It started as a sworn secret between eight New England artists. In 2003, Michael Townsend and seven friends moved into the Providence Place Mall. They'd discovered an empty 750 square-foot loft space. They hauled up furniture - a couch, a PlayStation, TV, waffle-maker. Hauled up two tons of cinder blocks for an apartment wall. In 2007, mall security discovered the apartment. Townsend was arrested and banned from the mall. He named no names.
SINCE THE MID-1990s, unsheltered Brazilians, known as the sem teto,or roofless, have organized to seize abandoned buildings and transform them into rudimentary housing. São Paulo, the most populous city in the Americas, has become the symbolic epicenter of this housing struggle, if only for the cruel irony of having more vacant dwellings than unsheltered people. In its center, from which the well-to-do have long decamped,
Maria Martin, 38, is charged with larceny from a building, vandalizing property, and permitting abuse on an elder or disabled person, according to Rutland police. She allegedly lived with the elderly Rutland resident under the guise of being a caretaker. When the elderly woman returned home, the locks had been changed, and drug paraphernalia was found around the house.
The first news accounts of squatters in New York City were published in the 1850s, as impoverished German and Irish immigrants surged into the city. Charles Loring Brace wrote about them for The New York Times, describing the rough cabins they lived in and the rough living many eked out, by picking through the streets to collect and sell anything of value.
The building, once an elite members' club frequented by celebrities, has devolved into a derelict squat, attracting antisocial behavior and neglect.
"I couldn't believe it. It was like a nightmare," Velazquez told ABC Chicago. The sheer disbelief of a homeowner being confronted by squatters defines the dread of property ownership.