So far, we have explored policies impacting official forms of housing tenure. The focus of this chapter differs in that it addresses the impact of a ‘nontenure’ of sorts – squatting and its 2012 partial illegalisation. While this may first appear to be an outlier of the book's case studies, what the criminalisation of squatting shares with the bedroom tax and the forefronting of temporary accommodation as a homelessness solution is its impact on vulnerable and low-income groups. As in the previous chapters, here we will explore how the criminalisation of squatting acts as an explicit form of domicide, legitimising the destruction of a form of homemaking which, though long maligned, has contributed much to affordable housing, subculture and even the establishment of social housing in the UK. Before examining the impact of criminalisation, the next section outlines squatting's recent history in the UK, and how section 144 came to be.

The road to criminalisation: a brief history of squatting in the UK

The contemporary squatting movement emerged as a consequence of severe shortages of adequate housing in the aftermath of war. Squatting grew as a practice in the wake of the Second World War, most significantly in London, many parts of which had been left badly scarred by the Blitz. Lack of housing provision, particularly for returning soldiers, led to a direct action campaign that saw many homeless servicemen seizing empty properties – a movement that highlighted the failure of the ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’ pledge1 of the interwar period. It has been argued that squatters during this time had a huge hand in putting pressure on the government to commit to the mass council housebuilding programme documented in Chapter 2. However, due in part to an alignment with communism at a time of increasing political tensions, and limited support from trade unions, the post-war squatting movement dwindled somewhat from 1946 onwards (Finchett-Maddock 2014; Platt 1999).

The movement re-emerged some two decades later with the formation of the London Squatters Campaign.