[kaskakokos]

Living in Spain, I have friends from both ends of the spectrum: those speculating with houses and those who cannot afford to buy one.

We can blame the okupas, calling them lazy if that suits you. But we are missing half the story if we don't consider the other end of the spectrum: people buying property purely for speculative investment. For example, consider the housing crisis in Majorca [1].

Since we have enough money to buy a house, it's easy to blame the okupas. However, you should ask yourself: How much would housing prices need to increase before I can no longer afford a home? What would I do with my kids in that situation?

Justice should be defended with a veil of ignorance about your personal situation. It's easy to talk about what is fair regarding housing if you own two or three properties. Talk to people, and you will understand how lucky you may have been.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/mallorca-property-boom-stirs-sellout-f...

[chipdart]

> We can blame the okupas, calling them lazy if that suits you. But (...)

I think you are completely missing one of the main origins of okupas in Spain: organized crime involved in extortion schemes.

I personally witnessed a case where individuals took over a store lot previously occupied by a restaurant. As the story goes, the restaurant operator tried to negotiate lowering rent to no success, followed by spending many months not paying rent until they were evicted. As yet another retaliation tactic, the restaurant operator managed to find a kind of service where he arranged for a lawyer team supporting a group of indigents to take over the store space, report it as their home address, and declare squatter's rights. The indigents were day in day out involved in disturbs, all sorts of vandalism, assaulting passer-bys and patrons in neighboring stores, etc. Nasty bunch, they were even caught on film shitting in a sandbox of a kids playground nearby for absolutely no reason. The police came in every single time, but every single time their lawyers were a moment's away. It took a couple of years of due process and multiple court cases exhausting with the lawyer team exploiting all possible legal recourses until the okupas were kicked out. The landlord had to hire a round-the-clock security because the exact same indigents, once kicked out, repeatedly tried to invade the same space.

[zxspectrum1982]

Housing is expensive because: 1. Progressive governments making incredibly difficult and expensive to build houses, apartments, etc. - E. g. I'm trying to build a house since SEVEN YEARS ago. Do you know what's the financial cost of having the land sitting there for 7 years? Who do you think is going to pay for that? Not me: it will be whoever buys that house. - E. g. the 2023 Housing Law making mandatory to offer 40% of the housing a lower prices. Since construction costs are fixed and very well-known by now, who do you think is going to subsidize that 40%? Correct: the other 60%.

2. Rental prices are up, and will be even higher, because landlords have no protection against quatters and default tenants. I have suffered the problem myself: I put out for rent the apartment were I used to live until a few years ago and the tenants only paid for the first month. Then it took me 18 months to kick them out. That apartment will not for rent until the law changes. There's MILLIONS of apartments in Spain like that. Protecting the landlords (eg kicking squatters and defaulters in 2 weeks instead of 2 years) would make one million apartments available immediately, bringing prices down.

[solids]

Maybe the housing crisis is related to the lack of legal security that owners have, which severely reduced the offer and obviously increased the prices.

The housing law that the current government passed wasn’t very clever…

[kerkeslager]

Wait so lack of legal security reduced supply... by what mechanism? How do you think this works?

[petre]

Your apartment is being squatted and you're selling it at a discount, not being prepared to navigate the legal landscape. The buyers evict the squatters, fix it up and list it at a higher than market price. They do this as a commercial enterprise.

[HDThoreaun]

Why would you build new housing when someone can waltz in and change the locks and youre shit out of luck?

[kerkeslager]

That logic also applies to demand. Why would you buy a house if someone can waltz in and...

It's very much not in evidence that this is affecting supply more than demand.

[RestlessMind]

> That logic also applies to demand. Why would you buy a house if someone can waltz in and...

The clear answer is you'd buy one if you know how to handle squatters. In other words, you are well connected and have enough capital to take preventive measures described in the article.

In other words, rich can get richer by having lengthy security apparatus to protect their property. Middle class investors, who might want to buy an extra house to have a stream of income from rents gets that ladder pulled away from them.

One might believe that renting itself should not exist and making money from housing is immoral. If so, let's pull that ladder away from everyone including the rich (though that won't end well since not everyone can be a homeowner).

[kerkeslager]

> Why would you build new housing when someone can waltz in and change the locks and youre shit out of luck?

The clear answer is you'd build one when you know how to handle squatters.

> If so, let's pull that ladder away from everyone including the rich

Yes!

> not everyone can be a homeowner

Why?

