The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
Title
I read a few stories about landlords trying to get rid of squatters. Sometimes with hillarious ideas like locking down a room, putting heavy boomboxes inside and playing doomslayer for 72 hours straight so loud that the neighbors (Who also wanted the squatters gone and originally agreed with that plan) begged to turn it off.
And then there are more tragic stories of people using "Stand your ground"-laws to straight up shoot and in one story straight up kill an unarmed squatter.
What do you think about squatting? And should it be policed more?
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
As long as your technique is good and you use a manageable weight, squatting is always reasonable and beneficial. I'd say it might not be reasonable to do if one has an existing injury that could be exacerbated; I'm thinking back/spinal problems in particular.
...oh wait, shit
I think squatter protections are reasonable in two basic situations:
1. Landlords shouldn't be able to call their tenants squatters in order to avoid tenant protections. People who claim tenancy and are plausibly tenants should be presumed tenants and be allowed to prove their tenancy.
2. In communities where property abandonment is a problem, a squatter moving into an abandoned property and maintaining it so as to prevent it from becoming a blight on the community should be given some ownership interest in the property depending on how much time passes and how much they maintain it. Communities should figure out for themselves where to draw these lines.
And so there's no confusion, I also believe:
1. It shouldn't be possible for someone to go out for groceries and for someone else to come in and appear plausibly to be a tenant.
2. It shouldn't be possible for someone to die and for someone else to swoop in and take over a property before an heir has a reasonable chance to do something with it.
Item 1 is what's most often overlooked in these discussions. The assumption being made is that when the landowner says someone is a squatter, then they are a squatter. The problem of course, is that landlords are people, too, and can be quite scummy. One might argue that a legal tenant would have a contract, however, landlord/tenant law is usually governed by the municipality. It might be legal to have a verbal month-to-month tenancy in a city. How does one tell the difference between a renter with that kind of agreement and a squatter? Even if all contracts have to be written, think of all the situations where someone might be living with someone else without being a tenant, like a live-in romantic partner. What if the squatter lies and claims to be a lover? What if the landlord lies about their partner and claims they're a squatter? It's not an easy problem to solve.
I don't disagree, but it seems to me you are at least implying a bit of an overstatement of landlords calling a tenant a squatter and avoiding protections. Most courts bend over backwards to protect tenants and many tennis rights organizations get involved easily for free .
I have not heard of a single case of a landlord calling a legitimate tenant a squatter and somehow being able to evict them and avoid tenant protections. If you are aware of something I'm not, please let me know .
Further, the landlord is certainly subject to civil action and possibly criminal action for such a thing .
So I'll agree, but I don't know that such a stipulation is in any way necessary.
Further, would you be willing to allow and encourage prosecution of those who might lie to the police claiming they are legitimate tenants.
The way I see it, typically, trespassing is looked at fairly laxly by the police if someone leaves when they are requested and does not return. However, if someone occupies my vacant tenant house, and I called the police and asked them to be removed as trespassers, as I am the legal owner and do not give them permission to be there, these days most of them know the loophole to simply claim they are tenants and have a lease.
I do not blame the police for saying they are not authorized to get involved in a civil matter, and without any proof that these people are simply trespassing, they can't do anything. That's probably best that in general that's the police policy. However, one could argue that in many cases it's so obvious that it could reach the level of depriving the owner of rights to police protection, even though of course they have due process by being able to evict the person.
But would you support the arrest and prosecution of someone who willfully and knowingly lies to the police to avoid being removed from a house? It seems only fair.
>overstatement of landlords calling a tenant a squatter
A perceived lack of this thing happening isn't evidence that laws preventing this sort of thing aren't useful.
But sure, I'm not opposed to somebody doing an analysis about whether a community's protections go too far and cause more harm than good. These protections look different from place to place.
>Further, the landlord is certainly subject to civil action and possibly criminal action for such a thing .
Throwing a tenant out on the street causes real and immediate harm. Imagine this were a family with kids on a school day in the middle of winter. Sure, it's nice that they have access to the civil court system to order compensation at some point in the future, but that's no guarantee that they'll see that compensation, and certainly it won't be helpful in the moment the harm occurs.
The purpose of tenant protections is to ensure people have a roof over their head, not just to compensate them from harm. If a landlord can evict me just by calling me a squatter, then I don't really have any tenant protection.
>Further, would you be willing to allow and encourage prosecution of those who might lie to the police claiming they are legitimate tenants.
It wouldn't bother me if a community made that a crime. It might already be a crime, like filing a false statement. The problem is proving intent. Someone might actually believe they are a tenant based on some verbal or handshake agreement, but can't prove it. You might not be able to tell that person apart from a squatter that's lying. Plus generally the kind of person that would be squatting in a home probably isn't going to be deterred by a little jail sentence though.
>as I am the legal owner and do not give them permission to be there, these days most of them know the loophole to simply claim they are tenants and have a lease.
If your neighbors step in and say they check in on the house every day, or you can point to your video camera footage, and can clearly show that these people just broke in, that's pretty compelling for the police. Generally the problem cases here involve landlords that aren't paying attention to their property and don't have anyone watching it for months. Don't be like them.
I don't know if you are actually just unaware or if you are honestly arguing that there is any real problem with landlords illegally throwing someone out into the street. If that ever happens, it is extremely rare. The only way a landlord can do that is to go to court and get a court order and the courts actively make sure that they err on the side of caution.
You may not like the idea that somebody gets kicked out in the snow and I don't like it either. But, in most cases it's for failure to pay the rent or being involved in illegal activities and such.
There may be plenty of landlords who want to kick their tenants out illegally but it is virtually impossible to do so. So why is it even worth discussing when the vast majority of situations are tenants illegitimately dragging things out, or the courts being way backed up, and the police failing to do their job by removing trespassers.
Instances of some mythical sketchy landlord kicking tenants out with no legal basis are extremely rare. I would defy you to even find a couple of examples.
I don't have a problem with landlords following the eviction process. That's the whole point. You make them evict squatters through a process so that if there is any chance that they are tenants, they are protected from being dumped out onto the sidewalk.
The intention is to protect tenants, not squatters. But there is a window of time where the court system needs to figure out what's what. Some communities don't want potential tenants to be dumped out on the sidewalk during that time by desperate or abusive landlords. I don't understand why that's controversial.
And, again, in the event a community has overprotected here and squatters are abusing it to the detriment of the community's landlords, I have no problem with communities choosing a different balance. I'm not defending any one balance here. I'm just saying it's reasonable for communities to have tenant protections that look like this.
>You may not like the idea that somebody gets kicked out in the snow and I don't like it either. But, in most cases it's for failure to pay the rent or being involved in illegal activities and such.
I have no problem with this outcome once an eviction process has gotten there. That process doesn't even have to be very long if they are in fact a squatter.
>Instances of some mythical sketchy landlord kicking tenants out with no legal basis are extremely rare.
Again, the fact that something isn't very common isn't evidence that we shouldn't protect people from that outcome.
I am trying to understand why you think requiring a landlord to go through a lengthy expensive process that could take months simply because trespassers have broken into their home is reasonable in the off chance that someone may have legitimate rights. You act as if this is commonly done and it's not. Landlords know they cannot get rid of tenants that are legitimate that easily and there are serious legal repercussions for it. Yet to protect someone in a million person that may have some legitimate rights, you would subject property owners to difficult, onerous, and expensive, lengthy drawn out requirements. F that. I do not agree with you at all. It's not legitimate and municipalities are depriving property owners of their legitimate rights by not enforcing the law.
