Confusing the Legal with the Social. Part 2

So now to the heart of the matter.

In recent decades the mounting evidence that squatters were present (in some degree) in American cities during the frontier era has led to some re-evaluation of Abrams' position that urban squatting simply didn't happen in the U.S.. The most cogent response restates Abrams' conclusion with the modification "to a significant degree".

On page 77 of their general history of Central Park, Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar critically examine what they believe is a myth of widespread squatting within the bounds of the park prior to construction. Upon examining contemporary tax lists, church registers, land records, and censuses, Rosenzweig and Blackmar drew a portrait of the park’s former occupants. What they found is exceedingly interesting:  many park inhabitants had permission to occupy those lots, or rented their homes. The paired footnote (on p548) extends their discussion greatly, concluding that “…it seems unlikely that the number of true squatters ever exceeded the number of property owners.” which they estimate to be 1/5th of the total.

Having established to their satisfaction that the pre-park inhabitants were not occupying the park illegally, Rosenzweig and Blackmar turn to answering the question of how the park residents were labeled squatters, and their conclusions rest upon two points. The first is that about 90 percent of the inhabitants were African Americans or recent European immigrants. The second is that more than two-thirds of the park population were low or no-skill workers; day laborers, gardeners, or servants. Of the remaining third, they were skilled tradesmen that still located them in the laboring classes, such as stone masons or carpenters.

To the the authors, this ethnic and occupational profile argues that the word “squatter” is incorrect when describing the Central Park evictions. To their minds, the evidence of permitted occupation alongside the generally high level of employment and the ethnic composition of the population suggests that, “[l]ike the word shanty, in mid-19th-century New York the term squatter was more a cultural category than a formal legal description, a convenient shorthand for the sort of poor people more affluent New Yorkers preferred to remove from their neighborhoods.”

I chose this example because this conclusion places the authors squarely in the center of that quaking bog I identified in part one of this topic; that undefined middle ground between the legal and the social meanings of squatting.

First, the authors present a needlessly narrow and quasi-legal definition of squatting to support their conclusions.
Second, their archival sources require that the occupants report their tenure accurately.
Third, they assume that the landlords of a rental property obtained clear title before renting.
Fourth, they frame squatting as a permanent category of ownership, one without a path to ownership.

Each of these is a critical topic for further discussion and will make up the next arc of entries.