1) Youth often sneak into an abandoned building, which displeases many city dwellers: you never know what might happen. Can they, and in what way, organize its security, fence it off, or demolish it entirely? Would the installation of a fence by a concerned public be a restriction of the freedom of urban exploration enthusiasts?
2) A group of squatters has settled in an empty cinema, arranged their own electricity (finding people on the free market who agreed to connect them), and lives there, organizing non-conformist concerts right in the cinema hall and inviting hitchhikers for overnight stays. Some believe this negatively affects property values in the area. Can anything be done about them?
3) A developer saw an unfinished business center and wanted to complete it and put it into operation. The last owner of the unfinished building is either unknown, unresponsive, or has already been dissolved as a legal entity. What should the developer do?
4) An initiative group of citizens wants to demolish an abandoned building and create a park in its place; many district residents have signed in support of the idea. However, the squatters living there do not want to move. They appeal to the right of the property they have acquired and the lack of rights to it by outside citizens, while the activists appeal to the illegality of the squatters’ settlement and their lack of any rights to such housing. Who is right and what is to be done?

Stalker

So, we have a city, which is a fairly dense settlement where the rights of its inhabitants to certain spatial objects are complex, mutually conditional, mutually overlapping, and constantly enter into minor collisions, and this is perceived as the norm. A person pays for developed infrastructure not only with money, but also by the fact that they are constantly bothered to some extent by their neighbors. Sometimes collisions become significant, and then they require a resolution.

Let me remind you of the principles of legitimate acquisition of property rights under ancap: homesteading, exchange, restitution, production. How can sufficiently clear property rights to an abandoned building be acquired in the complex conditions described above? Squatters quite logically apply the first method and occupy an empty building simply because no one before them used this method. What will protect them from indignant neighbors appearing on their doorstep tomorrow, waving the Lockean proviso? Only the other three methods of acquiring property rights.

1. Voluntary exchange. Squatters can agree with other city residents on what specific benefits they will provide in exchange for the recognition of their right to the squat. For example, organizing those very concerts, providing shelter for the homeless, maintaining the neat appearance of the building, or paying utility bills.
2. Restitution. Squatters could stand on the threshold of their new property with guns and declare that those who contest their ownership can only take it from their cold dead bodies. The willingness to bear the costs of war to protect one’s property has always been a very strong argument in favor of recognizing property rights, provided that someone else’s rights do not appear more compelling (and in the case of an abandoned building, no one has more compelling rights than the squatters). Squatters could also announce that as restitution for seizing the property (and thus for taking away the right to seize the same property from other potential claimants), they are ready to donate a certain amount to a city improvement fund. Agreement to accept the money would mean recognition of the legitimacy of the squatting.
3. Production. Squatters can begin converting the seized building for their own needs, and then anyone who might claim an alternative use for the abandoned building will calculate that if they had, for example, forcibly evicted them a month ago when they first moved in, and the squatters had sued, they would have received at most the price of a hostel rental for a couple of nights. But today, they would already be demanding reimbursement for all the effort and resources invested in the squat.

I have outlined what the squatters should do. But what should the citizens do if they really do not want abandoned buildings to end up in the hands of just anyone? Simply avoid their formation whenever possible. For example, utility service contracts could include a clause stating that if the owner of the serviced object loses their right without terminating the service agreement, then until a new owner takes possession, the provider continues service at the latest applicable rates as a loan secured by the object. Thus, squatters find themselves in a situation: this house belongs to no one; it is collateral for the companies providing water, electricity, internet, sewer services, and waste removal. If any one of these companies needs the house, it will squat it itself (but it will have to negotiate a buyout with the others). And if none of them need it, they will all be happy with anyone willing to take the building on their balance sheet and pay off the utility debts.

I have provided only one possible mechanism, but there could be any others, including a city fund for abandoned buildings, to which citizens donate funds so that it can be the first to squat abandoned buildings, create groups for discussing their best use, search for investors, and so on. And if people who do not inspire enthusiasm among the citizens have already moved into a particular abandoned building, this same fund could act as a negotiator to change the format of the squat’s use or pay the squatters a buyout to move out.