In no sense did I mean to say "I was virtuous" -Only that it was aimed at solving my problem (and others) at the expense of a body, not a person. You may differ, but many feel crimes against corporates are distinct from crimes against individuals, virtue aside. I don't think corporate personhood is an unalloyed "good"
What's the point of growing up? It seems boring (Peter Pan, probably)
This was almost 40 years ago. Are you the same edgy person you were 40 years ago? I am pretty sure I am not.
Thanks for giving a different viewpoint.
You can argue that the right to have a home prevails over the right to let a property sit empty and rot away. This is the case in the Netherlands, where squatting rights are very limited these days, but where its still necessary to go to court for an eviction where the property owner needs to prove they have plans for the property and want to act on them soon.
There is also a law in Amsterdam that requires that all housing that sits empty for more than 6 months is reported to the city. The city then forces the property owner to make it liveable again and rent it out.
Both examples show that property rights are not absolute in certain parts of the world.
Most squatted property in the time I was doing it, was owned by large organisations and left empty for a mixture of reasons, despite the severe housing shortage. Nobody I knew was looking to dispossess individual home owners, absentee or not. We broke into housing owned by corporates which was unavailable for ordinary use, had been cut off from power, we got power reconnected and we lived there briefly, until the law courts evicted us. Some friends uplifted their squat into social housing inside the system. Other people did it as a political act, There have been long standing socialised squats in Amsterdam, in Copenhagen. And yes, drug dealing and prostitution is a problem in illegal housing. Also in legal housing.
But I can't pretend there aren't issues in squatting.
It is surprising sometimes (at least to some people) how quickly "taking the law into your own hands" can become a crime. The whole "stand your ground" thing is really complex because "I acted in self defence" can very quickly turn out to have gone to another place.