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Abstract
Despite severely depressed property markets, housing in declining U.S. cities can be surprisingly unaffordable for poor residents. Yet the characteristics of decline, such as abundant vacant property and constrained economic/political conditions, also provide opportunity for squatting. This article explores survival squatting—illegal occupation of property as a means for procuring suitable housing by marginalized residents. Drawing on a 4.5-year ethnography in Detroit, I examine the mechanisms by which people strategically choose squatting as a method of sheltering in the context of local conditions, and the experiences and conditions of this practice. I situate these empirical findings within a broader discussion comparing squatting and other forms of housing that have received considerable attention by researchers (e.g., shelter use, sleeping rough, doubling up). Squatting is particularly risky and unstable, and often very hidden. Substandard housing conditions prevail, and substance abuse is common. Squatting may have negative implications for child welfare, but may also provide measures of independence, self-determination, and comfort for illegal occupiers. There is a critical need for further research in this area, both to inform comprehensive housing policies and to anticipate how squatters’ well-being is impacted by other urban initiatives, such as blight demolition.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Dr. Diane Sicotte for her valuable input, and Dr. Mimi Sheller and the three reviewers for their helpful feedback on this article.
Notes
1. Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and St. Louis have lost more than half their population, and Baltimore (Maryland) and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) nearly a third. Smaller cities like Camden (New Jersey), as well as many cities outside the Northeast and Midwest such as Richmond (Virginia) and Birmingham (Alabama), have also lost significant population. A striking feature common among these cities is property vacancy and abandonment (often scattered throughout the city in uneven fashion), which provide the spatial possibility for squatting. See Hollander, Pallagst, Schwarz, and Popper (Citation2009) for more examples of declining cities and their conditions.
2. This count refers to built structures “needing intervention” that fit the definition of blight according to Michigan law (Blight Task Force, Citation2014, p. 13). This does not include all structures that are vacant.
3. Calculated using property ownership data recorded by Loveland, https://makeloveland.com/otfr/mi/wayne/detroit#b=zips.
4. Interview with Quentin, October 22, 2013.
5. Interview with Quentin, October 22, 2013.
6. Extremely low income is defined as families whose incomes do not exceed the higher of the federal poverty level or 30% of the area median income. See U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (Citation2014). This ratio is likely even lower in Detroit proper where economic conditions are worse in the city than surrounding suburbs. See MacDonald and Terry (Citation2017) for discussion of poverty rates and median incomes in the Detroit Metro region.
7. In the second round of the Wayne County Treasurer’s tax auction, bidding starts at $500.
8. Cities where squatters are mentioned in postrecession New York Times articles include Flint and Detroit, Michigan; North Lauderdale, Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; Buffalo, New York; Richmond and Oakland, California; and Chicago, Illinois.
9. This extrapolation was calculated by multiplying 4,500 occupied land bank properties by 2.65, the estimated average household size in Detroit in 2016 (U.S. Census Bureau, Citation2010).
10. Adverse possession is a legal doctrine that enables a person in possession of land to acquire legal title to it if they fulfill a number of requirements. These requirements and the duration of possession vary by state.
11. Five hundred dollars is the starting bid in the second round of the Wayne County Treasurer’s yearly tax auction.
12. The local tax law was amended in 1999 (implemented in 2002), shortening the foreclosure timeline for delinquent properties down to 3 years from a process that typically took 6–7 years (Dewar, Seymour, & Druță, Citation2014).
13. Email correspondence with Michael Shane, longtime Detroit resident and organizer with Moratorium NOW! (a coalition to stop foreclosures, evictions, and utility shutoffs in Detroit), February 21, 2010.
14. Interview with Harold, January 17, 2014.
15. Interview with Frank, July 2, 2013.
16. This aligns with other findings that the police and city authorities are little concerned about and constrained in their ability to intervene with squatters who are not engaged in other illicit activities (see Herbert, Citation2018).