'Why are they making it a crime to be homeless?'

[Tony Gosling]

Looks like some of the often dispiriting work 
with local Daily MAil owned press could be paying off?

'Why are they making it a crime to be homeless?'
Monday, May 07, 2012 = This is Bristol - 4 minutes ago
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/making-crime-homeless/story-16012804-detail/story.html
FROM outside, the squat looks every bit as 
imposing and sinister as you might expect – with 
frowning makeshift metal shutters, and a graffiti-covered front door.
But from the moment I step inside the building – 
a former warehouse in Stokes Croft – it becomes 
clear that the inhabitants are friendly enough.
Emacs!

Irina in the Emporium community space Picture: Dan Regan

One young woman even tells me her name is Peace. 
"No," she insists when I smile. "My name really is Peace."
Inside the squat, known affectionately as "The 
Emporium" an old Persian rug attempts to hide the 
harsh cold concrete floor. There is a sofa 
against one wall, and a chintzy lamp adds a touch 
of fragile homeliness to a corner.
Roger Cole, 54, has been squatting since he was 
19 "on and off" – he now "runs" the Emporium 
squat as well as helping in the so-called "Free 
Shop" – the squat next door that's run by the 
bohemian group as a secondhand shop where no money changes hands.
Roger sits on a stool beside the door, carefully 
smoking a stub-end cigarette – more of a world-weary sage than a bouncer.
As the oldest member of this ad-hoc community, 
existing on the very fringes of society, he sees 
himself as a protector – a fatherly figure.
"Most of the squatters are very young," he tells 
me, concern knotting his brow. "They need someone watching over them."
It's a concern that is not felt by the majority 
of Bristolians. Squatters have long been seen as 
the ultimate free-loaders – ne'er-do-wells using 
a loophole in the law to torment the unfortunate 
property owners whose buildings they occupy 
indefinitely under the wearily defiant mantra of "squatters' rights".
But a change in the law – which many would say 
was long overdue – is about to shift the emphasis 
away from the rights of the squatters back 
towards the rights of the property owners.
This week the new legislation, contained in the 
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, received royal assent.
Ministers are keen to bring the squatting ban 
into force within just two months, meaning 
squatters could soon face fines of up to £5,000 
and in extreme cases could be jailed for up to six months.
Roger, the sensitive paternal squatter of Stokes 
Croft, is feeling bitter about the introduction of the new law.
"All it's going to do is to make criminals out of 
people that are just needy," he says. "What kind 
of a civilisation is that? What kind of a country are we living in?
"Essentially, you're criminalising homelessness. 
You're criminalising poverty. Let me tell you, 
the majority of these people don't live in these 
conditions out of choice. They squat because 
otherwise they would be sleeping out on the 
streets, while they're surrounded by empty buildings.
"This place, for example, has been empty for the 
best part of 30 years. Before we started 
squatting here a couple of years ago, it was just 
an empty space – a void in the street, abandoned 
by the property's owners who couldn't care less 
about leaving big blank holes in the middle of communities.
"Why shouldn't we be able to make use of these 
buildings? We've got half-a-dozen people living 
here in a building with no running water, no 
toilet, no heating. It's hardly comfortable. 
They're just sheltering from the elements."
It's not always so basic. Earlier this year, in a 
high profile case, a gang of squatters were 
evicted from the Grade Two-listed Clifton Wood 
House, once Bristol's most expensive property.
They had trashed the place.
The occupiers have now dispersed to less 
luxurious squats across the city. But the days 
"in the mansion" are remembered fondly among the itinerants.
Irina – a 26-year-old Lithuanian who arrived in 
the country in January moved straight into the £4 
million property, complete with swimming pool and wine cellar.
Today she is sleeping at the King's Arms – a 
former pub in Kingsdown, taken over by squatters 
before developers were able to convert the building into student flats.
"I'm living in this place with its leaking roof, 
among all the mould and the mice," she tells me gloomily.
"It's not like being in the mansion. It was good being in the mansion."
Like all the squatters I meet in the city, Irina 
