From : http://slug.squat.net
Ladies and gents,
After 6 months of renovation work we are proud to invite you all for the opening. The work is not over yet and a lot is only starting. Come by to hear what are our plans with the place, have a drink, re-unite, listen to some music and in general have fun. We start from 17:00.
Yet again, the law has served the interests of corporate business: The High Court issued an order of possession for Eileen House. It might result in bailiffs turning up anytime from today afternoon: we’ll have a legal update then.
But we insist: at a time when welfare and benefits are cut by the government, thousands of properties stand empty, and community and public spaces are sold off for private profit, squatting is more than legitimate!
We are gutted to bring the extremely sad news that media reports suggest that homeless man Daniel Gauntlett is the first known person to die because of the new squatting law brought in last September which criminalised squatting in residential properties.
There may be more people who have been affected in this way but he is the only person we know of for sure. He passed away last Saturday. The news comes exactly 6 months after the introduction of the new law.
An eviction of a significant number of homeless people at a downtown encampment in Fresno was expected to take place on February 14th. According to residents of the homeless encampment, located near Monterey and E street, they were told by the owner of the property they are living on that they had until that day to “move on.” The owner of the lot was accompanied by several officers from the Fresno Police Department and a truck & crew from the Fire Department. One homeless man said that the owner of the property threatened to bulldoze the vacant lot and destroy everything. The landlord said to “get the fuck out of here.”
Edinburgh City Council recently ruled that millionaire businessman Mark Fortune be removed from the city’s licensing register as unfit to operate as a landlord. It is the first time that the council has refused a landlord application. It is now illegal for this individual to let out properties and charge rents. The story is covered in full here: http://www.scotsman.com/edinburgh-evening-news/latest-news/landlord-banned-for-threatening-to-shoot-tenants-1-2778349
A new squat near the post office resisted attempts to evict occupants several times today (Feb. 20th 2013 – s!n). The squat is owned by the city, in the morning a city worker attempted enter the building, but was unable to unlock the door. Later in the day a second attempt was made by a locksmith, accompanied by a Police Nationale, but again they were not able to get in.
The following text is about our squat in the 2nd district of Vienna called „Pizzeria Anarchia“ which is now in danger of eviction. The owners of the house are Nery Alaev and Avner Motaev, who are hiding behind their „Castella GmBH“. They offered us to move into the house for six months in November 2011 with the hidden agenda that we will kick out the old tenants. The bottom line is, that we stayed, and are now fighting together with the old tenants (which are now in fact comrades of us) against the landlords.
Wednesday March 6th 2013, at 14:02, the Slangenpand (the “Snake House”) is precisely squatted for 30 years (March 6th 1983). During this time, a group of motivated and involved inhabitants has been building, living, creating, partying, protesting, breeding and much more.
March 6th 2013, it is also exactly one year that we opened the ground floor as “De Slang”. In one year, De Slang hosted (foto) exhibitions, theater, film screenings and concerts. We often hear “Amsterdam needs an open and accessible art space like De Slang”.
2013 is probably the year in which it will be clear whether the house is evicted and turned into free market living space, or if it can continue as a creative incubator. 2013 is the Year of the Snake, is it a good sign? In any case, we’ll make every effort to keep the Slangenpand. [Read More]
‘Property guardianship’ or ‘anti-squatting’ is a phenomenon which started in the Netherlands in the 1990s and has now spread to five other European countries, including the UK. Property guardians are essentially unofficial security guards, who pay to inhabit a building as their home, under the tenure of ‘license’.
Crucially, this is not a tenancy, and has none of the corresponding automatic rights of security of tenure. ‘Guardians’ usually pay £15-100 a week to do this, depending on the company involved, and the area they are in – the cost is always below market rent.
A two-day event in solidarity with all squats, self-organized projects and self-managed structures of counter-information (targeted by repression ever since the first police raid on Villa Amalias squat on the 20th of December 2012) was called for the 15th and the 16th of February 2013 in the Athens Polytechnic School, in Exarchia.
Torino: evictions/sfratti defeated last January
In December 2012, a zine was released on the subject of the struggle against the sfratti in Torino.
Lutte contre les sfratti à Turin (English translation in the works).
At large, this booklet was a compilation of texts, consisting as much subjective stories (allowing to understand the practices put at play) than more theorical reflexions on the perspectives of this ongoing struggle.
