From Squatters to Homeowners: Civic Engagement, Property, and Social Networks in a Time of Crisis

Author: Amy Starecheski

Dissertation School: Research Foundation of City University of New York

Abstract:

What can policymakers and scholars learn from studying the patterns of civic engagement developed by squatters? Squatters are a predominantly low-income population who typically work actively, yet outside of the labor market and most housing programs, to produce sustainable housing and contribute in little-understood ways to the strength and self-sufficiency of urban communities. Their practices of civic engagement are unusual, and thus challenge mainstream social science and urban planning paradigms. For these reasons, as the housing crisis continues and government and nonprofit agencies work to support affordable, sustainable housing and strong communities, ethnographic research into the past, present, and future of squatting is essential, yet almost nonexistent.

Since the current foreclosure crisis began in 2008, squatting has become more prevalent around the country, as foreclosed homeowners refuse to leave and social movements install homeless families in vacant, bank-owned homes. Experienced New York City squatters, a diverse group who worked to build sweat equity and recycle abandoned buildings in the 1980s and 90s, have been central to developing these new national squatting networks. In 2002, after decades of political and physical battles, New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development made a deal with the remaining organized squatters on Manhattan’s Lower East Side: eleven squatted buildings would be transferred to the residents for one dollar each. Thus more than 200 illegal squatters were perched to become owners of apartments in low-income, limited equity co-operatives. Almost 10 years later, fewer than half of the buildings have been converted. Many former squatters have become disaffected, worrying that the ballooning mortgages they took out to bring their buildings up to code now make them more vulnerable to foreclosure, and thus eviction, than did their illegal status.

My dissertation research tracks this group of pioneer squatters as they go through the process of becoming homeowners. I address two central questions: How do low-income populations such as squatters use property in innovative ways to engage with and develop their communities? What is the relationship between homeownership and civic engagement?

I will employ three complementary research methods: participant observation, network analysis, and oral history. Participant observation will provide deep knowledge of squatting, homeownership, and civic engagement. Social network analysis will show how homeownership has, or has not, affected patterns of relationships over time, and will reveal patterns of civic engagement that might otherwise remain unarticulated. Oral histories will provide access to past experiences of civic engagement and produce part of the raw data for network analysis. I hypothesize that squatters were able to make claims and engage as propertied citizens without having legal property rights, and that they engaged with their communities by working on housing, not by owning it. I also hypothesize that homeownership will strengthen some aspects of former squatters’ social networks, such as those between residents and other local homeowners, while weakening others, such as ties between formerly squatted buildings.

The proposed research will produce two outcomes: First, a longitudinal case study that resuscitates squatters’ practices of civic engagement and shows how social networks and civic engagement change with a shift in housing tenure from illegal squatting to homeownership. Second, a method for understanding civic engagement in a way that that focuses more effectively on the actual techniques employed than currently available social science methods, yet remains quantifiable and replicable. Today low-income homeownership is being questioned as a means to class mobility and neighborhood stability. It is essential to understand other ways in which vulnerable populations use housing to engage in their neighborhoods and pursue economic security. Through a multimedia dissemination strategy, this study will allow researchers, practitioners and policy-makers responding to today’s housing challenges to deploy this knowledge of squatters’ innovative, effective, housing-based civic engagement.

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