The Dutch consider themselves a pragmatic people, a mindset that has often led to radical or unorthodox solutions to social and political problems. Squatting in the Netherlands, which was legal between 1914 and 2010, was one such unorthodox solution. In 1914 the Dutch High Court ruled that citizens had the right to squat vacant or abandoned properties as long as certain conditions were met. Even as the sociopolitical circumstances around squatting changed dramatically over the course of the century, legal rights remained in place. It was, for the most part, seen as a practical solution to a quotidian problem: the shortage of access to affordable, adequate housing. While squatting in other parts of Europe coalesced alongside radical political theory and rhetoric, the Dutch—at first—approached the idea of squatting not so much as a deviant act but as a simple equation: if there was a surplus of empty properties and a surplus of people in need of housing, it was only logical that those in need of housing would take over the empty properties. By the time a more militant political movement began to form around squatting in the mid-1970s, the practice was already well established.

The chaos created by the German occupation during the Second World War solidified the legitimacy of squatting in Amsterdam.