”These forms of social resistance [homesteading, squatting and urban gardening] were also highly politically symbolic. By transforming the built environment, all three movements demonstrated the success of community reclamation as the means to combat physical and social decay. Although city agencies recognized some aspects of this resistance, funded some of it, or looked the other way, their policy preferences remained driven by the real estate sector’s political demands…”

Christopher Mele, Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New York City.