t is the first day of October and my housemates have become criminals. Last night they studied, ate a meal together and then went to sleep as they have done since they moved in a year ago. Yet this morning is unlike any other: this morning they are breaking the law.

I spent ten months last year living with six students in a squat in central Amsterdam. From the beginning of this month, the tradition of legally occupying unused buildings comes to an end in Holland. Anyone found squatting now faces a prison sentence.

As I think back over the year, I recall the early days when we sat on beer crates for furniture. By January we had installed a kitchen for ourselves. I recall one night in particular when the snow was falling outside, eating a roast dinner together as we marvelled at how we had all ended up living there together.

Whilst I’m sure life goes on like this, it’s difficult to believe that my friends now break the law by doing so. My friend Gina is midway through her undergraduate degree. She told me that "As a student it is stressful to go to class in the morning, knowing that our house and all of my belongings might be gone the same evening. I hope this won’t be for a while yet."

For a student in Edinburgh, the idea of squatting a building is probably absurd. Edinburgh University guarantees an offer of accommodation to all first year students. In the private sector, we can easily find a place to live. This is not so in Amsterdam. Every year students enrol at the two major Universities and need a place to live; but the city cannot cope. Year on year the state fails to provide enough affordable rooms for students. Christien Kop who works for Amsterdams Steunpunt Wonen (ASW), an organisation that attempts to help students find housing, said "There is no new accommodation being built for young people." Research by VU University Amsterdam estimates that there are approximately 1,500 squatters living in Amsterdam as a result of the housing problem.

I remember in the springtime, when the weather was warmer, that a class mate invited me to his house for dinner. He was one of the lucky ones with an affordable, decent sized room close to the University. I found out that he had been on a waiting list for five years for subsidised housing. I met many more Dutch students who were still living with their parents, which usually involved a daily commute of an hour or more into the city. Suddenly my morning sprint by bicycle along Middle Meadow Walk seemed a luxury.

Just imagine it. Halls are full. Your mate has had enough of top and tailing with you (plus your books are taking up all the shelf space). The housing agency is offering you rooms, but they start at 600 euros for ten square metres. What do you do? You squat.

Room upon room lies empty in Amsterdam city centre for years on end, owned by a housing corporation with hundreds of similar properties. They have no plan to find occupants or renovate, the building is a commodity to trade and make profit. In the Netherlands, if you can find an house which has been empty for a year or more you have a legal claim to live there. Or at least you did.

Squatting became widespread after the Second World War. Weary Soldiers returned home to cities such as Rotterdam to find mere rubble. Public opinion was sympathetic to people in need of shelter who actively sought homes in unused buildings. In 1971 the rights of people living in others' property was established in law, and thereby made squatting a viable option for the disadvantaged. During the 1980s, a period of massive demand for housing, UV University research shows that 20,000 people were squatting in Holland’s capital.

The movement is based on the demand for housing: the demand of a soldier in 1945, or the demand of a student in 2010. Simply put, if everyone could afford to have a home, then there would be no squatting.

This is the reality that the politicians who instigated the ban on squatting have failed to take on board. They offer no proposal on how to house the many thousands of people who live in squats across Holland. When I spoke to my friends in Amsterdam about the ban, they had no idea where they will live if the law is rigidly enforced. Their current living situation was not so much a choice, but a necessity and a last resort. Yet those who evict them offer nowhere else to go.

The benefit of squatting to the national housing problem was largely ignored during the debate in Parliament. Instead many speeches, articles and broadcasts have focused on migrants who apparently come to Holland to squat. Right wing politicians such as Van Dalen claim that "most squatters are from abroad" and that the free housing is a motivation to move to Holland. Yet there is no evidence produced to justify this claim. Indeed during the time I spent with other squatters in Amsterdam, I was often the only foreigner.

I’m sure squatting will continue in the Netherlands as it does in Berlin, Barcelona and London. As I’ve realised, it’s born from the necessity for a place to live and this won’t disappear because of a change in law.