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Squatters are scum

For a homeowner, the idea of returning to your house to discover that squatters have taken up residence is the stuff of nightmares. But, for many struggling to pay the rent, walking past perfectly habitable houses left empty and boarded up year after year is galling – squatting might look like a sensible option. An estimated billion people around the world are squatters; living in someone else’s building or land without permission. A huge majority of this number live in the shanty towns and favellas of the developing world, but tens of thousands can be found in the West (even though it is illegal in most countries). The Netherlands, which once had permissive laws on squatting, has recently outlawed it – anyone who now attempts to move into a building they don’t own risks a jail sentence. England and Wales now have the most permissive squatting laws in Europe.

Some consider this to be a legal loophole that squatters use to flout the rules of property as conventionally understood, allowing them to live at the expense of hardworking property owners while dragging down neighbourhoods. But others argue that it goes against our instinctive conceptions of justice to allow anything to go to waste when others need it, so as long as buildings are genuinely empty, and squatters do no harm by living in them, they should be allowed to get on with it. On this reasoning, squatters deserve more protection than the law currently gives them.