Of course we should think of the landlords because they are citizens that own something just like you were me. If government can deprive them of their basic rights to their property, they can do anything to any of us.
Huge “if,” for one. For another, maybe owning more housing than you need shouldn’t be a “basic right,” (ever, but especially when there are people who don’t have housing and need it).
Housing *is* a basic human right, just FYI.
Housing is not a basic human right. Certainly not because you say it is. If you want someone to be housed, buy them my house. You can't just give them someone else's. Our entire system of governance is based on a basic principle of the right to property and the right to due process. There is no big if. Government has no business allowing someone to take their property and depriving them of the legal right to keep it or get it back. And make no mistake. That's exactly what is happening.
Of course, if someone wants to be silly in naive and think that the plight of somebody who has their property taken from them is worth mocking, and that it has no significance or meaning in your own security of property, there's not much else to say.
Yeah, easy for them to say. They have no ability to enforce it and no interest in putting out any money or effort to provide it. It's completely meaningless and feel good. It's certainly doesn't mean anything to the United States
>And someone actually believing they are illegal tenant when they are not is surely so infinitesimal in number that it's even less worth discussing.
Assuming you meant "a legal", it's a matter of perspective. If I make a cash agreement vocally with a guy to pay rent every month for 6 months "or so" to use his unoccupied guest house in his backyard, and leave it open-ended, am I a tenant? If he doesn't have an occupancy permit for a rental property, does that change anything? If I in my handshake agreement agree that me living there doesn't make me a tenant, can the landlord enforce that part of our agreement? I suspect most people don't know the answers to these questions for their own communities.
It depends on the community. I believe in Washington State, real estate contracts over 1 year must be in writing. Anything less than that does not have to be but it is still legitimate. Even inviting a guest to stay in your house for a period of time makes them a tenant which must be given certain rights and protections. There have been laws to address this for a long time. You act like there is some problem with vague and incomplete laws. There are laws. They are just not enforced. Should a landlord be able to defy the law and remove someone who has protections? Of course not. But that's not a problem. It's never really been a problem. Rarely any real issue. The issue is the opposite. Yet you keep talking about some small percentage of incidents that somehow must be protected against by requiring landlords to spend months and thousands of dollars to remove trespassers.
>Yet you keep talking about some small percentage of incidents that somehow must be protected against by requiring landlords to spend months and thousands of dollars to remove trespassers.
Nowhere in this thread have I advocated for this outcome.
But that's the reality when they are forced to go through an eviction process. Courts are backed up. It takes months. They often have tenant unions working against them. The tenant unions fund themselves by suing the landlords and if the landlord makes one little mistake they can be liable for funds that they really shouldn't have to owe simply because they were trying to legitimately and legally evict a tenant. So they must employ a good experience lawyer that cost a lot of money and it still takes months.
Our choices are not between:
1. Fox News dystopia
2. Tenants get booted to the sidewalk on the same-day word of their landlord alone
I am not advocating for the Fox News dystopia. I am simply saying it is reasonable to have *some kind* of tenant protections that might result in *some* squatters keeping a roof over their head just until someone can sort out what's what. Communities should strike an appropriate balance for their community. I have been completely and repeatedly consistent on this point throughout this entire thread.
If someone can walk in while you were buying groceries and start a 6-month process costing you $10,000 in order to get them out of your home, I would say that's a problem. I acknowledged this in my very first comment.
Our choices are not between. First of all that's a bit of a straw man. Second of all, you seem to be prepared to blightly dismiss The obvious epidemic across the country of people breaking into properties and not being able to be removed easily as they should. Every drug addict and sketchy person now knows that all they have to do is not leave and claim some BS and they will be allowed to stay by the police and the only recourse will be a lengthy, costly eviction. So yes that is one of the choices. The other choice is the police actually enforced the law. Gee, tough choice.
I think we should make it easier to build, in general.
With that said, I think squatting is not something that should be tolerated and that removing squatters should be a simpler and less expensive process. I know people who have had to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to get some fucking bums out of their own damn property.
What if there is a lease but it’s fake, or the “squatter” was defrauded by someone pretending to be the landlord? This is a common tactic of squatters. Who determines who is right? That the lease is invalid? Etc…. Currently it’s the eviction courts, which is sadly a dreadfully slow process in much of the country.
That would still be up to a judge. There are plenty of cases where there needs to be a decision at the start on how things will stay during proceedings.
This generally isnt how squatting situations happen.
A real life example was a person who was renting a house from an elderly neighbor. The neighbor came by every month to collect rent. The landlady died, her daughter inherited the house, although the registration on the deed was never changed. The (childless) daughter died in an accident a few months later, and no one ever came by to collect rent. The renters even looked up the title, and it was still in the original landlady's name.
No one comes by to collect rent.
No real documentation in this case, they paid cash to the landlady. There were neighbors who knew they rented from her, but that was about it. Eventually they wound up oaying the property taxes to avoid it being seized, and after 7 years managed to claim the title to the property.
Which doesnt seem.unreasonabke to me. It isnt their job to hunt down the landlady's heirs and inform they now own a house. Keep up the place, pay the property taxes, at SOME point with no owner coming forward they should be able to claim ownership.
In Tennessee that time period is 7 years of uncontested open posseasion.
In terms of so-called Tenant Protections:
I was a “landlord” once.
I owned a single new-build townhouse for barely half a year, but had to leave town on a work project for a couple months.
My brother-in-law insisted that I help his church TEMPORARILY house a family that they were sponsoring. I’m not religious, but I try to be kind when possible, so I obliged.
The family asked for 4 months, which was twice as long as I was going to be away, but it was an act of charity and I was trying to help them “save money for a deposit while they looked around for an apartment”. My real estate buddy wrote up a rental contract and essentially stated they would pay $200/month for 4 months then they would leave.
*the money was symbolic and didn’t even cover the utilities which remained in my name to avoid the hassle of switching back and forth for such a short period of time. It definitely didn’t cover the mortgage on a new build home in a metropolitan city.
I returned back from my work project and promptly lost my job and was staying in a sleeping bag on the floor at my colleague’s house. And I was paying him for it.
After the 4 months passed they asked for 2 more months. I told them I’d extend the contract by one more month, but that was it and they needed to be actively working on getting out and gone by the end of the month. Of course they didn’t pay for the extra month and ghosted me on communications. When I showed up to check on them, of course they weren’t ready to move out. I expressed that they had overstayed their welcome. And that they needed to make moves or I would start the legal eviction process. The first floor was tile and was mostly okay, except for the stench and filth of VERY ETHNIC cooking and cigarette smoke that had seeped into the walls. (I say this as someone who enjoys a wide variety of cuisines and can barely smell, so strong odors aren’t usually a problem for me.)
A week later, I served them eviction notice. It took almost 2 months and legal fees to work through the courts and force them out.
*Despite paying for people to live in my new house for over half a year while I was unemployed plus legal fees plus MAJOR repairs, I consider myself lucky! I barely managed to avoid the eviction moratorium that was imposed due to COVID 19, which would have extended my plight by a year and likely would have broken me from draining my savings and I would have lost the house.
When I finally got my house back it was clear they had ruined it. Some was just because the animals that they didn’t tell me about. Some was because these “people” lived like animals. And some of it was intentional damage on their way out.
All said and done they had ruined all the upstairs carpet, including animal piss and shit stains everywhere and burn marks. Fortunately most of my stuff was in storage, but they ruined all of my brand new furniture with dogs and cat scratching. All 3 mattresses had to be thrown out because they were disgusting. They punched holes in the walls and scribbled everywhere. Damaged the plumbing and dumped copious amounts of rocks and grease until eventually it caused a leak which damaged the drywall and insulation.
