This is the third Racoon article about squats. A quick history of the tent city and Pope squat in the 2002 "summer of squats" in Toronto has been given. The improbability of any significant amount of low income housing being created by squats in Toronto has been .

What is really needed is to convince the city and the federal government to try different approaches to co-operative types of low income housing. There will be Racoon articles about such approaches.

But the experiences of the people who actually lived in Pope squat and tent city will be useful when former street people are finally allowed to set up and run their own housing with support. Some study of the experiences of residents of irregular housing world-wide is also useful.

The mother of all squats, Christiania, Copenhagen, has had a long history of problems with illegal drugs. Soon after its founding forty years ago, the decision was made that users and sellers of hard drugs had to leave.

However, Christiania became a centre for the quasi-legal cannabis industry throughout northern Europe. It was a major source of income but also of constant tension with the Copenhagen police.

Finally, in 2005 there was a fatal shooting involving cannabis traffic and the members voted to close down the 'pusher street' cannabis products market. This has not stopped the tension with Copenhagen authorities, who never give up trying to 'regularise' Christiania's status.

Christiania's people are generally lifestyle squatters. Avoiding 'regularisation' by the state is important to them. But housing for formerly homeless and sub standardly housed people must be regularised, or it will create tragedy.

Most marginalised people do not need more tragedy and trauma in their lives. This is illustrated by a sad incident in New York City. Somebody snapped dramatically after the squat he was in was broken by the police.

He had led a difficult life and the squat finally gave him somewhere to belong. He became its most enthusiastic and hard working member. He was busily mixing cement for repair work when the police came through the door to close the squat. He ran to the roof if the building and threw himself off.

So far as is known, nobody killed themselves when Pope squat ended. One resident later said he had been sleeping under a bridge the day before he came into the Pope squat and slept under the same bridge the night the squat was busted.

He and a few others were able to retrieve most of their possessions when the squat was briefly retaken a few days later. Some of them had even acquired colour televisions.

It is said that former Pope squat residents had an especially hard time getting into social housing. This may be because it was known as an OCAP (Ontario Coalition Against Poverty) project.

Tent city alumni may have had an easier time getting into the housing system. TDRC ( Toronto Disaster Relief Committee, a group of self appointed housing activists), which had 'adopted' tent city, pushed to get them in. TDRC is more popular within certain political circles than is OCAP.

But TDRC also bears some responsibility for tent city failing. They unreasonably attacked Home Depot, which owned the land under tent city, and were decent about it, giving the city a lot of time to find an alternative site for it.

Tent city worked when it was a small group. When one hundred people were camped there, with no system of governance, it got nasty. It attracted people who wanted someplace where there were no rules.

There were rapes in there. Someone was badly burned when his hut was set on fire in a personal feud. Drug dealers set up shop. A few gawkers who wandered into the encampment were severely beaten.

The best of the Pope squatters came in from tent city. They were angered by the disorder there and determined that Pope squat would be different. They announced that anyone engaging in antisocial behaviour such as stealing tools would be "boot fucked until they walked sideways."

The "posse" drove the drug dealers out of the squat, but their zealousness soon provoked a reaction against them. They were convinced to "loosen up". With a reasonable personal safety assured, community became possible in the squat.

There was a crisis when two residents quarrelled and one shot the other in the leg, causing no serious injury. The gun and the ammunition were completely hand made. The shooter and shootee promptly made up. The latter undertook to give the former, a 'psychiatric survivor,' some 'space'.

But then one of the residents came home from work and learned of this. Who knows what she was expecting when she called in the cops.

What she got was the SWAT team storming the squat with automatic weapons, scaring the hell out of everyone. The target holed up in his room with his hand-made marvel. The cops smashed holes through the freshly laid drywall to point their firepower at him. He was removed to the Queen street mental health facility.

It was agreed that people with addiction problems could remain in the squat as long as they bought their drugs somewhere else. Yet there were concerns about needles being left around. It was planned to install a hospital type sharps-a-gator, a receptacle for sharp objects, in the bathrooms. As with many things, the squat ended before it could be done.

Despite grumblings by the revolutionary faction in OCAP, that "we are not going to baby sit these people" some OCAP people decided to be social workers. They began helping the residents to apply for welfare and disability pensions, so they could have an income with which to contribute to the operation of the building. In other words, rent.

The 'baby sitters' organised a communal kitchen. They urged the residents to do more of the work of fixing and maintaining the squat.

Saturdays became "work days." This caused contention because some people had to go to jobs on Saturday.

Also, many of the squatters had serious physical limitations. They often lacked basic skills. Finally, many repair and maintenance jobs required specialised knowledge or training, otherwise personal injury and damage to the building could result.

At some point housing is going to start being created for people who have known only life in jails, shelters, the streets, flop houses, and "social housing." As much thought must be given to how these places will work as communities and places where people can build themselves up, as in their design and financing.

They will require more support than the OCAP 'social work' faction was able to provide. But they are going to react badly to authoritarianism, supervision, or arbitrary rules. Most of them have had enough of that.

But residents of such housing must accept responsibility for their actions or leave. They must respect the housing providers who committed time and resources to creating a space for them to live in.

They must acknowledge that they are living in a neighbourhood. The Pope squat tried to organise a "meet the neighbours" party. Sadly, that is another thing the 'revolution' faction at OCAP sabotaged.

Housing for the homeless must be created by people whose aim is to create such housing, and who know what they are doing, not to further other agendas. The last thing homeless people need are false hopes. That is the most important lesson.

June 24, 07

TR

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