New report by Observatori DESCA: Squats, the new version of shantytowns and favelas in Spain

The text also dismantles the false discourse that has been put forward by certain social sectors and political parties.

The report demonstrates that squats are a type of precarious or informal housing comparable to the shantytowns traditionally associated with the 1960s or even the current favelas in Brazil. The report, entitled ‘Squats: a historical type of insecure, precarious and informal housing’ asserts that all three phenomena should be conceived as a consequence of the local and global crisis of lack of decent and adequate housing, caused on a planetary level by the financialisation of housing.

The main novelty of this research is the approach to the reality of squatting from this perspective, dismantling the biased discourse that we hear daily from some political parties and the media, pointing out the real causes of untitled access to empty homes and identifying solutions through their recognition within urban and housing policies.