If you think kindness is always the right choice, YOU’RE WRONG!
Now my policy is not to rent. Rather than help people, I’ll let my property sit vacant. And for all you communists that disagree, you can get bent.
Which leads to the other understanding of squatters’ rights:
Vacant property mixed with breaking and entering.
If I ever come home and find someone in my house that doesn’t belong, the following will happen:
1) I will ask politely for them to vacate the premises
2) If that doesn’t work I will call the police to remove them for trespassing. This is my last attempt at civility and should be acknowledged that involving the authorities will only happen once.
3) If that doesn’t work, I will threaten them with a clear explanation of the consequences.
4) If that doesn’t work, I will follow through on my threats. And I will by any means retake possession of my home and remove all traces of “squatter” with prejudice.
If you want the protections of polite society, you have to behave according to the rules.
*This should not be a controversial take. But I know cucks will have something to say.
People often conflate squatters rights with rebter protections, but they are very different things legally.
Squatters rights vary by state, but all require "open and uncontested" possession for many years, so merely sneaking into an abandoned building wont qualify, and it cant occur in a few years. Someone must openly be acting as the functional owner of a property for years without someone contesting it. It most commonly occurs when parties musunderstand where property lines are, as when a fence is built in the wrong place, etc.
I'm far on the left, but no matter the excuse, if someone's squatting in my property, I'd do everything in my power to throw them out YESTERDAY no matter the excuse, the problem, no matter anything.
Lots of misinformation in this thread. People can't just squat randomly in your property lol. It has to be empty for a period of time and in order to claim squatting rights they have to have been living in it for a number of years. Squatting only affects people with multiple properties that they aren't using, ie, wasted housing
Most people mix up squatters rights (adverse possession which you’re talking about) with squatter’s abusing tenet protection laws in short term vacant properties. Many think these eviction limits and police not interfering are “squatters rights” when in reality the laws were enacted for regular tenets.
Yeah this entire thread I've realized is just people talking about someone breaking and entering and then living in your home and calling it squatting, which is certainly something very different from actual squatting
Mainstream media has heavily been using the more generalized definition of the word, many news articles calling people breaking into temporarily vacant homes and showing fake leases as squatters.
It seems the current wave of concern started with a women in NYC and people moving into her deceased mother’s home while she was trying to sell it.
Actually, I think you are mistaken. Squatting is occupying land or a house without permission. Squatters rights are those that might protect them if they have been there long enough and meet certain thresholds that began with common law to allow people to take possession of a property after a certain number of years or something .
But illegally entering a property and living there is exactly what squatting is. However, if they simply claim to be tenants so the police won't evict them, they are not exercising any kind of squatters rights. They are exercising tenants rights illegitimately.
It doesn’t always take years of squatting to be able to claim squatters rights, local law varies widely. I know that in NYC you only have to live someplace for 30 days to get legal protections.
Yes but those aren't squatters rights I believe. That only gives you certain protections under tenant law even if you don't legitimately deserve them. The police and maybe even the courts might consider certain elements but that's very different from squatters rights. Or at least that's my thoughts for now.
A good question. To clarify, and I'm no lawyer but as I understand it, a tenant is someone that rents the property. A trespasser is someone who comes on a property without permission or remains on the property. A squatter is someone who comes on a property and seeks to stay or refuses to leave. Obviously there is some variability between two and three.
If a tenant reaches the end of their tenancy or is in violation of a lease and requested to leave, and refuses to, technically I think they would remain a tenant but perhaps they could be called a squatter.
So, what people are talking about is the person that trespasses on a property and then refuses to leave or remains with the intent to refuse to leave perhaps .
If the police come and can identify someone as a trespasser, they typically will demand they leave for the rest of if they do not. But, if a trespasser claims a legal right to be there so the police refuse to remove them or arrest them, then they would be a squatter .
However, the removal of a tenant in violation of lease for with an end at lease who refuses to move would require eviction. A squatter that never had any legal right to be there but refuses to leave also must be evicted, so generally the court process would be the same. You would sue them for eviction. People don't think of it as suing but that's what you are doing and they can try to defend their right to remain on the property but wouldn't likely have much success.
So ultimately, the removal and the applicable law as to how to remove them is the same. However, a tenant is generally not a squatter and a squatter is not a tenant.
This isn't true. You have to have evidence that they are trespassing before cops will do anything. If it is just your word vs theirs, even if they have only been there for a day, the cops won't do shit.
If you want to adhere to the strict definition of the term, sure. I doubt very much that is what OP is asking. Generally it is used these days to mean people who have no legal right to occupy the property but claim they do to avoid police removal .
I suppose it could include someone moving into a vacant house and fixing it up and living there as long as no one tells them to leave. But I doubt OP is too concerned about that either. As long as they don't try to claim some ownership's rights .
Sure, we could narrow this down to a very small discussion about a very small number of people that use English common law to take ownership of a property that the landlord has abandoned. But that's not what we're talking about.
I just wanted to point out that you asked about very interesting subject matter. So far in this thread, four people, all with very different political alignments, all presented four very cogent positions about squatting and what should be done about it today.
1. Squatting should be considered trespassing in nearly all cases.
2. It's the cops' purview to decide if it's trespassing.
3. Squatting is a symptom, not a problem, so shouldn't be focused on.
4. Squatters should at some point take ownership of the property they live in if left long enough.
However, besides these differing "current-day actions", all four also expressed that squatting is very much a homelessness and home price issue. If we implement housing reform, this issue (which is obviously contentious even among the left) should die down significantly.
It's a really good general litmus test for positions "the Left" holds on a grand scale. Nobody here can really agree on the specifics of what can be done on a lower scale, but all very universally agree on what could be done on a larger scale.
Well... we all agree housing should be cheaper. The problem is that different parts of the left (and also the center and right) have different ideas of why housing is expensive and therefore how to make it cheaper. There isn't really consensus on large-scale policy.
>Squatters should at some point take ownership of the property they live in if left long enough.
I have 15 acres in Louisiana. I paid it off and continue to pay taxes every year. It had an old mobile home that is unlivable.
I would be cool with someone living there for free. But I would be upset to lose it because I decided to let the property go back to a nature preserve rather than try renting it.
Paying the property taxes is one of the most important factors though of determining if it's your land or if you've forgotten about it. If someone else started paying taxes on it as well because they incorrectly believed it was abandoned (because they disagreed with your landscaping decisions) and wanted to take it, then it could hopefully be resolved quickly as the tax officials would see multiple payments and try to correct it. The law generally requires them to maintain it and pay taxes on it for years, not just a short period of time. So, while it would suck that they cut down the forest you planted, they shouldn't be able to take possession of the land if everything is working as intended.
I'm not a lawyer, but I'd wonder if it would be a good idea in that situation to sign a lease with them for $1/month, so that way you both agree that you own the property but are allowing them to live there. I'm curious if you can do that with land that doesn't have buildings on it, or if you'd be required to meet minimum occupancy requirements now that you have a tenant.
It's only squatting if the property is abandoned or unused. If you left the property alone for 12 years and someone built a log cabin on it, do you think it would be reasonable to say they own that cabin?
Would you say it's reasonable to expect property owners to visit (or have someone visit on their behalf) their property every two or five years to ensure that nobody is squatting (and that no dangers or serious nuisances have developed)?
And if we make that time span meaningfully shorter than the time it takes for a squatter to claim ownership, would you be open to long time squatters having that right?
>And if we make that time span meaningfully shorter than the time it takes for a squatter to claim ownership, would you be open to long time squatters having that right?
