St Agnes Place was a squatted street in Kennington, south London, which resisted eviction orders for more than 30 years. When a number of derelict houses were scheduled for demolition to extend Kennington Park in 1969, squatters occupied the properties and a High Court injunction prevented the demolition. The street was run by a housing cooperative until 2005, when Lambeth London Borough Council obtained an eviction order. Demolition was completed in 2007.
On 1 June 1969, house number 54 was the first to be squatted. The council had acquired the unit and planned to demolish it for the extension to Kennington Park. The derelict buildings were completely rebuilt by the squatters. An attempt to evict it in 1977 was successfully resisted. An emergency High Court injunction, obtained by solicitors in Lambeth Law Centre, ordered the demolition to stop.[ citation needed ] The resulting furore and publicity on a national scale prevented further demolition and led to the Conservative leader of the council stepping down. [1]
A block of buildings were demolished either side of the road, and some were badly damaged and scaffolded. But a large central block on both sides of the road were completely untouched, and were in occupation on the day of the attempted demolition, and thereafter. Some damaged ones were renovated again by the residents, and made habitable i.e. one was re-roofed, and several were re-wired and had basic services restored.[ citation needed ]
The residents of St Agnes paid utility bills and for several years were run by a housing cooperative with diverse occupancy. In November 2005, Lambeth London Borough Council finally obtained a High Court of Justice order to evict the residents of 21 properties. This mass eviction was completed on 30 November 2005. [2]
According to a resident in 2005: "It's evolved into a unique community in London. You can walk in and out of people's houses here. It's a safe street. There's no mugging here. I think there is a lot of things society as a whole could learn from the way we live here." [3]
There were several community projects at St Agnes Place:
Lambeth Council obtained a possession order in 2003 and the squatters failed in their attempt to gain adverse possession. [4] Some squatters were threatened with 30 years of Council Tax, with the Council claiming it had lost over £4million in unpaid rent and taxes. [2]
There were a few dates given to the squatters in the summer of 2003 for them to leave when bailiffs would be arriving. Many of the residents moved out and a number of protesters associated with anti-capitalist, environmentalist and travellers movements moved in. Barricades were built and the bailiffs came and left making no attempt to evict anyone. [9]
Nothing more happened regarding the eviction until Autumn 2005 when firstly, the council obtained a demolition order for the street. Secondly, a new court order was issued by the council: The possession orders obtained in 2003 were still valid but the warrants to execute the court order had expired. This new court case was to firstly issue fresh warrants and secondly to have the execution of these warrants handled by the High Court rather than the County Court. This meant that they could use riot police instead of a handful of bailiffs.
A massive eviction happened on Tuesday 30 November 2005 by two hundred bailiffs and police wearing riot gear. [10] There was not much resistance and most people just wanted to avoid any confrontation but wanted to be thrown out rather than leave as a matter of principle. The street was swept and tidied by residents prior to the arrival of the police and banners put up criticising the council, particularly Liberal Democrat councillor Keith Fitchett who described the residents as "parasites". [11]
The Rastafari temple, one of the squats on the far end of the street, remained in place for another year and a half. It was separated by a large gap from the other houses in the street. The council expressed the intention of coming to some sort of agreement with the occupiers. On 12 April 2007 police raided the temple because it was allegedly being used to sell cannabis and crack cocaine. The police claimed the managers had told them about the drug dealing and gangsters because the temple had been overrun. [12] [13] After the raid, three people were charged with possession with the intent to supply a Class C drug. [14] [15] Nobody was charged with possession of crack cocaine, and cannabis has religious significance for Rastafari. Lambeth Council stated their intention of helping the temple elders find new premises to rent.
By July 2007 the site was demolished. [16] On 5 April 2008, the trial collapsed and all defendants were found not guilty. [17]
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Work on demolishing the houses in the street began immediately after the eviction - 10-foot-high (3.0 m) fencing and 24-hour security made sure the houses were not resquatted before they got the chance to demolish.[ citation needed ] Demolition was completed in 2007. [16]
In 2010 Lambeth Council and two housing associations, London and Quadrant and Family Mosaic, put forward planning proposals for the land to be used for housing, 50% of which would be social/affordable housing, together with a re-sited adventure playground and One O'Clock Club. [18]
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there were one billion slum residents and squatters globally. Squatting occurs worldwide and tends to occur when people who are poor and homeless find empty buildings or land to occupy for housing. It has a long history, broken down by country below.
Kennington is a district in south London, England. It is mainly within the London Borough of Lambeth, running along the boundary with the London Borough of Southwark, a boundary which can be discerned from the early medieval period between the Lambeth and St George's parishes of those boroughs respectively. It is located 1.4 miles (2.3 km) south of Charing Cross in Inner London and is identified as a local centre in the London Plan. It was a royal manor in the parish of St Mary, Lambeth in the county of Surrey and was the administrative centre of the parish from 1853. Proximity to central London was key to the development of the area as a residential suburb and it was incorporated into the metropolitan area of London in 1855.
