The no-rent option.

Squatters are homeless people who take over abandoned or empty buildings and live in them. One of the most famous squats was in the old Woodwards department store in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Once a retailing mecca for Vancouverites, Woodwards went bankrupt and closed its doors forever in 1993. A local developer came up with a variety of plans most of which involved turning the old store into a mix of retail, commercial, and high-end residential space.

The Downtown Eastside is pretty run-down but it is home to many of Vancouver's poorest citizens. Plunking an upscale development into this community would threaten its future; where would the locals go if the Downtown Eastside was gussied up?

So, as proposals for the Woodwards store came and went, the eight-storey, red brick building stood empty for years.

In 2001, the provincial government bought the building and announced plans to turn it into social housing for low-income residents. But, within six months, the new government of Premier Gordon Campbell cancelled this and many other social housing projects in the province.

In September 2002, with a municipal election looming, activists moved in and occupied the empty store. Hundreds camped on the street outside, completely surrounding the building. Frequent demonstrations drew attention to the plight of the homeless and the Wood-squat, as it became known, made national headlines.

Running for Mayor of Vancouver, Larry Campbell promised the squatters he would turn the old Woodwards store into affordable housing. Mr. Campbell won the election and the abandoned Woodwards building was purchased by the city in 2003. It will be redeveloped to include 100 units of social housing. But, squatters are still active in Vancouver.

In the fall of 2003, dozens of tents went up near Science World, a popular Vancouver attraction. There have been tent communities in Stanley Park and on other green spaces elsewhere in the city. Local merchants don't take kindly to having squatters as neighbours, so the police are called and the squats taken down. But, as soon as one squatters' camp is dismantled another one sprouts somewhere else.

In Toronto, so-called Tent City became a shanty town built on the city's waterfront. The place was built on "brownfields" that had been cleared of the factories and warehouses that used to be on the land, but not of the toxic soil left behind. The first residents began moving into Tent City at the end of 2000. Many lived in tents, while others built dwellings out of recycled garbage. At the time, an environmental report said the ground was contaminated with lead, arsenic, and PCBs, and was not fit for human habitation.

About 100 people lived in Tent City until it was bulldozed by the owner of the land, Home Depot, in the fall of 2002. A year later, almost all of Tent City's former residents were living in rent-subsidized apartments. But, it took the publicity of the bulldozing and evictions to prompt officials into taking actions for these people.

Not everybody thought the flattening of Tent City was a bad idea. It had become rat-infested and squalid. Drug dealers moved in along with some tough customers just out of prison. Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente didn't shed any tears over shutting the place down. "The high cost of housing is the least of the reasons why the people at Tent City chose to live there," she wrote. "The real reasons have to do with addiction and mental illness, and liking to sleep outdoors instead of in, and in preferring to party and shoot up where no one's going to stop you. Safe, affordable housing is not going to fix what ails them."

Squatters get a more sympathetic hearing from Vancouver's Mayor Larry Campbell. "It's fine to say there are jobs," he told The Globe and Mail. "Of course, there are jobs. But, how do you get one when you don't have a home? How do you get up every morning and go to work if you don't have breakfast? How many businesses do you know where they hire you and give you your first month's pay up front, so you can get a home, so you can get some groceries, so you can eat?"

SQUATTERS' RIGHTS

There is a concept in law that the legal professionals call "adverse possession." The basic rule is simple enough and it applies in most provinces other than Quebec. If a person occupies land for a required period of time, and, during that time, no legal action is taken to evict the ownership of the land goes from the legal owner to the squatter. In some cases, the occupation is as little as ten years that are, in legal lingo, "actual, continuous, open, visible, notorious, and exclusive." Other provinces require the adverse possess on (adverse means without permission of the owner) to be up to 20 years.

Websites

Dignity Village--http:// www.dignityvillage.org

Squat.net--http://squat. net/en/

Woodsquat--http://www. downtowneastside.ca/hot. html