[HDThoreaun]

You wouldnt, which is why no one is building houses. People still need somewhere to live though.

[zxspectrum1982]

Pal, you don't understand how the market, or even real life, works.

[kerkeslager]

Given as of 2020 the US had 580,000 homeless, the market does not work.

[misja111]

You were downvoted but you're hitting the nail on the head.

The housing problem is an issue of supply and demand. Currently demand is bigger than supply and that leads to problems, no matter what you do. Either renting prices go up until many people can't afford to rent anymore, or if some law is put into place such as restricting rents or reducing owners' rights, supply will become even smaller and demand even bigger.

To solve the housing crisis the government has to either decrease demand or increase supply, or both.

[ghostDancer]

In Spain there are lots of empty apartments, from the bubble and IIRC are more than 2 million empty , but prices are still going up, most of the market is on the hands of foreign funds who are emptying the cities with their prices. There's a lot of speculation with housing in Spain. Not to talk about the campaign in the media about squatting, sowing fear continuously. The supply is artificially being held by the owners.

[misja111]

Then the government should make it less attractive for speculators to hold those homes, e.g. by introducing taxes for empty properties. And on the other hand they could make it more attractive for them to rent them out, e.g. by improving owner's rights.

[winterismute]

The problem imho is that a lot of people, not only "the very rich" but also some very "middle class" people/families, have access and can make use of houses as investment vehicles, but houses (aka shelter) is also a primary need for humans. If you hold share of a publicly traded company, you can hold it forever until you think somebody can accept to buy it from you at a price that you like, hoping to make a profit if such price is high enough, and nobody will suffer from this process. But with houses, there is always somebody in absolute need for it, which means that either they will accept to rent it to a price that covers extra taxes applied by the state to you (as a landlord), or they will try to squat if they can not. It's really hard to enforce the right set of disincentives that are wide enough to convince people not to "hold" but at the same time does not apply to too many people but mostly the ones that are using houses as investments.

The whole thing is complicated by being geographically unequal: for example I think even Spain is full of affordable houses, only they are not in Madrid or Barcelona or Valencia, which is where people really want to live. So if you have a second house in an unpopular town you actually have not much - thus you are not rich - and you have often an empty house (nobody wants to rent/buy it) which is an easy target for squatters, and therefore you will become "one of the poor people ruined by squatters", while othen you are somebody who accepted the narrative that using houses as investment was a good idea, both an investment house cheaply in a town that never attracted enough people, thus "lost the game" and is now also losing the house to squatters...

[tstrimple]

> The problem imho is that a lot of people, not only "the very rich" but also some very "middle class" people/families, have access and can make use of houses as investment vehicles, but houses (aka shelter) is also a primary need for humans.

As an example, we bought our house for $280k in Iowa seven years ago. It held steady for a bit, but jumped up to close to $400k shortly after Covid. YIMBY policies in my area could cost me as much as $120k of wealth that I now possess. What percentage of home owners are going to willingly give up tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in wealth to support more equitable housing? Even for a liberal, $120k is a hell of a lot of money and it's only growing year after year under our current system. With that equity continuing to grow, maybe I have some hope of retiring in the future? That's a hell of a lot to put on an individual to ask them to support more equitable housing. Other people's suffering is their only chance to not suffer constantly until they die. And when you think in terms of not just my suffering but my family suffering, it becomes a lot easier to slip into NIMBYism.

How do you decouple primary housing from investment without fucking over literally millions of homeowners who have done the best they can under the existing rules? It's something I'm personally interested in. But I also don't want to be working until the day I die. What is the compromise that satisfies the majority of people?

[petre]

> e.g. by introducing taxes for empty properties

So the speculators set up a company, buy the property and list it on AirBnB at several times the market price. Now it's not an empty property, it's a business. Business is slow so they only have to bother with guests during spikes in demend.

[tieandjeans]

To get around this, we'll establish complex municipal regulations around AirBnB, with steeply escalating punitive fines.

https://airbtics.com/airbnb-regulation-in-barcelona/

[kerkeslager]

Introducing speculator taxes and then making it more attractive to be a speculator (landlord) just means that speculators pass the speculator taxes on to renters.

Letting people get rich off holding people's basic needs for ransom is never going to be part of the solution to homelessness.

[roca]

A tax on empty properties can't be passed onto renters.

[pier25]

I'm from Mallorca but I don't own property there.

Yes the situation is bad but nothing justifies squatting. And the okupas have been an issue for decades now, way before Airbnb existed.

