Squatting in London

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Londoner Katherine Hibbert was 26 years old and doing fine until she was laid off and informed that her rent was going up. So Katherine Hibbert decided to chuck it all… and live on just about no money. She became a squatter. That meant finding unused buildings to live in and finding food where she could. We speak with her about her experience as a squatter.

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JEB SHARP: Londoner Katherine Hibbert doesn’t want wealth either.  In fact she doesn’t want any money at all.  Hibbert was a material girl though a vaguely discontented one until 2008.  That’s when she was laid off and informed that her rent was going up.  So Ms. Hibbert decided to become a squatter.  Katherine Hibbert’s story appeared in the London Guardian Newspaper this weekend.  Katherine, why did you decide to become a squatter?

KATHERINE HIBBERT: Well, I suppose it was a combination of reasons.  Firstly though a sort of immediate problem of no money and nowhere to live that I could afford easily.  And then kind of underlying unease I’d been feeling for a long time about you know the way that I’d been living which was a very standard urban young person’s life.  You know you shop in the supermarket; you buy your clothes in the High Street.  When you’re facing an environmental crisis it just didn’t seem to really make sense and it didn’t seem to embody the values that I wanted in my life.

JEB: In some ways it sounds more like a quest than desperation.  Describe how you found a place to live.

KATHERINE: Well I did quite a lot of wandering around hoping to find a squat and I was incredibly lucky to meet a pair of kind people who said I could stay at theirs for a few days until I found somewhere to live myself.

JEB: It sounds as if squatting is actually legal in the UK.

KATHERINE: Yeah it is absolutely legal.  If a building is left empty, and there are about half a million long-term empty buildings in the UK, you’ve got one point five percent of the available homes, and you can get in without causing damage, then you can make your home in it until the owners take you to a civil court to evict you.  And the situation is very different in the US where trespassing is a crime.  But here trespassing isn’t a crime.

JEB: And how did you eat?

KATHERINE: Eating was really the easy bit.  Because there are just so many little shops, cafes, convenience shops, that throw away a really mind blowing amount of food every single day.  If you are out and about in the street and prepared to open up a couple of bin bags, you will almost certainly find enough to feed you and a couple of dozen friends for days.

JEB: There must be people who question your decision.  I mean even from the way you describe it you did have a safety net of your family and your friends and a safe bed if you needed it, even if you didn’t resort to it, which is not the case for many, many people who find themselves on the street.

KATHERINE: Sure.  And I think I would have felt bad about it if I had been taking food or taking shelter which someone more desperate than me needed more than I did.  You know for instance with food, the quantity of food that you see when you go looking for it is such that you know, even if you were sharing it among every person who sleeps rough in London there would still be some left over.  There’s such an incredible amount there I didn’t feel as if I was taking it out of the mouths of other people by eating it myself.  And also I think that there are, you know when you are living, you know I had lost my job.  I didn’t have a huge amount of money in the bank.  And when you are in a difficult situation like that you have to depend on community more than, you know what other people might depend on just being able to spend money to get out of a problem and I think if you’re making a contribution to the community it, that’s the important thing.

JEB: Katherine, where do you live now?

KATHERINE: I live in a squatted council flat in east London.

JEB: Now you originally had planned to squat for a year, what happened after that year was up?

KATHERINE: Well a year was up last May so quite a long time ago and I, I didn’t really consider moving out of my squat.  I like my flat mates, and I believe in what I’m doing so I decided to carry on.

JEB: Katherine Hibbert is the author of the forthcoming: Free, Adventures On The Margin Of A Wasteful Society.  Thanks very much.

KATHERINE: You’re very welcome.

JEB: This is P. R. I.

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