In response to Paul Butterfill's comments about squatters (Letters, December 11), squatting provides an avenue of selfhelp whereby squatters like myself do not burden the taxpayer by claiming housing benefit nor add to the downward spiral of debt faced by many mortgage holders and tenants.

For some of us there are no other options.

Squatting often helps to provide a critique of what some squatters perceive to be an "archaic" system of property and ownership designed to keep the rich getting richer and the rest of us in our place.

This often manifests itself in ways which are a service to society.

Squats have been used as social centres, cafes, and as places of interaction, sharing, learning, music and art, as well as places of local community resistance to gentrification and as desperate last stands against the tide of concrete and tarmac destroying this land.

The law which Mr Butterfill describes as "archaic" is section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 (commonly known as squatters' rights) which has been amended in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. This law is often ignored.

As squatting is a civil offence and not a criminal one if the police evict squats then they commit a criminal offence, although precious little recourse is available to those who are again on the streets.

One final issue I would like to raise is the suggestion that landlords need "lose concentration for only a moment".

Admittedly mistakes are occasionally made but most squatters look for properties which appear to have been vacant for a lengthy period of time as this increases the chance of having a home for longer.

  • Rosy Halldric, no fixed abode, Brighton