clearly believes wholeheartedly in her moral 
justification for occupying other people's properties.
Willowy and fragile, her nervous, wide brown eyes 
peer out of her sallow, malnourished face, as she 
wraps a charity blanket around her meagre frame. 
She hitch-hiked across Europe, intent on finding 
work in Britain – enchanted by childhood memories 
of a now distant holiday to Brighton in better 
times for her family. But since arriving in 
Bristol she says she has only found insecurity.
"I came here knowing I would need to squat while 
I was looking for work, because I literally have 
no money. Nothing at all," she says.
"At first, when I was in the mansion, it seemed 
okay this way of life. But now, it is not okay. 
It is horrible, and I am frightened. A squat is 
not a secure place to live. You never know who 
will be in there with you. It's hard to feel 
secure about the few items I do own. It's 
difficult to feel secure about my own personal safety.
"But it beats sleeping rough on the streets. The 
first night after we were thrown out of the 
mansion, I spent the night sleeping in a park. I 
was cold and wet and terrified of what might happen to me."
By day Irina works at the "Free Shop" – it's an 
unpaid job of course, but it allows her to feel 
"useful" – it helps her to integrate into the community of squatters.
"My dream is to get a real job and to start 
building my life," she says, before adding 
ominously, "I would do anything to earn some money. Anything at all."
Most of the squatters in Bristol seem to be 
"travelling through" – or once were, but have 
somehow settled in the haphazard squatting 
community in the city. But not all of them have travelled as far as Irina.
Forty-year-old Peter Jones left his home in 
Cornwall, after his landlord ended the tenancy on 
his small flat, in order to convert it into a holiday-let apartment.
"I could have stayed down there," he admits. "But 
there is very little work in Cornwall these days. 
If you're not a holidaymaker, it can feel a bit 
like the Third World. What work there is tends to 
be seasonal – jobs connected with tourism or with 
agriculture. There's no security in it."
Peter decided to travel "up-country" in the hope 
of finding employment, but only got as far as 
Bristol. For the past two years he has been living in a squat in St Paul's.
"I've never met anyone who squatted as a 
lifestyle choice," he says. "It's purely a 
necessity. We're homeless people in a city that 
has fewer and fewer hostel spaces.
"We face a lot of criticism about squatting. But 
you have to ask yourself whether faced with the 
choice of sleeping rough on the streets, or 
entering a disused building to find shelter, which one you would choose.
"Squatters are despised by the property owners, 
of course, and we're abused by the media and by 
politicians, but actually the normal man on the 
street tends to be either sympathetic or tends to completely ignore us.
"There have only been a few occasions when I've 
been attacked verbally in the street because I'm 
a squatter, and one or two times when I've been 
physically attacked – when property owners have 
tried to take the law into their own hands."
Peter grins nervously – showing a missing tooth as he smiles.
"To be honest, I can sympathise with them getting 
angry. Of course they don't want us occupying 
their property. But things aren't always black 
and white. Sometimes you have to think in terms of the lesser of two evils.
"To criminalise squatting is going to infringe on 
our basic human rights – the European Convention 
on Human Rights does recognise a basic right to a 
place to live; a roof over your head.
"If you put us in prison, ironically enough, 
you'll solve the problem – but you'll have to pay 
a lot more for putting a roof over our heads and food on our plates." 
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Fear not therefore: for there is nothing covered that shall not be 
revealed; and nothing hid that shall not be made known. What I tell 
you in darkness, that speak ye in the light and what ye hear in the 
ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. Matthew 10:26-27

Die Pride and Envie; Flesh, take the poor's advice.
Covetousnesse be gon: Come, Truth and Love arise.
Patience take the Crown; throw Anger out of dores:
Cast out Hypocrisie and Lust, which follows whores:
Then England sit in rest; Thy sorrows will have end;
Thy Sons will live in peace, and each will be a friend.
http://tinyurl.com/6ct7zh6 
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