SFBG What are some of your favorite and least favorite things about squatting?
HD One thing I really like about squatting is that even though you’re in a space that doesn’t belong to you, you still feel in control. You didn’t sign a contract, and you can do what you want, paint the walls or whatever...it’s exciting. Something feels more real about being in a space that isn’t worth anything monetarily, because it takes on a different type of value. When I rent an apartment, I feel more on edge. I need to worry about scuffing the floor or chipping paint, because I feel like I’m in someone else’s space.
Something I don’t really like is… the type of people who tend to gravitate toward the lifestyle--at least in the U.S. If you look at the European models [of squatting], it’s generally more functional. Some are social centers or community spaces; they serve as a space for more than sleeping, shooting up or getting drunk. In the U.S., it tends to attract people who are less interested in creating a space that can function and more interested in finding a space in which to exist. That can be important if you don’t have that space, like for the general homeless population, who will sometimes break into a building just to be there, but the squatting I’m talking about tends to involve the idea of creating a space that can contribute to the community rather than take away from it. In the U.S., squatters often take away from the local community by alienating neighbors or sucking resources from neighborhoods, without giving anything back.

SFBG What’s an example of sucking resources?
HD In Buffalo, New York, which is the second poorest city in the country, it’s easy to find an abandoned house and easy to get away with it. There was a group in this one house, and they would go to neighborhood meetings and get themselves voted into leader roles in neighborhood committees, and then they stopped scheduling meetings. They used that leverage to dissolve local councils, so the neighborhood couldn’t have a cohesive voice to advocate against them [the squatters]. It would have been great to get involved with local committees, but not when your motive is to do away with them.

SFBG I want to talk about squatting as a political act. When you started squatting, did you see it as a necessity, a lifestyle choice, a political act or all of the above?
HD When I started, I thought of it as a fun adventure. Of course, I didn’t want to pay rent, but I saw that I had the means to do this adventure and it worked out. Later there was a goal of making it a community space--which we wouldn’t have been able to make if we had to spend all our time working jobs to pay rent--but it didn’t work out, due to internal conflicts. This is not the reason for all squatters; you have people squatting out of necessity or the right to be in there own space...like with the foreclosures, now you hear about families squatting in their own houses.

SFBG Can you talk about the contrasts between the three squats documented in your film?
HD Hellarity House, a really old squat, at the time of filming, had been around for 10 or so years, it was more of a crash space for travelers, purposefully homeless individuals. Iit was a community space, in the sense that it helped out that specific community. It was also the home of Berkeley Liberation Radio, but it fell victim to a lot of classic squatting problems, including drinking and drug use.
The second segment focuses on Steve DiCaprio and his years-long legal battle for his house. It shows his interactions with police and the Berkeley PD’s response to squatting a house, even if the original owners have been dead for 25 years.
The third segment is about Power Machine, where I lived in Emeryville, practically inside the mall…so surreal, we somehow had the support of police, fire department and landlord, so we knew we were in a good spot. The fire chief brought over a queen-sized mattress as a housewarming gift. They saw us a better alternative to other squatters, whoever else would have ended up there…they were afraid of fires, junkies…

SFBG Is the idea of sustainable squatting an oxymoron?
HD I think the only way to view squatting is through a lens of sustainability, because if you’re not thinking about the long term, you’re not being constructive. I know people who won’t put any work in to a space because they don’t know when they might lose it--but with that attitude, you’ll never create anything worthwhile.
If anything, squatting is like a reality check--because nothing last forever. Even if you’re paying rent, you can get evicted…if you own a house, the City can say it’s not up to code. Knowing that you can lose everything, and still being willing to work on it, is a very valuable outlook on life.

SFBG What is the most disgusting thing you’ve ever seen in a squat?
HD To begin, our squat was very clean…cleaner than most punk houses. That said, it didn’t really cancel out the mold problem. Some rooms had lots of water damage with inexplicable plant growth. On the second story we had plants growing out of the carpet, which was weird because there was no soil. A fascinating phenomenon. There were also weird mushrooms growing out of the walls. In other squats, of course, you always have the ever-disgusting piss bottles. I tend to stay away from those. There was a place in Buffalo where the toilet was broken but people still used it.

SFBG How have the audiences been receiving your screening?
HD I did a brief tour in the Northeast and after did a short talk about using squatting as a community-building tactic rather than a dropout lifestyle. It generated lots of good discussion and got people thinking about squatting in their own communities. It would mean something different in Syracuse (being the Rust Belt with all its urban decay) than Boston, which has money. Two totally different conversations. It’s great that people are talking about it at all, because it’s an idea that needs to be clarified for a lot of Americans who don’t know what squatting is or that it’s even possible. One negative response I got was that I made light of homelessness, because the film shows squatters destroying plumbing. To this I said that the film is about what squatters have done, not necessarily what they should do.

SHELTER: A SQUATUMENTARY
Tues/22, 8 p.m., $6
Artists' Television Access
992 Valencia, SF
(415) 824-3890
www.atasite.org