gives power to someone else over your home. We anarchists believe the land belongs to those who inhabit/work it and no higher superstitional paper (property title) is valid.