De Blauwe Aanslag was a squat and self-managed social centre in the Dutch city of The Hague. The oldest part of the building was built in 1886. The large building formerly housed tax offices and was occupied in 1980. When the local council took over the ownership of the building, it was agreed to renovate it in three stages, with the squatters living there. However the plans changed and since 1995 the council decided to widen the roads next to the building; for this reason the squat needed to be demolished. After many efforts to block the demolition with lawsuits, the squatters were evicted by military police on 3 October, 2003.
Kennington Park is a public park in Kennington, south London and lies between Kennington Park Road and St. Agnes Place. It was opened in 1854 on the site of what had been Kennington Common, where the Chartists gathered for their biggest "monster rally" on 10 April 1848. Soon after this demonstration the common was enclosed and, sponsored by the royal family, made into a public park.
Villa Amalia is the name of the building that hosted the former Second High School of Athens in Greece. It is located on the corner of Acharnon and Heiden streets, near Victoria metro station. It was an anarchist squat before its eviction in 2012. It reopened as a school in 2016.
London Street Commune was a hippy movement formed during the 1960s. It aimed to highlight concerns about rising levels of homelessness and to house the hundreds of hippies sleeping in parks and derelict buildings in central London.
Jack Tafari was a sometimes homeless Rastafari activist who advocated for himself and other homeless people, in the US and the UK. He was best known for promoting "sanctioned tent cities" as transitional housing for homeless people, including himself, in Portland, Oregon, United States.
The Advisory Service for Squatters (A.S.S.) is a non-profit group based in London and run by volunteers. It aims to provide practical advice and legal support for squatters. It was founded in 1975, having grown out of the Family Squatters Advisory Service. After being based for many years in St. Paul's Road in Islington, A.S.S. moved its offices to Whitechapel High Street, in the same building as Freedom Press.
The Frances Street Squats were a set of six squatted houses, including one women-only building, that existed between February and November 1990 in Vancouver, Canada. They were occupied by SAVE and took a stand against development which was generally supported by local people. The Vancouver Police Department evicted the buildings.
Squatting in England and Wales usually refers to a person who is not the owner, taking possession of land or an empty house. People squat for a variety of reasons which include needing a home, protest, poverty, and recreation. Many squats are residential, some are also opened as social centres. Land may be occupied by New Age travellers or treesitters.
Squatting in the United States is the unauthorized use of real estate. Historically, squatting occurred during the California Gold Rush and when colonial European settlers established land rights. There was squatting during the Great Depression in Hoovervilles and also during World War II. Shanty towns returned to the US after the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 and in the 2010s, there have been increasing numbers of people squatting foreclosed homes using fraudulent documents. In some cases, a squatter may be able to obtain ownership of property through adverse possession.
Argyle Street was a Victorian terraced street in Norwich, Norfolk. It became a squat lasting from 1979 to 1985. The street was then demolished in 1986. Some of the newbuild houses were subsequently demolished in 2015.
Squat Milada is a First Republic villa located in the Libeň district of Prague. Milada was intended to be demolished in the 1980s and thus deleted from the cadastre, becoming a house which officially did not exist. It became one of the Czech Republic's best known squats, occupied from 1997 until 2009. It was then reoccupied for a day in 2012. Acting as a self-managed social centre and infoshop hosting concerts and events, Milada was also home to a number of people. Despite various plans for the site, as of 2019, the building was standing derelict.
The 2016 Bendigo Street housing dispute concerned a series of occupations of houses in Collingwood, Melbourne, Australia. The properties were owned by the Victorian Government which had made aborted plans to construct the East West Link road. The houses, mostly on Bendigo Street, became the centre of a lengthy dispute between the government, Victoria Police and the Homeless Persons Union.
Umbrella House is a former squat and a Housing Development Fund Corporation in New York City's East Village, at 21-23 Avenue C. The squat, formed in 1988, was known for its political engagement and high level of collective organization among its members. In 2010, the building officially became a housing cooperative.
Grow Heathrow is a land squat and community garden in Sipson, west London. It was occupied in 2010 by local people concerned about the possibility of the expansion of Heathrow Airport. It is part of the Transition Network. Half of the site was evicted in 2019.
Squatting in Australia usually refers to a person who is not the owner, taking possession of land or an empty house. In 19th century Australian history, a squatter was a settler who occupied a large tract of Aboriginal land in order to graze livestock. At first this was done illegally, later under licence from the Crown.
Squatting in the Republic of Ireland is the occupation of unused land or derelict buildings without the permission of the owner. In the 1960s, the Dublin Housing Action Committee highlighted the housing crisis by squatting buildings. From the 1990s onwards there have been occasional political squats such as Grangegorman.
Squatting in the Netherlands is the occupation of unused or derelict buildings or land without the permission of the owner. The modern squatters movement began in the 1960s in the Netherlands. By the 1980s, it had become a powerful anarchist social movement which regularly came into conflict with the state, particularly in Amsterdam with the Vondelstraat and coronation riots.
Oval Mansions are eight separate blocks of tenement housing in Kennington, south London. The blocks stand between the Oval cricket ground and the Oval Gasholders. After being occupied by one hundred squatters from 1983 until 2000, the buildings were sold off by Lambeth Council in the early 2000s.
Coordinates: 51°28′54″N0°06′28″W / 51.4818°N 0.1078°W
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