With the growing concern around the foreclosure crisis and the emergence of the Take Back the Land movement and the Occupy Our Homes initiative, public discourse around the right to land in the United States has been considerably amplified in the past two years.Nine-tenths of the Law aims to chronicle the recent history of squatting and land reclamation in the United States, with an eye toward illuminating the murky legal framework that surrounds a citizen's right to shelter.Dobbz's book is not a guide to squatting, but neither is it an indictment of those who do. Rather, squatting emerges as one tactic in a larger toolbox for defending and reclaiming the right to shelter.Though this is Dobbz's first book, she has already toured the country extensively to promote her documentary Shelter (2008), which chronicled the squatting movement in the California East Bay, and provided the early impetus for the development of this book.Nine-tenths of the Law also examines contemporary squats across the country, particularly ones seeking to gain legal title by way of often archaic laws left over from the 19th century. Dobbz gives give historical context to the laws in which today's squatting practices are rooted.
Оглавление
Hannah Dobbz. Nine-tenths of the Law
Praise for Nine-Tenths of the Law
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Timeline of Significant Property-Related Developments in the United States Since European Settlement (as discussed in this book)
Introduction
Chapter One: And Then There Were None: Indigenous Land Struggles and the Problem of Ownership
Chapter Two: "Scattering the Seeds of Discord, Misery, and Insurrection with Both Hands": Land Distribution and Resistance in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Chapter Three: Junkspace and Its Discontents: A Modern History of Urban Housing
Chapter Four: The Rendering Scarce: Squatters in the Foreclosure Age
Chapter Five: Surreal Estate: Adverse Possession and Other Tales of Squatter's "Rights"
Chapter Six: Outrunning the White Elephant:[a] A Thoughtful Approach to Homeownership
Chapter Seven: Equitable Living without Equity: Housing Cooperatives and Land Trusts
Chapter Eight: The Stories of Spaces: Urban Planning and the Wonder of Used Places
Conclusion
Appendix A: Property Research
Appendix B: Property Laws for Defending an Occupation
Appendix C: Organizing for Occupation's Tips 4 Squatting
Appendix D: Glossary
Appendix E: Adverse Possession Code, State by State
Notes
Index
Copyright
Отрывок из книги
“Considering how many people all over the world have been involved in squatting vacant properties, it is amazing to me that there are so few good books on the subject. Hannah Dobbz’s book is a welcome addition. She deals with a wide range of approaches from the Native American Seizure of Alcatraz Island, to New York Squatters and Homesteaders of the 1980s, to the housing actions led by Occupy Wall Street today. She does not simply advocate but asks important philosophical questions about these tendencies. With America’s foreclosure crisis generating a landscape full of empty houses, one can see the rise of an even bigger squatters movement on the horizon. To those engaged in such activity, and those considering it, this book will be a valuable resource.”—Seth Tobocman, author of Understanding the Crash and Disaster and Resistance
“Millions of foreclosed homes and abandoned buildings on one hand; millions of Americans desperate for decent shelter on the other. Hannah Dobbz makes the necessary addition of resources and needs in a brilliant history of squatting in the USA.”—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums
.....
It took a few months, but Occupy movements in other cities began to have similar realizations. After all, what could be a more fitting response to a housing crisis than the direct reclamation of housing? In this way it was important for each city to examine and analyze the regional conditions that created the inequities they were battling. While occupying Wall Street was (momentarily) an effective tactic in New York City, the same protest rang hollow upstate. This is similar to the way that a European-style social center is more appropriate and viable in Madrid than it is in Memphis: Squatting itself is a tactic, and as with any tactic, we must consciously choose it as a result of our cultural and legal environment. That said, squatting—despite the dedication of this entire book to the subject—is not always a solution.[b]
In these pages, I discuss many ways that squatting has been used as a tactic throughout the history of the United States. By framing it strictly as a tactic, I tend to steer away from instances of squatting as an ends, though they certainly do exist. While there could be as many types of squatting as there are squatters, I define it here as occupying an otherwise abandoned structure without exchanging money or engaging in a formal permissive agreement. I then focus on ways of seeking title to such squatted properties. Additionally, I cite numerous instances of property resistance that cannot categorically be described as squatting; squatting is only one type of property resistance within a broader pool of tactics in the global struggle for equity. This book is about how property outlaws have demonstrated and continue to demonstrate such resistance in the American context. I specify American for two reasons: (1) Squatting is a different animal in Europe, just as it’s a different animal in India, just as it’s a different animal in Brazil. Because squatting happens in other ways and for other reasons in such places, they are mostly incomparable to squatting in the United States without extensive research and severely elaborate analyses that are beyond the scope of this book. (2) Europe is already famous for squatting, while American efforts have been largely ignored.
