(en) France, Alternative Libertair #222 - Toulouse: The right to housing criminalized (fr)

The Collective for the requisition, self-help and self-management (Crea) Toulouse now 
organizes several social squats and hosts dozens of families. Back to self-management 
experience. ---- For a year and a half, Toulouse sees increasing requisitions empty 
buildings. First squat, 70, went damselflies, a former building of the AFPA. Forty people 
including fifteen children, there are housing. This building was a place for families 
living on the streets, with or without papers, women galley, working poor and students. It 
was also a place of business open as proposed, among other things, literacy classes, 
boxing, it housed a library, a concert hall, meeting rooms and even a swimming pool! All 
running on the basis of self-management, with an eye to free, horizontality, solidarity 
and sharing of know-how.

Obviously, it was too good for the state (PS), the Town Hall (PS) and the prefecture who 
expelled the building on August 28, to create a center for the homeless (which has not 
been day). A few days later, different groups have joined forces to make a new place (old 
building Urssaf, unoccupied for 6 years). This time, 97 people lived, taught, amused 
themselves by helping each other according to the same recipe. It is in the old pots you 
make the best soups!

A daily practice of self
But after a summary trial the President of TGI found that there were no inhabitants, which 
justified an eviction within 48 hours. On 8 October, the quiet Demouilles saw an avalanche 
crashing blue 30 trucks of riot police, the tray, and the RG GIPN ensuring the aerial part 
of the show, since it is a part of the helicopter holders legitimate violence have 
"liberated" the roof of this empty building for 6 years. Since then, temporary housing 
solutions have been found in more modest buildings. This experience of collective 
reappropriation of empty homes once again shows that it is possible to organize the 
foundation to meet basic needs such as housing. But the goal is not to overcome the 
shortcomings of the state, becoming a sort of 115 AC and fall into the social aid. The 
task is not always easy: the self can not be decreed. If for some horizontal practices are 
selected and undertaken for other community living in a squat is more of necessity. It is 
pragmatic practices and a continual questioning of the reports will be born more equal. At 
Toulouse and elsewhere, houses left empty just waiting to become alive.

W (activist Cr?a) and Elsa (AL Toulouse)