| Summer squats >> Cops reacting, city
scrambling, by PATRICK LEJTENYI
“The situation in the neighbourhood is like the Plateau in the ’90s,” says ADDS coordinator Richard Miron. “It’s becoming more and more a place for the petite bourgeoisie, with a lot of recent graduates looking for more affordable housing. There are new needs here, and the developers are taking advantage of it. We are very worried about the neighbourhood’s gentrification.” It’s an old story, really. A traditionally working-class neighbourhood becomes overrun with young, upscale new tenants, the long-time residents are forced out, and no one seems to take notice, much less care. Miron calls the situation, especially in his district, bordering on criminal. “We want to denounce gentrification,” he says. “To me, it’s kind of like ethnic cleansing, only it’s done along class lines. It’s social cleansing, and that’s wrong. If we want to make the neighbourhood more prosperous, we should be giving the poor people here jobs. We shouldn’t be importing the rich and exporting the poor.”
For the Valois squatters, the action was, as it was meant to be, overtly political. It got the attention of the police, the city and, to a certain degree, the media (although mostly French). And while Michel Prescott, the vice-president of the city’s executive committee, condemned the police for the heavy-handed tactics used to evict the squatters on Saturday night, the city is trying to keep all sides happy and recognizing the problems of all concerned parties. “The city’s policy is not to intervene if actions take place on public property,” says mayoral aide Darren Becker. “But if people are entering private property, then it becomes a police matter. These people don’t have to convince the city administration that there is a housing crisis. We’ve been preparing contingency plans since March or February.” Admittedly, the city’s administration has been acting faster and more decisively in handling the housing crisis than its predecessor. It has to, because this year is probably the worst in terms of lack of housing in recent memory. It has set up shelters for families and individuals without homes in schools, has teams of housing agents scouring the city looking for available apartments, has offered to subsidize rents for low-income families, and is making good on its promise to build more low-income housing. It has even provided translation services for easier communication between potential tenants and landlords. And on Monday morning, Prescott called on banks to make all their repossessed homes available to tenants. “The city has really been trying to make sure that everyone [without shelter] is on their way to find something,” says Becker. “But when it comes to squatting, public awareness is one thing, civil disobedience is another.” For housing activist group FRAPRU, however, civil disobedience is nothing to be frowned upon. Indeed, it’s to be encouraged, says FRAPRU coordinator François Saillant. In May, his group led a series of guerilla-style occupations/street fairs throughout the province. “It’s quite evident that we don’t oppose these kinds of actions,” Saillant says. “We didn’t want to do anything around moving day, but if there are political actions bringing attention to the fact, we can’t be anything other than favourable. I’ve been in those apartments on Valois. They’re very nice, they’re 7 1/2 or 8 1/2. Precisely the kind of apartment that should be on the market. The fact that they’re not is scandalous.”
The mood greeting police at the Valois squat/occupation on Saturday was confrontational. Squat supporters chanted, “Notre action est légitime, que les flics arrêtent leurs crimes!” (“Our action is legitimate, make the cops stop their crimes”). In a communiqué issued on Tuesday, the ADDS denounced the “arrogant attitude” of the group of “armed cowboys.” And while not as brashly anti-capitalist/anarchistic as the Comité des sans-emploi, the group that led the Overdale squat, there is among the ADDS members and supporters a palpable sense of frustration and exasperation. “We felt there was a lot of police harassment on Saturday,” says Miron. “They wanted to nip the action in the bud.” Not that police attention will deter the ADDS from staging more actions. Miron says it is “highly probable” that more actions will take place around the neighbourhood in the coming months. As for the Comité des sans-emploi, they have expressed their support for last weekend’s actions but point out that they had nothing to do with it. And while they say they are not planning any squats like Overdale, they will be celebrating its anniversary on July 27 with a rally and march downtown. Their plan, says a spokesman, is to march through Centre-sud to several points that represent struggles fought and lost by residents of economically depressed neighbourhoods. That means stops at Berri Square and the CBC building, built on razed residential areas. It will end with an overnight “re-appropriation” of a street corner. The summer, then, promises to hold more demos, actions and occupations by irate activists and tenants. While a surreptitious July 1 street blocking was called off for technical and organizational reasons by one group, the ADDS vows to hold more occupations. And FRAPRU’s Saillant says that a squat in Quebec City that has been occupied since May 17 is still active, in a building in the shadow of the National Assembly building.
But the squat problem is hardly new. As Mathieu Theriault, one of the Overdale squat organizers and a Comité des sans-emploi activist, says, “People, whether they’re homeless or young punks, have been squatting for a long time. It’s only recently that it’s become a media event.” In many ways, the Overdale squat is casting a long shadow. Mayoral aide Darren Becker says the way then-mayor Pierre Bourque handled it misfired and in part cost him his re-election; and squatting has become an increasingly popular method of attention-grabbing among activists. It also legitimized the housing crisis: while rents spiralled skyward over the last couple of years, the housing activists have enjoyed increasing sympathy and recognition from the city and the media. FRAPRU took part in last month’s Montreal Summit and is considered among the leading housing advocacy organizations. But among the more radical activists, squatting is an increasingly popular action, partly, believes Theriault, because of the Overdale squat. “I think Overdale did have important political repercussions,” he says. “Look at FRAPRU, look at the anti-G8 demos in Ottawa, where they occupied a house. I think Overdale showed that it was possible.” : |
In
a little-publicized event last weekend, a group of poverty activists
in the East End staged a not-so-spontaneous occupation of an abandoned
building on Valois that they say is ripe for occupation. The action
was preceded by a squat the previous Wednesday, where two single-parent
families moved into an unoccupied building. Both resulted in police-forced
evictions.