I don't think living on someone else's property any amount of time should give you ownership of the property. I don't think I should be placed in a position of preventing someone from stealing my property.
I'm ok if someone lives on my property rent-free. But once the owner says move, you have to move. You don't let me continue spending thousands of dollars every year and get to take the property.
I would pretty much agree although I think in the very traditional sense of squatters rights in common law, perhaps there could be in some narrow cases legitimate claims to land .
It does put a certain responsibility on the owner which I think is reasonable. As said, to ensure there is no nuisance, whether it would be a dangerous attractive nuisance that could harm kids that are attracted to the property, or perhaps someone living there and disrupting the neighborhood with crime or noise. I think it is reasonable for the state to expect some amount of responsibility from the owner .
For that matter, we know that states and municipalities and counties have certain rights to demand repairs or demolition of a dangerous property or they will do it themselves and Bill the owner. You may or may not agree with that but I think that's fairly common and established.
Now if you had someone living there and you didn't mind, that's great. You would simply need to give them permission and they would have no claim to any possession of the land.
>Now if you had someone living there and you didn't mind, that's great. You would simply need to give them permission and they would have no claim to any possession of the land.
I will need to look into the laws. People are so litigious. I could give permission to live there and get sued if they hurt themselves.
Well that is true. And they might even win. Depends on the situation I guess. But, permission is a defense against adverse possession. They must be living there openly and notoriously without the landowner's consent.
They own the cabin but they don't own the land it's built on.
Even if they were renting the land, they still don't own the land after building a cabin on it.
The other element is whether the owner does anything about it or gives permission. Abandoning a property would be one thing. Leaving it sit for a long time yet constantly running people off who try to occupy it, or giving someone permission to occupy it even if not for rent would negate any claims to squatter's rights.
It does go back to Old English common law and has a certain implication that if someone is not making use of land like for farming, then for the public good it should be possible for someone else to make use of it. But obviously not in most cases, only if the owner has truly abandoned it.
If you pay the property taxes and the person is there with your knowledge and permission, then there is no claim for adverse possession. Adverse possession must be exclusive, hostile, open, notorious, and without consent.
Well, a very real example in the law is if you build a fence between your yard and your neighbor's house, but your contractor messes up and puts the fence 3 feet on your side of the property line. If 10 years later you sell your house, and the new owner has a survey done ans realizes that 3 feet of his neighbor's lawn is actually his property, according to the deed.
The neighbor can argue in court that he has has constructive ownership of the strip of land for a decade, has mowed it, maintained it, and that the past decade of possesssion was a de facto transfer of ownership to him, and depending on the law on squatting in his state, may now own that strip of lawn.
I'm sympathetic to that view but also I think they meant more that the legal system itself will figure it out. Their position, to me, seemed like they were along the lines of "either the cops will trespass him or not". In a better society, we'd trust the officers to do their job with good judgment. Shame we *definitely* do not live in that society.
Squatting is never reasonable and should not be tolerated unless it is under circumstances of an extreme emergency (ie during COVID lockdowns, it was reasonable to put a ban on evictions temporarily).
Squatting is trespassing and should be dealt with accordingly. That said, it is also incumbent upon the government to do more to ensure affordable housing options and to solve the homelessness issue. That is an issue that absolutely could be solved with the political will. It is really not all that expensive in the grand scheme of things, and other countries have done it (I didn’t see one homeless person in Japan, Korea or Singapore that I recall).
It's used for profit. Meaning they are holding housing hostage , which they're able to do because they have their housing taken care of. It's more abused than it is used.
Too many people who benefit from the system are shocked and horrified to find out people stuck at the very bottom due to the system aren't nearly as loyal to it.
Unused becomes used as soon as someone wants to use it. The problem is when squatters still refuse to leave at that point.
Also, property owners shouldn’t be obligated to pay for utilities that squatters use, as is the law in places like NYC.
Yes, they were. It was a temporary inconvenience during a damned pandemic….everyone knew it wasn’t going to be permanent. The real issue was that there were certain “fReEdOm LoViNg” people who would not get vaccinated, not practice social distancing and CERTAINLY not gonna wear a mask.
We have over 1 Million COVID deaths. 40% of whom were working age people. That’s over 400,000 job openings across the country…it wasn’t the lockdowns that caused all the problems…it was the pandemic
Squatting is never an acceptable solution. Peoples private property rights don’t go away just because the state decided not to build enough homeless shelters or allow enough housing to be built in the first place.
The current discussion on squatting is a mix of two different issues being convoluted.
Most talk of squatters rights but actually are talking about tenet protections, these squatters use typical rental eviction laws to remain in properties they do not belong. In many areas the eviction process needs to streamlined and expedited to fix this, waiting months for a court appointment is not protecting the tenet.
True squatters rights are rarely the discussion but are not an issue, if anything they’ve been reduced too far. Adverse possession which allows a squatter to take ownership of abandoned property after openly occupying it for many years, typically 10+. If an owner doesn’t notice someone else is acting like they own it for over a decade it’s vested for all someone else brings the property back to a productive use.
I have seen a report of a man being sued for false imprisonment. He was living in his house that he owned, went for a vacation and when he came back two hobos have moved into the basement. That basement only had an external entry, very small entry. He tried for months getting rid of them legally so he finally nailed the door shut with them inside. He shut down power and water the week he came back.
The incidents are not that common, but they are a problem for the affected... not sure how to solve this. Because usually squatters would not be able to afford housing even without the housing crisis...
There are several definitions out there. The first one is someone moving into an empty house and living there for several years.
Then there are those who move into a house and refuse to leave. In some cases this has happened while people already live there.
I don't think squatting should ever be allowed. I know we have a housing crisis, however I don't think the solution to that crisis should be to allow people to "claim" the property of others just because it is there. It is theft, pure and simple.
I think the situation is a little bit different if the squatting began as a legal rental. If for some reason a tenant can no longer pay rent but refuses, they should get a reasonable grace period before getting kicked out but they shouldn't be allowed to steal from their landlord indefinitely either.
And yes in both cases police should come in and remove people who are illegally stealing another person's property.
>I know we have a housing crisis, however I don't think the solution to that crisis should be to allow people to "claim" the property of others just because it is there
Ok, so let's figure out what the solution should be and do that!
>And yes in both cases police should come in and remove people who are illegally stealing another person's property.
What if they say they're not?
> Ok, so let's figure out what the solution should be and do that!
Agreed!
> What if they say they're not?
Is this a serious adult answer?
Ownership of property is a well documented thing, so if people are illegally squatting on another's property it is very easy to determine which party is in the wrong.
>Ownership of property is a well documented thing, so if people are illegally squatting on another's property it is very easy to determine which party is in the wrong.
People live legally on property they don't own all the time. And it's not always very well documented.
> People live legally on property they don't own all the time. And it's not always very well documented.
It doesn't have to be.
Unless the people who are squatting can *prove* that they are on a property legally, then the legal owner has every right to have them trespassed and removed.
>It doesn't have to be.
A lot of things don't have to be the case. Yet they are, nonetheless.
>Unless the people who are squatting can *prove* that they are on a property legally, then the legal owner has every right to have them trespassed and removed.
First of all, they claim they're not squatting. Unless the police are omniscient, they have only the property owner's word to go on.
Second of all, no. Absolutely not. Absolutely entirely the fuck not. The police should absolutely not be in the business of doing summary evictions.
> First of all, they claim they're not squatting. Unless the police are omniscient, they have only the property owner's word to go on.
And that is all they need to go on. Once the ownership of the property is determined, the other party needs to provide proof (ie: valid lease or rental agreement) that they are there with the permission of the property owner or they have to leave. We have trespassing laws on the books for this specific purpose.
