2 of Europe's very historic squats face eviction threats.

international | housing | other press Saturday November 05, 2005 15:28 by iosaf

This week sees 2 of Europe's very historic squat communities step up their latest campaigns to fight eviction.

(1) St Agnes' Place in Kennington. London has been squated for 30 years, and though attempts have beenmade to evict some resident before the latest attempts by Lambeth borough to evict the community seem the most concerted yet.

(2) The Rhino squat in Geneva called a demonstration which began at 14h00 today, and sees the wider housing movement in Switzerland support the 80 residents against the Geneva's canton's attempts to evict them by 22 november they have been in continuous occupation of the site for 17 years.

There have been (I argue) four distinct waves to squating in Europe. & the most historic sites (dating bck to the first wave) have now almost all been either evicted or changed the nature of their tenury.

In this category belong certain dutch and danish sites and of course the Rivoli in Paris which eventually was gifted to its "artistic" community by the council.

There will be another wave of occupation. It is certainly interesting to note the different attitude now to squating in London, with an estimated 10,000 hanging on in there, compared to an estimated 250,000 10 years ago. But the cities which probably be squatted succesfuly are to the east.
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BBC coverage of St Agnes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4407772.stm
St Agnes' website seems to be unreliable at the moment, and has changed since the last eviction threat of 2003 (c/f http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/279250.html )so I won't link to it.
other media coverage from now:-
http://www.blink.org.uk/pdescription.asp?key=9870&grp=21&cat=94

English language coverage of Rhino
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=107&sid=6211788&cKey=1131035721000
home site
http://rhino.la/