That's possible. I admit I haven't been keeping up, and my knowledge of squatting stems mostly from the 1990s, when I was a student.
I still think it's a very pragmatic way to fight real estate speculation. But my impression is that Amsterdam doesn't have a big problem with buildings sitting empty, so if squatting is illegal again, I guess they've found a different way to prevent it? I have no idea what that is, though.
Not wrong and not 30 years but 9 years out of date.
I still think its noteworthy, that Amsterdam had such a rule for a long time until very recently. It shows that there are precedents for how to deal with empty buildings.
I think its noteworthy, but in the opposite manner. Amsterdam tried such a rule and then got rid of it. What do the Dutch know about the costs of this rule that isn't in this conversation?
Well, this is not always how it works: many factors can lead to a reverse of legislation, such as stonger lobbying, backfire from a government held together by strong opposite ideas, or simply the measure might have solved the problem and a different rule might have been adopted (btw, assuming you are from the US, I think the idea of undoing medicare is a good example).
I have lived in the NL just when the change in squatting legislation was happening (2009-2015). My impression was that more and more parties that were ideologically against it got popular and this changed the agenda of policymakers, given also the pressure estate investors that were hunting for a treasure. But existing squats were definitely well integrated with the cities I lived in (Utrecht, Amsterdam), sign that this law somehow became part of the city identity.
It was mostly the right-wing parties (CDA and VVD) that wanted to ban squatting. No idea why they didn't succeed in banning it during the 1980s. From what I read about the history, I can't find anything about a law that explicitly allowed it; it seems it was simply the high court that didn't consider it breaking and entering when it was in a building that wasn't being used, presumably considered a building unused when it hadn't been in use for a year, and anyone living in a house for some time got the same legal protection as a legal tenant.
Conservative parties considered this a loophole in the law, progressive parties probably thought this worked quite well to prevent housing speculation.
But it appears it may have originated from a legal accident rather than explicit legislation. Still, during the 1990s it was explicit policy at least in Amsterdam to tolerate squatting within these conditions.
> But it appears it may have originated from a legal accident rather than explicit legislation.
See, this is something I never fully understood: people told me the same, but I mean, when somebody is allowed to go to the gemeente (town hall, kind of) and say "hello, I want to register as a legal resident of this address, I don't have a contract or anything and in fact I am squatting the building. Can I?" and the answer is "ok", I consider this somehow "explicit legislation", at least in practice, no?
There's a difference between legislation and policy. Legislation means there's a law saying so, policy means it's what the executive branch of the government does.
Though I'm sure there are big fuzzy areas between the two.
It wasnt a cost benefit analysis. It was a moral opposition to the idea of squatting after a rise of the far right into parliament and reporting that put squatters in the corner of left wing terrorists.
We can learn that certain people oppose the idea of squatters on a moral level. I dont think thats a surprising new finding.
Thats as helpful for a general discussion as a communist calling private property theft or a libertarian calling taxes theft.
We currently have rules in quite a few countries that allow nationalisation as well as expropriation under certain conditions. Not using your plot of land could get you expropriated in the Netherlands, just as you can get expropriated if the government wants to build something important enough on your plot of land. You know, like a border wall. You might get some compensation, you might not. Depends on the country and the laws of that region as well as the circumstances.
I still think it's a very pragmatic way to fight real estate speculation. But my impression is that Amsterdam doesn't have a big problem with buildings sitting empty, so if squatting is illegal again, I guess they've found a different way to prevent it? I have no idea what that is, though.