[Aurornis]

> We can blame the okupas, calling them lazy if that suits you. But we are missing half the story if we don't consider the other end of the spectrum:

I disagree. Two wrongs don’t make a right. You don’t have to put different people’s situations on to a spectrum and allow only one of them to be wrong and therefore anything the other person does is right.

It’s also disingenuous to pretend like all of the okupas are from desperate people who have no other choice, when there’s plenty of evidence that the okupas is being abused for extortion, crime, or just for fun.

[kjkjadksj]

If you can’t afford a home its still not justifying squatting. Just rent like everyone else in that situation the world over. At the end of the day homes aren’t priced to be impossible to afford for everyone or else they wouldn’t sell at all. You just might need a better job than the first one you can find. Afaik Spain seems to do better with producing housing to meet demand than the US or a lot of other places too.

[jjav]

> But we are missing half the story if we don't consider the other end of the spectrum

No, not really. Theft is not the answer.

Consider laws restricting how many houses a person can own, or maybe an increasing property tax on each unit. These are good solutions.

Condoning theft has no other side to the story, it's always wrong.

[petre]

> Consider laws restricting how many houses a person can own, or maybe an increasing property tax on each unit. These are good solutions.

So they set up a company and buy the property using the company. Pressure is always the answer, whichever tactics are used.

I understand the issue in Mallorca after visiting Mabella. Also the locals don't have to live on a holiday island, but they can elect pressure the speculators and their clients. Somehow this doesn't happen in Greece.

[maeil]

Until such laws are instated -if they ever are - then "theft" is very much an answer .

I'm sure smarter people than me here can come up with a good number of examples where you would agree that "condoning theft" is a good thing. Such ethical problems are never black and white.

[m000]

> Consider laws restricting how many houses a person can own, or maybe an increasing property tax on each unit. These are good solutions.

Won't somebody please think of the investors? /s

[burnished]

Theft is a violation of property laws. If you recognize that property laws are in some senses arbitrary/designed to fit a purpose (which you seem to, since you are proposing changes to them) then I think you should also recognize that treating theft as a purely black and white topic does not make sense.

Not advocating for the burglary higher up the thread, still a shit thing to do so someone

[noduerme]

Based on your definition, theft of indigenous land would be fine since there were no property laws to violate.

Yet it was not fine.

That's because theft is a violation of universal moral laws. Everyone knows it is wrong. Justifying it is an immoral barbarism.

[Teever]

How do you feel about the freedom to roam that is codified in some areas?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

The concept of property rights is a bit more fluid than you think.

[sheepdestroyer]

"La propriété, c'est le vol." Proudhon : Property is theft.

It's not quite morally universal that a right to unlimited property exists.

[burnished]

I'm curious how you read that as an endorsement for that sort of behavior?

Your 'but indigenous peoples' reeks of point scoring behavior. If you wanted to explore that topic you'd be more specific. If you were engaging in good faith you might assume that I'm generally opposed to genocide. Taking an abstract point about theft and property laws to accuse me of endorsing genocide ('immoral barbarism') is not good behavior.

[noduerme]

I didn't read it as an endorsement of theft, but defining theft as malum prohibitum, contingent on a time, place and legal system, is a flawed argument. Laws can be wrong. But the fact that a bad law or an unjust system bans theft does not make theft ok. Lots of bad laws enable theft (e.g. those enacted as post-justification for land theft), which also doesn't make it ok. No bad law can sanctify what is morally and universally wrong, and no rebellion against a bad law can sanctify it either. When we say a law is bad we mean: There is a larger moral framework in which it is unjust. Therefore the same is true in resisting bad laws: Resistance can't justify morally repugnant behavior. That was the point I was trying to make.

I didn't pick indigenous land theft to score points, but only because it's the most obvious example of some type of unregulated theft still being universally recognizable as wrong - and it's frequently brought up by many of the same people who make the case that other types of theft are in the service of justice.

[kerkeslager]

> No, not really. Theft is not the answer.

Well HN's favored solution seems to be not caring that people are homeless until they start scaring rich people, at which point you lock them up in "mental health" institutions that are less about helping them and more about keeping them away from rich people.

My solution is not letting people own homes they don't live in, but that's going to crash a lot of rich people's investments, so we can't have that. Making sure the rich get richer is apparently more important than meeting citizens' basic needs.

So frankly, theft is the best answer currently available. I'd prefer they stole from the people actually causing the problem, the rich who buy up housing and make it unaffordable. But when they don't, maybe the middle class being stolen from shouldn't be so confused about why that's happening.

