Squatting

Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building (usually residential) that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. Squatting typically occurs when people find empty buildings or land to occupy for housing. In developing countries and the least developed countries, shanty towns often begin as squatted settlements. In African cities such as Lagos, much of the population lives in slums. There are pavement dwellers in India and in Hong Kong as well as rooftop slums. Informal settlements in Latin America are known by names such as villa miseria (Argentina), pueblos jóvenes (Peru) and asentamientos irregulares (Guatemala, Uruguay). In Brazil, there are favelas in the major cities and land-based movements in rural areas. In industrialized countries, there are often residential squats and also left-wing squatting movements, which can be anarchist, autonomist or socialist in nature, for example in the United States. Oppositional movements from the 1960s and 1970s created freespaces in Denmark, the Netherlands and the self-managed social centres of Italy. Each local situation determines the context: in England and Wales, there were estimated to be 50,000 squatters in the late 1970s; in Athens, Greece, there are refugee squats. In Spain and the US, the 2010s saw many new squats following the 2008 financial crisis.