Canada, Quebec City occupied building safe, -- fire departement

There's absolutely no security reasons that would justify the expulsion of the occupied house on De la Chevrotière street» said a representative of the Quebec City fire departement after a team of inspectors visited the Comite populaire squat this morning. The mayor commented that «as long as there is no security concerns and that we dont get complains from neighbors, we will not expel the squatters», adding that he is not in a «confrontation mood». This in itself get the local mainstream media upset, a local right-wing TV commentator said that this mean that «as long as it's safe, you can squat any city owned building». The same TV chanel hope to stear some public hatred tomorow by broadcasting a populist show titled «should the city tolerate squatters». Your truly and a comrade will do it's best to defend the squatters position...

Meanwhile, the city concilor responsible for housing said today that they are in negociation with community groups so that someone buy the squatted house and build a cooperative as soon as possible. He said that construction could beggin as soon as july! We didint have the time to check with our contacts in community groups, but that could be a good news (that is, if they abandon the idea of condominiums). More on this latter.

The squat was open friday may 17th by activists from the Comite populaire Saint-Jean-Baptiste at the end of a 300 strong march to denounce the housing crisis and demand social housings. The squatters have three main demands: that the occupied house be transformed into an selfmanaged housing cooperative; that a moratorium on any new condominium project be implemented until the vacancy rate goes up 3% and finaly that the provincial governement start a program to build 8 000 social housing units a year.

Nicolas Phebus

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