They take squatting seriously here, apparently. I was walking home recently, around 11PM and noticed a noisy protest going on down the street, which was hampering traffic. I turned down my street and then noticed police tape. Dammit. Right in front of my building. I crossed to the other side of the streetand asked a police officer if I could get to my apartment building. “Go around”. “No, no, I live right-” Pointing to the building “- there. Can I go home?” I got an affirmative reply, but of course I couldn’t just go now. So I asked what was going on. He said there were squatters in the apartment building across from mine. They, as far as I could discern, broke in and squatted. A female officer joined us to talk about this. I thought it funny (I HAD been drinking) that they were all about my age. Probably even younger. It just seemed bizarre to me that instead of feeling intimidated and pissed off at these guys, I almost wanted to ask them to hang out with me. I didn’t.
This morning I awoke around 7AM to banging outside. I got up and looked out the window. They were still there!! Dozens of them! I saw them climb, one by one, in a street level window. They had taken off the metal window shutters (which I saw them later trying to stamp the kinks out of… no, guys… that won’t make it better) and were crawling in. I have no idea why… had they given the baddies the entire night in which to barracade themselve sin – oh AND everyone else in their building?! Hell, if that was my building the police would have come in to find some guys in major pain if they were preventing me from getting into or out of my apartment building. Oh, I can’t even IMAGINE if I had come home to find that I couldn’t get into my building. I’d be freaking out. I have pets!
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