Last week one of Britain’s highest-profile and most politically significant squats was given its latest stay of execution. Residents at Grow Heathrow, a squat set up on derelict land in protest at plans for a third runway, were granted the right to appeal against a ruling by the royal courts of justice giving them 14 days to leave. The case has been rumbling on since the land was occupied in 2010; despite many eviction attempts, the squatters look set to fight another day.

In this, however, Grow Heathrow is bucking the trend. Almost exactly five years after the government introduced new laws criminalising squatting in residential properties, it is harder than ever to squat in Britain – even in non-residential ones. Near where I live in Brighton, a group of activists recently established a squatted community centre in property owned by the University of Brighton, with the aim of providing food, shelter and support to the city’s ever growing homeless population – a job that the authorities are signally failing to do. Local papers reported that the squatters were busily rehanging doors, sanding floors and planning workshops on subjects as diverse as plumbing, women’s issues and political theory. Within a couple of weeks, they were evicted and the place was shut down.

Historically, squats have been places in which new cultural, political and technological ideas have flourished

It is worth asking why squatting – even squatting with laudable social or environmental intentions – is seen as such a threat. In a new book, The Autonomous City: A History of Urban Squatting, the Oxford university geographer Alex Vasudevan documents how across Europe and north America the economic crisis has been followed by a crackdown on squatters’ rights.

At a time when housing is unaffordable for so many, governments in countries including the US, Britain, Spain and the Netherlands have introduced tighter laws in order to discourage the kind of mass squatting that we last saw in Britain after the end of the second world war. Supporters of the new laws claim that they defend the rights of hardworking homeowners against squatters; their critics see instead measures designed to uphold a system of profit-making from property that is fundamentally unsustainable.

From the Calais camps to the E15 Focus mothers’ occupation of the Carpenters estate in Newham , squats continue to be political flashpoints. And yet, for those of us who spend our lives working to pay the rent or mortgage, it can be difficult to drum up much passion about squatters’ rights. Wouldn’t we all love to live for free, dedicating ourselves to nothing more pressing than organising “radical embroidery” workshops, such as those at Grow Heathrow?

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But a 2011 report by Crisis found that the majority of squatters had previously been sleeping rough: of homeless people squatting, 34% had been in care, 42% had physical ill health or a disability, and 41% reported mental ill health.

Squats are not only a practical solution to housing need; they also have cultural benefits for us all. Historically, they have been places in which new cultural, political and technological ideas have flourished. The 1970s feminist and gay movements had their roots in squats. Artists and writers from Jake Arnott to Grayson Perry came out of the 1980s squatting scene, and much of the environmental movement has grown from squat culture. Grow Heathrow has pioneered ways to live sustainably off-grid: power comes from turbines and wood-burners, with food cooked using energy-efficient biochar burners. “Squats tend to attract these kind of maverick thinkers,” says one former resident. “They get a chance to try out their mad ideas, and develop them into stuff which ends up changing the world.”

So we should all try to get beyond our envy of their low-cost lifestyle, and support the squatters at Grow Heathrow. If nothing else, they remind us what socially useful things we might all be doing if we weren’t obsessing about covering our overheads. We could all do with a bit more free time and space in our lives. Radical embroidery? Bring it on.