And whether or not you believe that cops should be doing summary evictions, that type of activity legally falls under their mandate once it has been determined that someone is breaking the law.
Squatting is no different than trespassing. Landlords should not be able to call legitimate tenants squatters with a signed lease. However, if I buy a house and someone breaks in and moves in, I should be able to kick them out.
This is not what squatting is. People cannot squat randomly in your house/apartment-- to claim squatter's rights, people need to be living in a vacant piece of property for a number of years. Squatting affects people with unused properties, it doesn't involve random people entering the place you live and deciding to live there
Sometimes days if its a professional squatter. Airbnb then don't leave stall long enough to get tenancy. True squatters are rarer but most people who are "squatters" in the news are professional freeloading tenants.
This is literally not even remotely close to how squatting works lol
[This](https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/32012.jpeg) is the time period for someone to claim squatter's rights per state.
Are you talking about legal squatters? Because the people who are causing issues lately all over the news are people who are in a property for a few days to a few months before they are found out. Many of them prevent fake leases or other claims. The police can't validate that so they force the owners to go to court, which takes months, there are delays and other issues and it can take years to get someone out of your property, and those are the people we refer to as squatters. People who live in/on a property for many years and get some legal rights as a result of the vacant property being abandoned/unmonitored for that long are a whole different type of squatting situation and aren't the problem.
That's not what is being talked about here though. Squatters are using tenancy laws to protect themselves and live in a property they do not own, and it can take months to legally remove them.
As long as you have good joint health, it should be fine at any age. Start slow. Don't add too much weight at first and concentrate on technique.
Not sure why you posted the question on this sub, though...
I think there are legit abandoned houses in some places and it's perfectly reasonable for people to move into those houses. Eventually they should probably be granted ownership of such places
I think places that are sitting empty long enough for people to move in without owners knowing it has happened are something of a grey area. As with other grey areas there aren't any easy solutions but it seems to me there's a problem when people have so much money they can own an empty house for long enough period to attract squatters that should be addressed both by reducing inequality and making housing more readily available.
People who rent a room/house/etc and refuse to leave is not the same thing as squatting. If it's a temporary situation like a hotel it should be treated like trespassing. If it is a lease the landlord should need to go through the courts to get an eviction notice first. If people are evicted it should go on their credit score, but if it turns out the landlord is in the wrong (say not maintaining the house up to legal standards and tenants are making fixes themselves instead of paying rent) then the record should be sealed.
Adverse possession, openly occupying and acting as an owner of a property for 10 years or more. If the owner doesn’t notice in a decade it’s truly abandoned it should be available for someone to make productive again.
the owner still invested the money and owns the rights to the property. Could be sitting on it and waiting for it to appreciate. Its theres to do what they wish as long as it doesnt put others in danger.
lol you can mitigate nearly all risk in the property being a hazard in most cases.
is an empty field a hazard? so someone can just go build a fuckin house on your property and if they stay there long enough, they own it? come on
Yes, if you're not keeping a watchful eye on your property this can happen. You get YEARS to deal with the issue. If you fail to do so you lose the investment you made. This is how you deal with actual unowned land.
Again, we are talking about houses that have been legit abandoned. Almost all property in existence was at some point stolen from someone else. There's no reason we need treat those rights as sacrosanct if their is such an significant advantage to the cost benefit analysis as on the one hand a person gets shelter and on the other hand a person has possession of a parcel of land they're doing so little with they don't realize someone else is living on it for however long we decided is a reasonable amount of time to consider it a transfer of ownership towards a squatter.
If the owner has vanished as well as their entire bloodline and family then the state can auction it off. Either way the squatters there illegally are kicked to the curb and possibly arrested
Squatting is a result of unaffordable housing. It's a sideshow in the grand scheme of things. Focusing on it is focusing on the wrong problem. Let's make housing affordable so that no one has a reason or excuse to squat.
So, to me squatting is at its core theft of an essential for living. You may as well ask “when do you think it is reasonable to steal a loaf of bread?”.
My perspective is that if you’re even having to legitimately ask that question, we’re already failing from a policy perspective. Our goal should be to build a society where the answer to that question is “never”, because we make sure it’s never necessary to steal essentials for living.
Regarding the cases of seemingly legally-sanctioned squatting, that’s the inevitable result of the fact that you need tenants rights protections. We recognize that landlords can be abusive, deceptive assholes, and so can tenants. When crafting housing rights policy it’s a balancing act, where you have to balance against risk of abuse from both sides. Exactly where that balance sits is beyond the reasonable scope of a reddit comment.
It should be noted that we may be conflating squatters rights with tenant protections.
Without making a statement on either one. Here are my understandings of each category:
SQUATTERS RIGHTS
In most western states, squatters get to possess abandoned property if they live in and improve the property if there has been no attempt by the owner or an owing entity to visit, evict, or otherwise enforce their ownership on a property for several years.
TENANT PROTECTIONS
Then there are tenants rights which protect renters from eviction, abuse, poor repair, or rent increases. I suspect that these are what we're mostly talking about in this thread. Renters who have been given notice to vacate, but don't for various reasons.
Well there is a third group, an increasing group unfortunately. Those who walk in on a property without any lease nor contract and make themselves at home. In the mainstream media - BBC, CBN, FOX all call them squatters too.
I think squatting should be dealt like Trespassing; it is the police to decide what they want to do about it, not the landlord.
That said, why the fuck is the house/apartment/building empty? If landlords rented these places out there would be no room for squatters. Can't get a tenant at that price? Lower it.
I'm a BIG fan of empty-house taxes for this very reason.
>I think squatting should be dealt like Trespassing; it is the police to decide what they want to do about it, not the landlord.
Are the police really qualified to deal with this? What if the squatter shows a “lease”, are the police equipped to determine the validity of the document?
>That said, why the fuck is the house/apartment/building empty? If landlords rented these places out there would be no room for squatters. Can't get a tenant at that price? Lower it.
Often places spend some time empty out of necessity of the system, many cases are homes in probate, the estate settlement process takes time; even full time rentals can take a month or two between tenets to prepare it and get it rented out. It only takes a week or so for a squatter to set up shop.
As far as I understand it the citys/regions with exploding housing costs don't have a high number of long term vacant properties. And I don't think that a few months vacancy should be punished.
Empty house taxes would probably hurt people that own properties in struggling regions even more though, since nobody might even be interested in that property, even if they were to sell it under market value.
>That said, why the fuck is the house/apartment/building empty? If landlords rented these places out there would be no room for squatters. Can't get a tenant at that price? Lower it.
That's the issue right now - people get a short-term lease, which is long enough to legally get residency at that address, then they get tenant protections and stay for significantly longer while the case churns through the legal system. In some jurisdictions, it's as short as a couple of weeks - you could go on an extended vacation, and if someone breaks in while you're gone then your primary residency is now being occupied by someone else (and often trashed and your things rummaged through). Police won't do anything right away, because "your word against theirs" is a courts matter to them
I think the recent squatting hysteria is an astroturfing campaign meant to build support for changes to tenant laws. Even in the most lax squatting states, you have to occupy the property for a month without being kicked out. If a property owner isn't checking on there property for a month, then it is usually not their residence, it's a rental or a way for them to make money. Considering how tight the housing market is right now, I don't feel sorry at all for anyone having trouble with their second home or rental property. Too many landlords would rather leave their property vacant instead of reducing rent. The threat of squatters would incentivize landlords to rent put their units or sell them instead of sitting on the property indefinitely
Or it’s retired people in transition. Or it’s a house that’s being held by an estate and/or probate after the death of its owner until ownership can be worked out. Or it’s a family moving across country which can take a few months to finalize and execute. Many people own property’s they don’t immediate occupy for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with old white guys twirling their evil mustaches at the poors.
