I was wondering what kind of website this is given how obviously it is siding with landlords.
Squatting is only a problem that can happen if housing remains unoccupied. And it's more likely to happen if there is no strong communal network in the area (because most people don't want squatters moving in next to them because of the implications). The easiest way to have housing remain unoccupied for long periods of time and to have neighbors be apathetic about squatters moving into it is to destroy the local community through rent hikes and gentrification and to not live in the area yourself (e.g. because you're a real estate company and not a private landlord or because you're an external speculative investor).
As I understand it, Spain has also had massive problems with investors buying properties to put on AirBnB for tourists, often in defiance of zoning laws.
I understand the concern about property damage from squatting but unoccupied housing is wasting public resources (i.e. habitable land) and can often easily be solved by lowering rent - which from the tenant's POV is literally just giving you free money to use something you already built/bought (i.e. a sunk cost), unlike maintenace & utilities which actively contribute to its upkeep. If you want to think of real estate as an investment you need to understand that investment comes with risks and you shouldn't have a right to make a positive ROI (certainly not a moral one).
In a sense, I would argue (and I think some of the resident Georgists would agree) that keeping housing deliberately unoccupied because of inflated rents and real estate speculation is ethically indistinguishable from squatting - if not worse - because you're deliberately preventing society from making use of that land purely in the hopes of a speculative postive ROI. Housing is only valuable to society when it is occupied.
I was talking about the website the article is on, not HN. I'm well aware that HN is run by Y Combinator. It's in the URL.
That said, squatting unused housing is literally "disrupting the housing market" by eliminating the waste of critical resources. It's upsetting the market and breaking established rules, sure, but so are AirBnB, Uber, generative AI and cryptocurrencies.
If you think about the founding mythology of "Hacker culture", squatting fits right in there alongside the stories of defrauding telephone companies with "phreaking" and other "adventures". Except of course for the obvious class difference between hacking your Ivy League university's computer lab and having to squat an empty building because the alternative is being homeless.
Squatting is only a problem that can happen if housing remains unoccupied. And it's more likely to happen if there is no strong communal network in the area (because most people don't want squatters moving in next to them because of the implications). The easiest way to have housing remain unoccupied for long periods of time and to have neighbors be apathetic about squatters moving into it is to destroy the local community through rent hikes and gentrification and to not live in the area yourself (e.g. because you're a real estate company and not a private landlord or because you're an external speculative investor).
As I understand it, Spain has also had massive problems with investors buying properties to put on AirBnB for tourists, often in defiance of zoning laws.
I understand the concern about property damage from squatting but unoccupied housing is wasting public resources (i.e. habitable land) and can often easily be solved by lowering rent - which from the tenant's POV is literally just giving you free money to use something you already built/bought (i.e. a sunk cost), unlike maintenace & utilities which actively contribute to its upkeep. If you want to think of real estate as an investment you need to understand that investment comes with risks and you shouldn't have a right to make a positive ROI (certainly not a moral one).
In a sense, I would argue (and I think some of the resident Georgists would agree) that keeping housing deliberately unoccupied because of inflated rents and real estate speculation is ethically indistinguishable from squatting - if not worse - because you're deliberately preventing society from making use of that land purely in the hopes of a speculative postive ROI. Housing is only valuable to society when it is occupied.