Find Your Building
Finding an empty building is generally pretty easy. Your city is full of empties ranging from destroyed shells to perfectly livable places that have nothing wrong with them. The best way to find a building is simply to walk around the streets and look for the signs. Is the letterbox overflowing? Is the garden overgrown? Are there broken and/or boarded-up windows and doors? Is the power off? Check at the electricity meter.
If unsure, you might want to ask a postie, a local shop owner or a neighbour if anyone is living in or using a building you suspect is empty. Be inventive and plausible — make out that you’re looking to rent the place, or would like to acquire it for a housing co-op, or research it as part of an ‘architecture’ or ‘geography’ project on housing.
Or, it may be just as successful to be honest with the neighbours and local residents:
Explain your case and tell them how you came to be in your situation. Give them statistics on the numbers of people who are homeless, on the waiting list for public housing or unable to find affordable housing in the private rental market.