Re-squatting the place, while it has been made clear that there is an intended purpose for it seems counterproductive. Unless i'm mistaken the law, used to be, that you can use a squat, as long as there is no purpose for the building.
I think like many you have too rose-colored a view of the historical situation.
Perhaps somewhat like our oft-mistaken soft drugs legislation, squatting was never really 'legal' - it was just that once you had established your presence in a house or building (to be caught 'red-handed', or heterdaad, during the illegal act of squatting itself was a distinct possibility), your right to 'inviolability of the home' (huisvrede) now outweighed the owner's immediate right to have you evicted, who would then first need to make a reasonable case in court that they had active plans with the property, now or in the foreseeable future. It stands to reason this didn't require much convincing on their part, unless they really were clueless, or so perhaps really were only interested in speculation and the like, not actively developing or putting to use their property.
Naturally, inasmuch as squatting apart from immediately addressing housing shortages also formed a wider statement and movement against city planning as a whole (gentrification and whatnot), squatter demands extended, and still extend, to such property development benefiting the (less affluent) community at large, through social housing, low-rent space for low-key idealistic business spaces as well as (sub) cultural and art venues, gathering places free from the pressures of either state supervision or commercial market demands, and so on.
In this case, much-reported in the press has been De Key's plans to realize housing and cultural spaces on the spot - sadly underreported has remained that this pertains to expensive private property and high-brow undertakings.
Re-squatting the place, while
Re-squatting the place, while it has been made clear that there is an intended purpose for it seems counterproductive. Unless i'm mistaken the law, used to be, that you can use a squat, as long as there is no purpose for the building.
I think like many you have too rose-colored a view of the historical situation.
Perhaps somewhat like our oft-mistaken soft drugs legislation, squatting was never really 'legal' - it was just that once you had established your presence in a house or building (to be caught 'red-handed', or heterdaad, during the illegal act of squatting itself was a distinct possibility), your right to 'inviolability of the home' (huisvrede) now outweighed the owner's immediate right to have you evicted, who would then first need to make a reasonable case in court that they had active plans with the property, now or in the foreseeable future. It stands to reason this didn't require much convincing on their part, unless they really were clueless, or so perhaps really were only interested in speculation and the like, not actively developing or putting to use their property.
Naturally, inasmuch as squatting apart from immediately addressing housing shortages also formed a wider statement and movement against city planning as a whole (gentrification and whatnot), squatter demands extended, and still extend, to such property development benefiting the (less affluent) community at large, through social housing, low-rent space for low-key idealistic business spaces as well as (sub) cultural and art venues, gathering places free from the pressures of either state supervision or commercial market demands, and so on.
In this case, much-reported in the press has been De Key's plans to realize housing and cultural spaces on the spot - sadly underreported has remained that this pertains to expensive private property and high-brow undertakings.
Hence people's resistance.