Home is where you make it

>> Squat squad takes over building that time nearly forgot

by CRAIG SEGAL

One big question hovers over the abandoned building taken over by squatters in a downtown parking lot Friday night. Why didn't the police cuff them and chuck them all in a paddy wagon the minute they broke into a privately owned heritage building on Overdale?

Snowdon City Councillor Marvin Rotrand is not surprised the police did not arrest the squatters right away. He thinks Mayor Pierre Bourque had to be careful with the squat since he is just beginning his campaign for the megacity election, and can't afford any large screw-ups. "Pierre Bourque will become the friend of anybody until the election," says Rotrand. "For him to have suddenly found his gentler inner soul--it's cynicism." The mayor's office refused to comment.

Although the squatters were trespassing, the police couldn't kick them out without the owners' permission, or a report from the fire department or building inspectors that the building is dangerous, says Police Commander Paul Chablo, of Station 38. Nevertheless, Chablo continues, police arrested one young man Friday night, and threatened to arrest any others who committed "illegal acts," as the police "are filming everything."

"This building has been empty for 13 years," says organizer Mathieu Thériault. "It's in good shape. It just needs water and electricity. The only variable we don't control is the attitude of the police."

Squatter Marie, 18, has been kicked out of squats throughout Montreal since she moved out five years ago. She said police harassed her at Overdale.

"I was walking with a walkie-talkie, doing security for the squat, and saw two policemen were following me," said Marie at the Overdale parking lot Monday afternoon. "They threw me to the ground and cuffed me and lifted up my shirt and skirt to look for the walkie-talkie. I didn't have it, so they kicked me in the ribs and thigh and called me a bitch."

A public affair

The squat was public from the start. For weeks posters have been visible throughout the Plateau, with an Astérix and Obélix cartoon announcing that anyone interested should meet at Carré St-Louis at 5 p.m. Friday. Posters were put up by anti-poverty group le Comité des Sans-Emploi, a group well known for a stunt they pulled back in 1997, when hundreds of hungry protesters raided a buffet table at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

Around 400 people showed up at Carré St-Louis at the announced time. Most appeared to be students in their late teens or early twenties, although some were middle-aged and older. Others were dressed in black or wore masks. But they were there for the same reason.

"The lack of affordable housing has become a crisis," said Monique Rocheleau, of L'Association des défense des droits sociaux du Montréal-Métropolitain, as she handed out pamphlets. "The landlords are allowed to be very selective." One pamphlet stated 200 families were thrown out of their homes on July 1--Montreal's citywide moving day. "Poor people must unite in solidarity to reclaim their rights," the pamphlet read.

"We know that hundreds don't have homes," said Lise Fornier of Movement Action Chômage Longueuil. "They're living in campgrounds. Without an address parents can't send their kids to school, and mothers come to us crying. They are afraid to go to crisis centres because they are afraid the Department of Youth Protection will take away their kids."

At around 6 p.m. an organizer announced the reasons for the squat. "We're against capitalism in all its forms," she yelled into a loudspeaker. "We're going to reappropriate a vacant building because we refuse all the illegal evictions in Montreal, like what happened to the people on Mackay," said the speaker, referring to the 30 mostly elderly tenants who were evicted from their apartment building last winter. (The building has since been torn down.)

Led by a large white truck booming rock and hip hop, the group walked west along Sherbrooke, turning south through the downtown core. At 6:50 pm the group sprinted south through a parking lot at the foot of Bishop to a boarded-up three-storey building at the corner of Overdale and Lucien-L'Allier. A few young men ripped the wood down from the basement's entrance. The crowds cheered and flooded the basement, only to realize that no staircase led to the next floor. They then went to work with crowbars and a sledgehammer on the wood boarding up the windows. As some protestors set up an outdoor kitchen, others spraypainted the lower part of the building with slogans and hung a banner above the door: "Housing is not a luxury. It's a right."

Overdale ghosts

The building has history beyond its heritage status. In 1986, developers announced their intention to demolish an Overdale residential building with 107 apartments and replace it with luxury condos. It was one of the few low-income spots left in the area, and the city's Housing and Urban Planning Committee was against the project. In 1987 Mayor Jean Doré's government approved it anyway, to many Montrealers' disapproval. Overdale residents organized a squat of their own, and Doré had the riot police kick them out.

"It's a joy for me that they chose this building," says François Saillant, coordinator of anti-poverty group FRAPRU and former Overdale protestor. "I was arrested twice here. An old woman died here during the protests."

"It's kind of history repeating itself, isn't it?" says architect Joe Baker, who supported Overdalers in 1987. "Back then I got a call from the people living in Overdale--they needed some material to block up the building so the police couldn't get in. So I loaded my wagon up with as much scrap wood as I could find. But the riot squad came and got the kids out. They could have restored those houses, but the city didn't want to." The developers never built their 40-storey condo towers. "They went belly-up and weren't able to carry out what they had proposed," Baker says. "Maybe the police are going a little more carefully than they did last time. There's no project at the moment, so there's no urgency."

The building's owners, Robert Landau and Douglas Cohen, live in Montreal but refused to comment, and on Tuesday they had called for the squatters' eviction. The city entered into negotiations with the squatters for alternative arrangements, offering them an empty Plateau school building equipped with electricity, running water and plumbing facilities.

At press time, most of the squatters had accepted the offer, hoping to eventually turn the building into a cooperative. The squatters have been given full control of the building where they will live rent-free. They were also granted full amnesty. :