Reflection & Data:
This last week, I examined academic literature concerning squatting and alternative uses of vacant buildings in Detroit, Michigan. In comparing such scholarship to studies on New York City, I remained stunned by the extent to which squatting projects evade any singular theoretical framework, constituting diverse initiatives of ‘makeshift urbanism’ depending entirely upon the local context. For example, while aptly applying to gentrified neighborhoods in Manhattan, the concept of a ‘right to the city’ fails to adequately describe occupying phenomena in spaces of urban decline. Furthermore, prior to assessing cases in Detroit, I naïvely imagined squatting as a project that wholly embodied post-neoliberal resistance to private property rights, never predicting how residents could, for instance, adopt vacant structures to ‘protect’ their neighborhoods against certain populations of occupiers. Accordingly, instead of focusing mainly upon ‘rights,’ I now plan to analyze ‘governance’ – which undeniably includes discussions of civil guarantees, yet also more broadly encompasses relationships/obligations between municipalities and residents, as well as amongst community members. Nevertheless, such shift in scope still perceives squatting as a movement that contests neoliberal processes of disinvestment (which exacerbate not only gentrification but also urban decline) and analytical bifurcations between deprivation- and politically-based objectives. In the next few days, I will begin exploring tent encampments in west coast cities, particularly Seattle, Washington.
Below, I summarize two examples of informal occupation in Detroit:
Despite the immense affluence of its suburban surroundings, Detroit represents the quintessential city in urban decline, a victim of prolonged deindustrialization, market restructuring, racialized disinvestment, and neoliberal austerity measures (Kinder 2014; Herbert 2018). Exemplifying such trends, the 2008 recession elevated the municipality’s financial distress to unprecedent heights and, in 2013, Detroit became the largest US city to file bankruptcy (Kinder 2014). Throughout decades of decay, Detroit’s population has declined dramatically, from nearly 1.9 million in 1950 to an estimated 677,116 in May 2016, resulting in over 75,000 vacant units scattered unevenly across the city. Property values have plummeted a staggering 78.76% since 1958 (adjusted for inflation), yet nearly one-half of renters in Detroit report feeling rent-burdened, paying an average 38% of monthly income to lease (Herbert 2018). Given this proliferation of abandoned buildings, an under-resourced municipality that fails to enforce property laws, and the need for affordable shelter, illegal occupation has achieved a notable degree of informal legitimacy in Detroit. Estimates indicate, for example, that 60 of the approximately 200 houses demolished each week in Detroit hold occupiers, not even accounting for spaces slated for future redevelopment, as well as those owned privately or by other governmental agencies (Herbert 2018).
Claire Herbert (2018) thus asserts that Detroit “presents very different sociospatial conditions” that elude scholarship focused upon “cities with growing populations and an inadequate supply of affordable housing” (799). Challenging “right to the city frameworks,” occupation here, according to Herbert, indeed constitutes “survival squatting,” both lacking political organization and intended to fulfill urgent shelter needs (800). In this context, mothers with children or solo adult males typically squat single-family occupancy homes, quite distinct from the more communal occupation of entire flats or apartment buildings in New York. Accordingly, squatting principally serves as a favorable alternative to doubling-up with relatives, overcrowded shelters, and street living, providing advantages of a residential address and personal privacy. Nevertheless, as in most contexts, occupiers in Detroit still confront unsuitable living conditions, often residing in houses without functioning utilities, basic appliances, or structural stability. Moreover, while the municipality hardly enforces code violations, squatters continue to experience criminalization. Most notably, Detroit ratified a law in 2014 that grants owners and police more power to remove occupants from a property (whereas before authorities needed to present evidence of trespass or vandalism), through removing belongings or changing locks. Nevertheless, despite now constituting a misdemeanor and felony for first and second offenses, respectively, squatters rarely report negative interactions with law enforcement (Herbert 2018).
However, informal occupation in Detroit does not solely materialize in such forms of deprivation-based squatting. In the southwest region, residents instead intervene and reappropriate abandoned spaces “not to liberate them from privatized, capitalist dictates but rather to keep formerly private venues from slipping closer into the public realm of potentially seize-able space” (Kinder 2014:1771). Kimberly Kinder (2014) notes that such “guerrilla-style” occupation represents a tactic of “self-provisioned security strategy” beneath neoliberal disinvestment (1767). In Detroit, many foreclosed buildings or abandoned private lots remain entirely unmanaged by the city, falling victim to drug dealing, scrapping, and even arson – issues that often spread to nearby homes. Without a promise of municipal intervention, let alone market revival, many residents have responded “to keep their block safe and governable” by controlling access to such residual spaces. For instance, local community groups encourage “masking” vacant status by circulating fliers that urged residents to collect mail, mow grass, pull weeds and put potted plants on porches. Neighbors sometimes even display signs (i.e. ‘No Dumping’, ‘You’re On Camera’, or ‘This House is Being Watched’) to deter “criminal occupation.” Furthermore, residents might “adopt” vacant houses, enlivening the spaces with human bodies, or instead physically fortify units against potential occupancy, boarding up doors and windows. In extreme cases, neighbors employ a strategy of “sabotage,” damaging or even setting fire to spaces to encourage citations against owners and thus demolition (Kinder 2014:1774-78).
While the elected strategy depends upon the “condition and history of the house in question,” each tactic serves to exclude certain populations (those involved in drug dealing, scrapping, and arson) and thus reinforce notions of private property. Identifying lawful owners or tenants as “the only people who could legitimately make use of such empty spaces,” most residents adopt these “guerrilla-style tactics” not to create “provisionally public spaces but rather to reprivatize formerly private spaces that other people were treating as publicly claimable” (Kinder 2014:1782). Although functioning as “an organic, grassroots response to government contraction,” these initiatives “undeniably reverberate with neoliberal ideologies of private urban governance,” especially as larger philanthropic entities have started funneling resources towards these practices instead of to other structural issues (Kinder 2014:1781-82). As such, the municipality’s general ambivalence towards informal occupation and appropriation of vacant buildings partly facilitates continued retrenchment of affordable housing and racialized disinvestment.
Bibliography:
Herbert, Claire W. 2018. “Squatting for Survival: Precarious Housing in a Declining U.S. City.” Housing Policy Debate 28(5):1-17. Retrieved February 28, 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2018.1461120).
Kinder, Kimberly. 2014. “Guerrilla-style Defensive Architecture in Detroit: A Self-provisioned Security Strategy in a Neoliberal Space of Disinvestment.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38(5):1767-84. Retrieved February 28, 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12158).
Lopez’s Comments:
Brandon, this is turning out to be incredibly interesting and relevant project. I had not thought about it, but I do think that you’re onto something here. The right to the city approach really does look at people displaced through the process of gentrification. Unfortunately, this approach does not take in account the rightlessness people who live in nonnormative housing situations, such as squatter settlements. For this reason, it makes complete sense that you take a governance and not a rights approach to examining squatter politics. I’m not sure if you came up with this term, but I do really like this idea of makeshift urbanism. I cannot wait to see your final project!