Meet the Folks Secretly Squatting in Australia’s Homes | SBS The Feed

By now, you've probably heardthat we're in a housing crisis. Housing crisis. Housing affordability has hit a three decade low,showing no signs of slow. And prices are rising fasterthan they have in years. So when it feels like rents are out of control, some people are decidingthat they don't want to be in the rental marketaltogether.

You can just take direct actionmove into an empty house. I really don't think it's upto the individual to to claim it. We know that people don't squatand live well. I don't think it's legitimateas a societal response. We're on our way to meet a guywho has been living alone in his housefor about six months now. But he doesn't ownthe place. He's not renting. He's squatting.

He doesn't want usto use his real name. So todaywe're going to call him Percy. Hi. Hey. I believe that there would be a point that I would own property,and the market just kept getting worse and worse. Then I realised thatmaybe there was another way, and I just went for it.

Percy isliving in one of the wealthiest areas in all of Brisbane. It's a very upmarket area. Like I'msort of a bit out of place. A few years ago, Percy was a paying renterin the same house, but when he movedinto another rental and found this placesitting there empty,he decided to move back in.

I've always triedto live in places with the cheapestrent possible, but it's just harder and harder. It sounds sort of silly, I just wanted to havethe space, that sort of freedom that Iwouldn't otherwise be afforded, like renting or share housing. He didn't want to do the interview in the housebecause he was afraid.

Of being overheard. But he did agree to let uslook inside. We got bedrooms here. This one iskind of like the guest room. There's like water damageyou can see in here. So there was a bunch of mould upthere. The floor undulatesa little bit. There's some holes. That's a fun one there.

You gotta love thatin summer. I try not to loudlysay like that, I'm squatting. Sometimes you can get all up in your head, you know. But he still feelsjustified in his actions. We have such an inequitablesociety. People should just takethe power back. I hold those values andthat helps me like, justify it. In Australia,it may not be illegal.

For a squatterto enter a building if it looks abandonedand if the doors are unlocked. If they're asked to leaveand don't, that is trespass. And if the door isn't unlocked. You could be upfor like break and enter. And how did you gain access?Were the doors unlocked? Yeah,the back door was unlocked. So do youhave electricity in this place? Basically, I just have a billthat's in my name.

I was probably more concernedabout water because that's not a billthat I can get in my name. Percy had heard from squattersbefore him that connecting the water ishow he'd be caught. Instead, you'll see there'slike this barrel behind you. So I fill it upas much as I need and then just divvy water out from therearound the house. I just throwsome water in here. A bit of soap. Bob’s your uncle.

And even though Percy is livingcomfortably here, the toilet situationis a bit of an adjustment. So this is a paint bucket, milk crates toget some height over the top. So I just squat over the top and then just throwsome sawdust, kind of just cover itlike a litter tray, like a giant human cat. I have questions. Do youmake your guests do this?.

The option is availableto them. There's no real definitionof what counts as an empty property. But up to 136,000 homes couldbe vacant across Australia. And while some people think that they're making betteruse of the vacant homes by squatting in them,this comes with warnings. It sets our expectations low and saysthat people are homeless.

The best they can haveabandoned buildings. Because we know that squattingis not actually safe. And we know that people who don't have housingare not just at risk of expedited death. We don't only know thathomelessness makes people sick, but it underminespeople's capacity to participate in societyas a citizen. It can also be a health risk.

To squatters who end up in abandoned housesthat are sometimes left empty because they're unfitto live in. Sometimes property ownersfind that their place has been completely trashedby squatters, and it can be a nightmarefor owners who sometimes have to dealwith property damage and the task of kicking themout.

Leave me alone I've got things to do because I'm getting kicked out. Okay. Emma came home lateone night after being away and found a mansquatting in her house. We just heard this mighty scream, this piercingscream of my sister, and she ran out saying,‘There's a man, there's a man.’ My sister was crying.I started crying. We all just started crying.

Emma's dad was the oneto kick him out that night, but she later worked outthat he'd been staying there on and off for months. Every time she went away. He knew our routine. It just really didactually affect me for, you know,quite a time afterwards. We got security camerasand we got rid of the bushes in the front.

And just made the whole placequite, like, much more open. Yeah, it was innate fearof just coming home at times. I always would make surethat I'd leave lights on. And when ownersdon't come home for years, they might actually find that they don'town the place anymore. In 1998, a property developer in Sydneywalked into this house when he found outthe elderly owner had died.

He changed the locks, renovatedand actually put renters in this place for 20 years. So essentiallythey were squatting for him. After a couple of years in court,he won the title to this house and then he sold it two yearslater for $1.4 million. This is calledadverse possession and in most Australian states you can try and make a claimafter 12 years of squatting.

But the law is tricky becauseuntil you can make that claim, you can still be chargedwith trespass. Anyone considering squattingis taking a real legal risk and should gettheir own advice. But that didn't stop Andy, who squatted in Sydney,Brisbane and Melbourne for over three years. So this is a publicationthat me and some friends at distributedmany, many copies of.

Andy has lost count ofhow many squats he's stayed in, but some that he set uphave lasted for over a decade. These days, Andy is living inhis friend's backyard in this shedthat he's building. Part of the theoryis that there shouldn't be private propertythat people can hoard. If you have enoughfor yourself, then morally you should be offering that to other people.And even though.

He's been kicked outmore than a few times. I never had any chargesrelated to squatting. There is a possibilityof being fined, but generally if the finesa few hundred dollars, like I mean, you come out ahead compared to how much rentyou would have been paying. There was also always a list of backup placeswhen owners would return to take their valuable assetback.

You’d need to crash at a friend'splace for a few days while you sort of got sorted totry to move into another one. So, you’re getting left here. And while Andy is done with squatting, his abilityto find an empty house is still very much there. I would intentionally ridea different route, a slightly different route each day going the same place,just so you are covering more streets.

Yeah. So how did you find this place?I've trained myself over the yearsto notice certain things. Long grass,the gates off its hinges and there just isn't any stuff, any sign of, kind of, humansliving here. Often there'd be more junkmail piled up. Which does suggestsomebody is keeping at least a cursory eye on this place.

Or maybe someone's alreadysquatting? Yeah, well,I don't see any signs of that, but that that does happensometimes you think, ‘Oh, yes, I've found this empty place. Amazing.’ And you get inand you find somebody else is already there. How common is that? I wouldn'tsay it's that common, but it has happened to mea couple of times.

At a government level, there have been some attemptsto reduce the number of propertiessitting there empty. In parts of Melbourne there is a tax for vacantresidential properties. The idea is to encourage owners to put these empty propertiesback into the rental market. But Cameron saysfixating on the empty houses is just a distraction.

I don't hold great hope that we can solve homelessnessor the housing crisis by merely interveninginto the empty houses. We can only do that by demonstrablyincreasing the supply of social and affordablehousing in society. And he says people are focusing too much on the havesand have nots when there are even bigger questions.

We don't need to pit peoplewithout housing up against property owners. Some governments over time often will try and increase the supply of social housingin certain neighbourhoods and many residents, many communitygroups will reject it. We have the income inAustralia. We need to choose differently. We can't just blamethe politicians. This is us.

In the meantime, Percy isn't too worriedabout being moved along and instead he'ssettling in for a long haul. I felt like if I was creeping aroundand not living comfortably in a placelike what is the point? But I wanted somewherethat, sort of, was mine and could be home.

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