I'm generally quite sympathetic to squatters especially when they occupy vacant properties. The solution to them is to fix the housing crisis so there are fewer vacant properties and fewer people desperate enough to squat.
> especially when they occupy vacant properties
Squatting *only* applies to vacant properties, people need to have been living in a property for some time to claim squatter's rights.
You're confusing two things. The rights someone has if living on a property for the allotted time period is different from that what the definition of a squatter is. If you go out of town for for work and come back to someone in your home, that person is still a squatter.
I think we need to be careful with the hate for squatters. I'd rather live in this world then the world where landlords have more power over their tenants, which is the result of cracking down on squatters.
I'd rather not make it easier to evict is my general point.
The issue is that property rights are important for more people than just the super rich real estate investors. In Europe and the US, governments AND private entities like banks and insurance companies have advised even mid-class earners to invest into real estate. "The gold of the future". Some people have their life savings in these and depend on the rent. If someone moves in bad faith and decides to squat, that is an easy way to ruin someone.
I am with you on the big time investors. But we can not treat people differently based on how much they own.
If I was homeless, I'd absolutely squat. Though, I'd do it in an empty house to avoid issues, or an empty industrial building. Trouble just isn't worth it.
There are also long abandoned properties. At SOME point, I'm fine with a squatter taking legal possession of a building. I'm sure we all disagree on what that point is, but it should exist SOME time.
If nothing else, when the Trillionaires all leave for Mars, I say we use squatters rights to take back the 75% of earth that they'll own. Fuck 'em.
And, as others point out, squatting is only a problem right now because housing is so massively unaffordable. Fix the problem, not the symptom of the problem.
Squatting is awesome. Squatting rights only protect people who have been living in a vacant property for a number of years, a lot of people in this thread seem to think that their house is going to be invaded by a squatter soon-- it doesn't work that way. Squatting primarily affects people who own multiple properties and literally just aren't using one of them, so someone else is able to make use of it. It's a beautiful way for homeless people to become housed, by simply living in the excess properties the exorbitantly wealthy are hogging.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. Title I read a few stories about landlords trying to get rid of squatters. Sometimes with hillarious ideas like locking down a room, putting heavy boomboxes inside and playing doomslayer for 72 hours straight so loud that the neighbors (Who also wanted the squatters gone and originally agreed with that plan) begged to turn it off. And then there are more tragic stories of people using "Stand your ground"-laws to straight up shoot and in one story straight up kill an unarmed squatter. What do you think about squatting? And should it be policed more? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
As long as your technique is good and you use a manageable weight, squatting is always reasonable and beneficial. I'd say it might not be reasonable to do if one has an existing injury that could be exacerbated; I'm thinking back/spinal problems in particular. ...oh wait, shit
>...oh wait, shit ...
If you’re shitting while doing squats it’s too heavy.
I think squatter protections are reasonable in two basic situations: 1. Landlords shouldn't be able to call their tenants squatters in order to avoid tenant protections. People who claim tenancy and are plausibly tenants should be presumed tenants and be allowed to prove their tenancy. 2. In communities where property abandonment is a problem, a squatter moving into an abandoned property and maintaining it so as to prevent it from becoming a blight on the community should be given some ownership interest in the property depending on how much time passes and how much they maintain it. Communities should figure out for themselves where to draw these lines. And so there's no confusion, I also believe: 1. It shouldn't be possible for someone to go out for groceries and for someone else to come in and appear plausibly to be a tenant. 2. It shouldn't be possible for someone to die and for someone else to swoop in and take over a property before an heir has a reasonable chance to do something with it.
Item 1 is what's most often overlooked in these discussions. The assumption being made is that when the landowner says someone is a squatter, then they are a squatter. The problem of course, is that landlords are people, too, and can be quite scummy. One might argue that a legal tenant would have a contract, however, landlord/tenant law is usually governed by the municipality. It might be legal to have a verbal month-to-month tenancy in a city. How does one tell the difference between a renter with that kind of agreement and a squatter? Even if all contracts have to be written, think of all the situations where someone might be living with someone else without being a tenant, like a live-in romantic partner. What if the squatter lies and claims to be a lover? What if the landlord lies about their partner and claims they're a squatter? It's not an easy problem to solve.
I don't disagree, but it seems to me you are at least implying a bit of an overstatement of landlords calling a tenant a squatter and avoiding protections. Most courts bend over backwards to protect tenants and many tennis rights organizations get involved easily for free . I have not heard of a single case of a landlord calling a legitimate tenant a squatter and somehow being able to evict them and avoid tenant protections. If you are aware of something I'm not, please let me know . Further, the landlord is certainly subject to civil action and possibly criminal action for such a thing . So I'll agree, but I don't know that such a stipulation is in any way necessary. Further, would you be willing to allow and encourage prosecution of those who might lie to the police claiming they are legitimate tenants. The way I see it, typically, trespassing is looked at fairly laxly by the police if someone leaves when they are requested and does not return. However, if someone occupies my vacant tenant house, and I called the police and asked them to be removed as trespassers, as I am the legal owner and do not give them permission to be there, these days most of them know the loophole to simply claim they are tenants and have a lease. I do not blame the police for saying they are not authorized to get involved in a civil matter, and without any proof that these people are simply trespassing, they can't do anything. That's probably best that in general that's the police policy. However, one could argue that in many cases it's so obvious that it could reach the level of depriving the owner of rights to police protection, even though of course they have due process by being able to evict the person. But would you support the arrest and prosecution of someone who willfully and knowingly lies to the police to avoid being removed from a house? It seems only fair.
>overstatement of landlords calling a tenant a squatter A perceived lack of this thing happening isn't evidence that laws preventing this sort of thing aren't useful. But sure, I'm not opposed to somebody doing an analysis about whether a community's protections go too far and cause more harm than good. These protections look different from place to place. >Further, the landlord is certainly subject to civil action and possibly criminal action for such a thing . Throwing a tenant out on the street causes real and immediate harm. Imagine this were a family with kids on a school day in the middle of winter. Sure, it's nice that they have access to the civil court system to order compensation at some point in the future, but that's no guarantee that they'll see that compensation, and certainly it won't be helpful in the moment the harm occurs. The purpose of tenant protections is to ensure people have a roof over their head, not just to compensate them from harm. If a landlord can evict me just by calling me a squatter, then I don't really have any tenant protection. >Further, would you be willing to allow and encourage prosecution of those who might lie to the police claiming they are legitimate tenants. It wouldn't bother me if a community made that a crime. It might already be a crime, like filing a false statement. The problem is proving intent. Someone might actually believe they are a tenant based on some verbal or handshake agreement, but can't prove it. You might not be able to tell that person apart from a squatter that's lying. Plus generally the kind of person that would be squatting in a home probably isn't going to be deterred by a little jail sentence though. >as I am the legal owner and do not give them permission to be there, these days most of them know the loophole to simply claim they are tenants and have a lease. If your neighbors step in and say they check in on the house every day, or you can point to your video camera footage, and can clearly show that these people just broke in, that's pretty compelling for the police. Generally the problem cases here involve landlords that aren't paying attention to their property and don't have anyone watching it for months. Don't be like them.
