The building was unoccupied for 20 years before being expropriated. Photo: Ocupação Saraí/Facebook In the heart of Porto Alegre in Brazil, about two dozen families squatted in an empty building for ten months until their stay came to an end early this summer. Not with police intervention, as past occupations in the same building have, but with a legal decree on July 4 expropriating the property for public housing. Their mobilization was credited with “sensitizing the power of the state government” to declare the building of social importance. As well as being a residence for the families, the building had also been transformed into a cultural space in downtown Porto Alegre. The movement, called the Saraí Occupation, used Facebook to raise awareness and connect with squats in other parts of the country; YouTube to show life within their community; and the hashtag #OcupaSaraiEuApoio (#ISupportOccupySarai) to allow users to follow along on Twitter. An online petition supporting the occupation of the property was also created. With 60 days remaining before the state government would decide whether to sign the expropriation, a video circulated explaining the reasons for the Saraí squat. Among them were the fact that the building was initially created to serve as housing for 40 families, but stayed vacant for nearly ten years, “not fulfilling any social function”. The video tried to create awareness of the situation of people living inside the squat and how public support could help their cause. One of the children who lives at the squat participates in a public protest, promoted by Saraí's residents. Photo: Ocupação Saraí/Facebook The story of a building nobody lived in Built to serve as affordable housing with funds from the National Housing Bank — a defunct Brazilian state firm which financed real estate ventures — the building was never used for its intended purpose. After being used to house the offices of Brazilian public bank Caixa Econômica Federal, it remained abandoned for almost two decades without purpose. According to a special report by the local independent newspaper Jornal Tabaré, in the early 2000s a large real estate company bought the building from the bank for the price of 600,000 reals (around 271,000 US dollars). About two years after making the purchase, having found no use for the property, the company re-sold it for the sum of 1.2 million reals (450,000 dollars), double the value of the initial purchase, to a man who served as a front for the largest criminal organization in Brazil, the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) faction. The group is based in São Paulo, but maintains branches in every state of Brazil as well as in Paraguay and Bolivia. In the abandoned building in Porto Alegre, the members of the faction intended to dig a tunnel leading to the headquarters of a bank a few meters away. According to the Tabaré report, as a result of the scandal generated by the case, “the building returned to the control of the [real estate] company, in spite of the fact that the building's registration was never officially transferred to the Caixa Econômica Federal”. Of the occupations organized by the Movimento Nacional de Luta pela Moradia (MNLM) (National Movement to Fight for Housing) since 2005: Corner of the building were Occupy Saraí is located, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Photo: Ocupação Saraí/Facebook Duas delas foram ações de denúncia pela situação do prédio, com duração de um ou dois dias. A ocupação de moradia que mais durou teve 4 meses, de 20 de novembro de 2006 a 23 de março de 2007. A maneira como foram removidos também é simbólica – mas da repressão. Two of them were protests to denounce the situation of the building, and lasted for one or two days. The longest occupation of the building lasted for four months, from November 20, 2006, to March 23, 2007. The manner in which the occupiers were removed is also symbolic — but because of the repression. In August 2013, families from the MNLM once again occupied the unused, empty building in the city centre. In September, military police intervened one morning. While they were fixing a pipe problem at the building, some residents claimed to be harassed and beaten up by police officers who were passing by. The company itself went as far as to recognize the “irregularity” of the intervention. But Saraí resisted. Ten months would pass until the state's decision. The notion of property, strongly debated and analyzed among the squatters, was explained in another a video by Gloria Maria, a girl who saw Saraí as her home for the last months. She called it the “right of owning”. After listing a number of things that one may own, Gloria Maria linked property to the “right of owning” a citizenship, which she calls “a temporary place”.