Ultimately I'm not sure why you don't have the same moral outrage about rich people buying up people's basic needs and holding them for ransom so they can get richer, as you do about poor people stealing to meet their basic needs.

[jjav]

> I'd prefer they stole from the people actually causing the problem, the rich who buy up housing and make it unaffordable.

If you actually want to protest the system this is what you should do.

Go occupy the vacant summer homes of rich politicians and CEOs.

[kerkeslager]

I think people angry about squatters are thinking that squatters are squatting for political reasons, because for people angry about squatters, this is a political issue.

For squatters, this isn't primarily a political issue, it's primarily a survival issue.

Squatting in the summer house of a CEO does solve your survival need for shelter, but it leaves a bunch of your other survival needs unmet because you're far away from, for example, grocery stores, and don't have the resources that the CEO has to have staff deliver and prepare your food. So I'd guess that's why squatters aren't targeting these properties.

The narrative that squatters are being disingenuous about their political beliefs because they squat the wrong homes is really just a tool to paint squatters as disingenuous political activists. The reality is that while squatters might hold political beliefs, few people would choose to squat if they had other housing options. It's not a secure housing situation. Most squatters are squatting out of necessity not political motivations.

[jjav]

> So I'd guess that's why squatters aren't targeting these properties.

The primary reason they won't target homes of the rich or well connected is because they can afford to be in areas with private security that will make any squatting attempts a complete non-starter.

Thus squatters can only harm the middle class homeowner who can't afford such protection measures.

[thegrim33]

> The reality is that while squatters might hold political beliefs, few people would choose to squat if they had other housing options

Here in Seattle, time and time again, studies are done which show the majority of homeless, when offered shelter, turn it down and prefer to live on the streets. Which seems to completely contradict your claim that they would make use of housing options.

Maybe Seattle homeless are different than your homeless. I don't know why that'd be the case. The same people with the same political ideologies blame the cause of it on the same things, in both places, at least.

https://komonews.com/news/project-seattle/many-homeless-peop...

https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-city-council-wants-d...

https://www.seattlepi.com/homeless_in_seattle/article/A-lot-...

[MrJohz]

Interestingly, they've found the opposite effect in a number of places in Europe, which suggests that the Seattle homeless population really are quite different, or that there's something odd in how these sorts of policies are being implemented in Seattle. I suspect the latter: you're talking about temporary shelter accommodation, but the policy of Housing First is to give homeless people permanent flats and houses of their own. I can understand why people would not be interested in the former but would accept the latter.

See for example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First https://thebetter.news/housing-first-finland-homelessness/

[petre]

Maybe the shelter comes with strings attached, like no booze on the premisses. This is a nonstarter for people living on the street where they can freely drink booze.

[southerntofu]

At least here in France, the "housing" they offer is just a mattress in a huge room with no intimacy and dangerous people around. Most homeless people are skeptical at first, but after getting robbed/assaulted they certainly will refuse temporary housing for the rest of their life.

If the authorities really cared about the homeless, they would requisition empty dwellings and assign them individually so people have a proper home to rebuild their life.

[mrgoldenbrown]

Being offered one night in a shelter that won't let you and your wife sleep in the same room is not a good faith example of being offered housing. It's not at all surprising that people prefer living on the streets to sleeping in a crappy shelter.

[kerkeslager]

> > The reality is that while squatters might hold political beliefs, few people would choose to squat if they had other housing options

> Here in Seattle, time and time again, studies are done which show the majority of homeless, when offered shelter, turn it down and prefer to live on the streets. Which seems to completely contradict your claim that they would make use of housing options.

Shelters aren't homes.

Can they store their things there and reasonably expect they won't be stolen? Can they have pets? Can they have privacy?

Would you stay in a homeless shelter? I mean, come on. The fact that anyone at all says yes to staying in these places shows just how bad staying on the streets is.

[chipdart]

> Well HN's favored solution seems to be not caring that people are homeless (...)

I think you're not realizing that "homeless" and "okupas" are completely separate problems, and "okupas" in Spain are typically criminal organizations dedicated to pulling extortion schemes.

I'm talking about lawyer-types riding in BMWs which get a hold of indigents to invade a space, and proceed to demand "compensation" from property owners to "convince" said indigents to walk out.

This is not new or rare. It's a Spanish twist on the old protection rackets, and one which only exists because useful idiots convinced themselves that siding with organized crime networks is somehow benefiting society.