Last week we were amused to learn that Trade School was offering a class this year called "Squat the Condos." But our amusement quickly turned to disappointment when we saw that the class was already full. Rather than wait and just squat the class, we did the next best thing and called up the teacher, the artist Christopher Robbins (no relation to the the Gothamist staffer of the same name) for a talk about everything from squatting in empty condos versus squatting in unfinished buildings, to how he got fed up and
started his own WPA last year, to whether or not squatters have (or should have) rights.
So, squatting. How exactly did this class on squatting come about?Do you know much about Trade School? It's part of this larger network called Our Goods, which is sort of like eBay, but no money allowed. Just trading. You have an account where you say your needs, wants and your haves, and trade that way. Then Trade School was sort of an extension of that. So you take a class or teach a class—like mine where I'm having people pay me in cabbages because I want to learn how to make pickled cabbage. So yeah, the course mostly came from Trade School. Last year, I taught this Action Research class, and then Caroline Woolard asked me to teach a class there again and this felt like—when I think about all the shit that's happening, trying to find some way to do something about it—this felt like the most equitable way to basically instigate people to start squatting all these places. Plus I've heard, I'm not sure where, there are enough empty condos in New York City for each homeless person to sleep in, so this seemed like the logical solution.
Have you ever actually squatted? I've never squatted. I mean, I've stayed short-term in lots of places, and established a mailbox, which is a part of it—you know, establishing a mailing address which is unofficial—but I hope the wording is clear that this is a dilettante exercise, where it's like "we're going to figure this out, we're going to do this." Last year, I mean, I ran my own WPA—my own illegal government works program—and clearly I didn't know how to do that but I managed to get offices and front as the government and pay people to fix roads at the WPA. So a lot of things I do I am totally illegitimate and unqualified and unprepared to do. But I do it anyway and it seems to work so far.
That's really cool, could you go into a little more detail about that WPA project? Basically, when the economy went down the tank in, I assumed for once that the primary discussion would be about how to help ourselves. I was like, "Wow, the U.S. is acknowledging that we aren't the all-powerful place in the world, this is great! We're going to have another WPA!" I really liked what came out of the old WPA. But then the recovery effort has been so backwards. After 2009 came and went and it still didn't come back, I was like, "Fine, if the government isn't bringing back WPA—which during the Great Depression employed millions of people in tons of different ways—then I am. I'm going to hijack their brand and use it till they force me to give it back to them."
I got on Kickstarter and got some funding. I got an office in upstate New York and Jamaica, Queens and just started silkscreening uniforms and got donations of construction gear and opened the offices. And basically people would come in and I'd collect ideas for public works that they wanted or if they wanted employment I'd take down their names.
Once we came up with a project and agreed on it, I'd hire some people and we'd go out dressed as construction workers in WPA uniforms—we even made a little WPA payment press to press into it that said, "WPA 2010" like the old 1940s ones—and did that. That was in 2010.
That's just a great project. Someone else started one up in New Jersey and some people in Texas and Hawaii said they're starting up ones, too. It is a great project, it didn't go the way I thought when I started it though. I wasn't setting out to be arrested but I had a feeling I would be, because we were breaking up sidewalks with no permission or anything. I assumed eventually they'd notice, but I was careful. I worked in community organizing for awhile, and of all of the projects we did, none of them came from me. I wasn't a member of the community we were working in, so I knew we always had projects that people cared about. Plus we were employing people who community members had said said: "These are the people in the community who I think really need employment."
I knew that if authorities came in and stopped us in the middle of it, it would at least generate press. Like, "finally the officials are getting involved only to stop this project that is employing people and doing needed public work." But instead I guess things were so dire I just got embraced. The local government was like, "This is great. Your WPA workers can put in a crosswalk and we'll give you a sign for it." I got a call after one of the big storm asking WPA works to help pick up stuff, so it wasn't the Black Gat approach I guess that was needed to get the conflict happening. Instead it just ended up being accepted as this illegitimate child of the government, at least by local government.