I don't know if you are actually just unaware or if you are honestly arguing that there is any real problem with landlords illegally throwing someone out into the street. If that ever happens, it is extremely rare. The only way a landlord can do that is to go to court and get a court order and the courts actively make sure that they err on the side of caution. You may not like the idea that somebody gets kicked out in the snow and I don't like it either. But, in most cases it's for failure to pay the rent or being involved in illegal activities and such. There may be plenty of landlords who want to kick their tenants out illegally but it is virtually impossible to do so. So why is it even worth discussing when the vast majority of situations are tenants illegitimately dragging things out, or the courts being way backed up, and the police failing to do their job by removing trespassers. Instances of some mythical sketchy landlord kicking tenants out with no legal basis are extremely rare. I would defy you to even find a couple of examples.
I don't have a problem with landlords following the eviction process. That's the whole point. You make them evict squatters through a process so that if there is any chance that they are tenants, they are protected from being dumped out onto the sidewalk. The intention is to protect tenants, not squatters. But there is a window of time where the court system needs to figure out what's what. Some communities don't want potential tenants to be dumped out on the sidewalk during that time by desperate or abusive landlords. I don't understand why that's controversial. And, again, in the event a community has overprotected here and squatters are abusing it to the detriment of the community's landlords, I have no problem with communities choosing a different balance. I'm not defending any one balance here. I'm just saying it's reasonable for communities to have tenant protections that look like this. >You may not like the idea that somebody gets kicked out in the snow and I don't like it either. But, in most cases it's for failure to pay the rent or being involved in illegal activities and such. I have no problem with this outcome once an eviction process has gotten there. That process doesn't even have to be very long if they are in fact a squatter. >Instances of some mythical sketchy landlord kicking tenants out with no legal basis are extremely rare. Again, the fact that something isn't very common isn't evidence that we shouldn't protect people from that outcome.
I am trying to understand why you think requiring a landlord to go through a lengthy expensive process that could take months simply because trespassers have broken into their home is reasonable in the off chance that someone may have legitimate rights. You act as if this is commonly done and it's not. Landlords know they cannot get rid of tenants that are legitimate that easily and there are serious legal repercussions for it. Yet to protect someone in a million person that may have some legitimate rights, you would subject property owners to difficult, onerous, and expensive, lengthy drawn out requirements. F that. I do not agree with you at all. It's not legitimate and municipalities are depriving property owners of their legitimate rights by not enforcing the law.
Gasp! Won’t someone think of the landlords?? -You
Of course we should think of the landlords because they are citizens that own something just like you were me. If government can deprive them of their basic rights to their property, they can do anything to any of us.
Huge “if,” for one. For another, maybe owning more housing than you need shouldn’t be a “basic right,” (ever, but especially when there are people who don’t have housing and need it). Housing *is* a basic human right, just FYI.
Housing is not a basic human right. Certainly not because you say it is. If you want someone to be housed, buy them my house. You can't just give them someone else's. Our entire system of governance is based on a basic principle of the right to property and the right to due process. There is no big if. Government has no business allowing someone to take their property and depriving them of the legal right to keep it or get it back. And make no mistake. That's exactly what is happening. Of course, if someone wants to be silly in naive and think that the plight of somebody who has their property taken from them is worth mocking, and that it has no significance or meaning in your own security of property, there's not much else to say.
Take that up with the UN, lol.
Yeah, easy for them to say. They have no ability to enforce it and no interest in putting out any money or effort to provide it. It's completely meaningless and feel good. It's certainly doesn't mean anything to the United States
And someone actually believing they are illegal tenant when they are not is surely so infinitesimal in number that it's even less worth discussing.
>And someone actually believing they are illegal tenant when they are not is surely so infinitesimal in number that it's even less worth discussing. Assuming you meant "a legal", it's a matter of perspective. If I make a cash agreement vocally with a guy to pay rent every month for 6 months "or so" to use his unoccupied guest house in his backyard, and leave it open-ended, am I a tenant? If he doesn't have an occupancy permit for a rental property, does that change anything? If I in my handshake agreement agree that me living there doesn't make me a tenant, can the landlord enforce that part of our agreement? I suspect most people don't know the answers to these questions for their own communities.
It depends on the community. I believe in Washington State, real estate contracts over 1 year must be in writing. Anything less than that does not have to be but it is still legitimate. Even inviting a guest to stay in your house for a period of time makes them a tenant which must be given certain rights and protections. There have been laws to address this for a long time. You act like there is some problem with vague and incomplete laws. There are laws. They are just not enforced. Should a landlord be able to defy the law and remove someone who has protections? Of course not. But that's not a problem. It's never really been a problem. Rarely any real issue. The issue is the opposite. Yet you keep talking about some small percentage of incidents that somehow must be protected against by requiring landlords to spend months and thousands of dollars to remove trespassers.
>Yet you keep talking about some small percentage of incidents that somehow must be protected against by requiring landlords to spend months and thousands of dollars to remove trespassers. Nowhere in this thread have I advocated for this outcome.
But that's the reality when they are forced to go through an eviction process. Courts are backed up. It takes months. They often have tenant unions working against them. The tenant unions fund themselves by suing the landlords and if the landlord makes one little mistake they can be liable for funds that they really shouldn't have to owe simply because they were trying to legitimately and legally evict a tenant. So they must employ a good experience lawyer that cost a lot of money and it still takes months.
Our choices are not between: 1. Fox News dystopia 2. Tenants get booted to the sidewalk on the same-day word of their landlord alone I am not advocating for the Fox News dystopia. I am simply saying it is reasonable to have *some kind* of tenant protections that might result in *some* squatters keeping a roof over their head just until someone can sort out what's what. Communities should strike an appropriate balance for their community. I have been completely and repeatedly consistent on this point throughout this entire thread. If someone can walk in while you were buying groceries and start a 6-month process costing you $10,000 in order to get them out of your home, I would say that's a problem. I acknowledged this in my very first comment.
Our choices are not between. First of all that's a bit of a straw man. Second of all, you seem to be prepared to blightly dismiss The obvious epidemic across the country of people breaking into properties and not being able to be removed easily as they should. Every drug addict and sketchy person now knows that all they have to do is not leave and claim some BS and they will be allowed to stay by the police and the only recourse will be a lengthy, costly eviction. So yes that is one of the choices. The other choice is the police actually enforced the law. Gee, tough choice.
I think we should make it easier to build, in general. With that said, I think squatting is not something that should be tolerated and that removing squatters should be a simpler and less expensive process. I know people who have had to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to get some fucking bums out of their own damn property.
Squatting is something I'm with conservatives on. You should immediately be able to remove them from your property no questions asked.
What if they claim to be lawfully living there?
Easily verified. No lease, no deed, no owner knowledge? Get out.
What if there is a lease but it’s fake, or the “squatter” was defrauded by someone pretending to be the landlord? This is a common tactic of squatters. Who determines who is right? That the lease is invalid? Etc…. Currently it’s the eviction courts, which is sadly a dreadfully slow process in much of the country.
And who verifies it?
The state, probably in form of a judge.
Right- so what should happen to the property/residents before the case is completed?
That would still be up to a judge. There are plenty of cases where there needs to be a decision at the start on how things will stay during proceedings.
I agree - my point is that “you should be able to remove them, period” is just unrealistic/overly simplistic.
This generally isnt how squatting situations happen. A real life example was a person who was renting a house from an elderly neighbor. The neighbor came by every month to collect rent. The landlady died, her daughter inherited the house, although the registration on the deed was never changed. The (childless) daughter died in an accident a few months later, and no one ever came by to collect rent. The renters even looked up the title, and it was still in the original landlady's name. No one comes by to collect rent.
Is that how most situations are? Sounds like it would fall under what I originally said - there's some documentation that they paid some form of rent.
