For many marginalized individuals and communities, informal practices are an essential means of gaining access to services and spaces that are otherwise unavailable or unaffordable. This is especially true for shelter and housing, where squatting often serves as a last resort. While property owners have broad legal means to evict squatters, squatters also hold limited rights, leading to often adversarial and protracted legal battles. ReOCCUPY Your City offers an alternative approach to squatting. By combining a supportive legal framework, a Pro-use Housing Policy, and formalized Co-operative Squatting Societies, it empowers squatters to take control of vacant industrial properties, transforming them into collaborative spaces that provide affordable housing for Los Angeles. Under the Pro-use Housing Policy, a group of dwellers can form a Co-operative Squatting Society, claim collective ownership of an abandoned building, and gradually inhabit and manage it democratically over time. As residents join, their involvement in the co-operative can evolve from emergency occupancy to transitional and ultimately permanent residency. ReOCCUPY Your City thus enables a community-driven, democratic reuse of vacant buildings, empowering squatters to not only claim and improve these structures but also to contribute to the city’s housing stock. The project also allows the city’s housing administration to make underutilized spaces progressively productive, offering affordable, self-governed housing solutions.
ReOCCUPY YOUR CITY: The Co-operative Squatting Society