That's terrifying and sort of awesome at the same time. It was such a strange experience. There were so many things that I didn't think would happen, that did. Libertarians and socialists—or to be more frank, racist libertarians and black socialists&mdnash;working together on the same project and for totally different reasons, too! There was a lot of strange things going on.
That was a great digression. But back to squatting, what kind of research have you been doing for the class? Talking to people who actually have squatted, and organizing major squats, and of course Abbie Hoffman and looking at the Weather Underground people, and from that stuff to people who do it more on the punk tip than political tip these days.
Do you have any tips already about what you're going to be covering in your class? I guess I'm trying to think of it more on the political side of things than the "I need a place to stay for a week," side of things, so there is more of a hiccup when they try to kick you out. So, things like keeping the property clean, how to keep a mailbox so that the mailman will start delivering to a place that hasn't been getting mail, getting utilities in your name—all the things that make it as official as possible, so that when you start to get booted out it takes longer and there is more involved. That's the approach I've decided to take with this. The goal really for me at the end of it is to have a couple people, maybe just one, who really actually wants to go with forward and I can work with them as an instigator to get this actually happening.
What kind of retribution are squatters these days facing? Back in the 80s there was some serious police intervention, but we don't really hear about that much anymore. The people I've talked to said it's really just about being kicked out. One guy I talked to, he had to fight it. He was taken to court and they were trying to press charges and incarcerate him. He had a place on the water in Brooklyn. Other people I've talked to its been much more short lived, just basically being booted out. Do you know Picture the Homeless?
I'm aware of it. Well, they do a lot of very organized squatting projects.
In terms of talking to people about this, have you found different responses to the idea squatting? Oh yeah. Most people I talk to, when it's "squat the condos" specifically, and they're talking about it as basically all the condos that came into these neighborhoods that weren't completed and are vacant because they couldn't sell at the crazy rates anymore—at that level most people are supportive, because they are empty anyway.
When it comes to moving into places that's vacant but complete, then there are definitely people who are weary. Obviously the ethics are still dodgy for something that's not finished and just abandoned, and there are people—including my wife—who definitely aren't on board with that side.
What rights do you think squatters should have? When I think of it completely logically, just looking at the law and thinking about it logically and putting myself in all the different shoes involved with that, it doesn't seem like there are rights according to US law and I don't see room for that. However, I know two wrongs don't make a right, but fuck it. Eye for eye. There is so much injustice right now, the way it does seem that the poor are being made to pay for the steaks of the wealthy. I do agree it's unethical on the micro scale, but on the larger scale it is an unethical act that I feel has to be done and has larger ethics.
What neighborhoods do you think will see squatting going forward? You were talking about the condos versus the actually built-out... Sunset Park seems ripe for condo squatting. Jamaica, Queens has another situation where so many people were able to buy houses because of the bubble, then lost them. So we're talking single family or at most three family places, that seems like another place.
A very different approach, where it is smaller... it would be great to find people who used to live there. Do the research, figure out who used to live there, and get them back in. That would be another, smaller project.
But Jamaica, Queens and Sunset Park are the two that immediately popped into my head. Sunset Park for just these condos that aren't quite finished that were clearly made for yuppies. Jamaica, Queens which is more somebody who finally got a loan they wanted, but the terms they couldn't afford it once the adjustable rates kicked in.
Since your class sold out, and I feel bad that I'm interviewing you and telling more readers about this class that they can't attend, is there any chance of a follow-up class or anything like that? Definitely, and it doesn't have to be through Trade School. We'll see how this one goes, and go from there. I believe in it and feel like it's an important project to move forward and I'm definitely up for having it happen in different venues with different people. Different people are going to bring different things to it.
The WPA project was helped a lot by the class I taught at Trade School in Community Action Research, because I had a lot of people who wanted to help out and supply us with construction gear. So absolutely, anyone interested should contact me on my website and I'd love to do another class whenever it works.
If you are interested in seeing some of Robbins work in person, you are in luck. He has an opening tomorrow night for Next Time, a project connected to the housing crisis. It features "a series of conveyor belts made of fake grass in a 60 foot expanse of windows, dropping hollow plaster houses over and over." The show runs until the 27th at chashama at the Donnell, 20 W 53rd Street (across from the MoMA).