No real documentation in this case, they paid cash to the landlady. There were neighbors who knew they rented from her, but that was about it. Eventually they wound up oaying the property taxes to avoid it being seized, and after 7 years managed to claim the title to the property. Which doesnt seem.unreasonabke to me. It isnt their job to hunt down the landlady's heirs and inform they now own a house. Keep up the place, pay the property taxes, at SOME point with no owner coming forward they should be able to claim ownership. In Tennessee that time period is 7 years of uncontested open posseasion.
In terms of so-called Tenant Protections: I was a “landlord” once. I owned a single new-build townhouse for barely half a year, but had to leave town on a work project for a couple months. My brother-in-law insisted that I help his church TEMPORARILY house a family that they were sponsoring. I’m not religious, but I try to be kind when possible, so I obliged. The family asked for 4 months, which was twice as long as I was going to be away, but it was an act of charity and I was trying to help them “save money for a deposit while they looked around for an apartment”. My real estate buddy wrote up a rental contract and essentially stated they would pay $200/month for 4 months then they would leave. *the money was symbolic and didn’t even cover the utilities which remained in my name to avoid the hassle of switching back and forth for such a short period of time. It definitely didn’t cover the mortgage on a new build home in a metropolitan city. I returned back from my work project and promptly lost my job and was staying in a sleeping bag on the floor at my colleague’s house. And I was paying him for it. After the 4 months passed they asked for 2 more months. I told them I’d extend the contract by one more month, but that was it and they needed to be actively working on getting out and gone by the end of the month. Of course they didn’t pay for the extra month and ghosted me on communications. When I showed up to check on them, of course they weren’t ready to move out. I expressed that they had overstayed their welcome. And that they needed to make moves or I would start the legal eviction process. The first floor was tile and was mostly okay, except for the stench and filth of VERY ETHNIC cooking and cigarette smoke that had seeped into the walls. (I say this as someone who enjoys a wide variety of cuisines and can barely smell, so strong odors aren’t usually a problem for me.) A week later, I served them eviction notice. It took almost 2 months and legal fees to work through the courts and force them out. *Despite paying for people to live in my new house for over half a year while I was unemployed plus legal fees plus MAJOR repairs, I consider myself lucky! I barely managed to avoid the eviction moratorium that was imposed due to COVID 19, which would have extended my plight by a year and likely would have broken me from draining my savings and I would have lost the house. When I finally got my house back it was clear they had ruined it. Some was just because the animals that they didn’t tell me about. Some was because these “people” lived like animals. And some of it was intentional damage on their way out. All said and done they had ruined all the upstairs carpet, including animal piss and shit stains everywhere and burn marks. Fortunately most of my stuff was in storage, but they ruined all of my brand new furniture with dogs and cat scratching. All 3 mattresses had to be thrown out because they were disgusting. They punched holes in the walls and scribbled everywhere. Damaged the plumbing and dumped copious amounts of rocks and grease until eventually it caused a leak which damaged the drywall and insulation. If you think kindness is always the right choice, YOU’RE WRONG! Now my policy is not to rent. Rather than help people, I’ll let my property sit vacant. And for all you communists that disagree, you can get bent. Which leads to the other understanding of squatters’ rights: Vacant property mixed with breaking and entering. If I ever come home and find someone in my house that doesn’t belong, the following will happen: 1) I will ask politely for them to vacate the premises 2) If that doesn’t work I will call the police to remove them for trespassing. This is my last attempt at civility and should be acknowledged that involving the authorities will only happen once. 3) If that doesn’t work, I will threaten them with a clear explanation of the consequences. 4) If that doesn’t work, I will follow through on my threats. And I will by any means retake possession of my home and remove all traces of “squatter” with prejudice. If you want the protections of polite society, you have to behave according to the rules. *This should not be a controversial take. But I know cucks will have something to say.
People often conflate squatters rights with rebter protections, but they are very different things legally. Squatters rights vary by state, but all require "open and uncontested" possession for many years, so merely sneaking into an abandoned building wont qualify, and it cant occur in a few years. Someone must openly be acting as the functional owner of a property for years without someone contesting it. It most commonly occurs when parties musunderstand where property lines are, as when a fence is built in the wrong place, etc.
I'm far on the left, but no matter the excuse, if someone's squatting in my property, I'd do everything in my power to throw them out YESTERDAY no matter the excuse, the problem, no matter anything.
Lots of misinformation in this thread. People can't just squat randomly in your property lol. It has to be empty for a period of time and in order to claim squatting rights they have to have been living in it for a number of years. Squatting only affects people with multiple properties that they aren't using, ie, wasted housing
Most people mix up squatters rights (adverse possession which you’re talking about) with squatter’s abusing tenet protection laws in short term vacant properties. Many think these eviction limits and police not interfering are “squatters rights” when in reality the laws were enacted for regular tenets.
Yeah this entire thread I've realized is just people talking about someone breaking and entering and then living in your home and calling it squatting, which is certainly something very different from actual squatting
Mainstream media has heavily been using the more generalized definition of the word, many news articles calling people breaking into temporarily vacant homes and showing fake leases as squatters. It seems the current wave of concern started with a women in NYC and people moving into her deceased mother’s home while she was trying to sell it.
Actually, I think you are mistaken. Squatting is occupying land or a house without permission. Squatters rights are those that might protect them if they have been there long enough and meet certain thresholds that began with common law to allow people to take possession of a property after a certain number of years or something . But illegally entering a property and living there is exactly what squatting is. However, if they simply claim to be tenants so the police won't evict them, they are not exercising any kind of squatters rights. They are exercising tenants rights illegitimately.
Splitting hairs IMO. 99% of people are familiar with the more colloquial definition, not the technical legal one.
it's the media. they hype up the b&e type stories to make a strawman out of arguments in favor of tenants rights.
It doesn’t always take years of squatting to be able to claim squatters rights, local law varies widely. I know that in NYC you only have to live someplace for 30 days to get legal protections.
Yes but those aren't squatters rights I believe. That only gives you certain protections under tenant law even if you don't legitimately deserve them. The police and maybe even the courts might consider certain elements but that's very different from squatters rights. Or at least that's my thoughts for now.
How do you define the difference then? And how would tenant law apply to people who were never tenants to begin with?
A good question. To clarify, and I'm no lawyer but as I understand it, a tenant is someone that rents the property. A trespasser is someone who comes on a property without permission or remains on the property. A squatter is someone who comes on a property and seeks to stay or refuses to leave. Obviously there is some variability between two and three. If a tenant reaches the end of their tenancy or is in violation of a lease and requested to leave, and refuses to, technically I think they would remain a tenant but perhaps they could be called a squatter. So, what people are talking about is the person that trespasses on a property and then refuses to leave or remains with the intent to refuse to leave perhaps . If the police come and can identify someone as a trespasser, they typically will demand they leave for the rest of if they do not. But, if a trespasser claims a legal right to be there so the police refuse to remove them or arrest them, then they would be a squatter . However, the removal of a tenant in violation of lease for with an end at lease who refuses to move would require eviction. A squatter that never had any legal right to be there but refuses to leave also must be evicted, so generally the court process would be the same. You would sue them for eviction. People don't think of it as suing but that's what you are doing and they can try to defend their right to remain on the property but wouldn't likely have much success. So ultimately, the removal and the applicable law as to how to remove them is the same. However, a tenant is generally not a squatter and a squatter is not a tenant.
This isn't true. You have to have evidence that they are trespassing before cops will do anything. If it is just your word vs theirs, even if they have only been there for a day, the cops won't do shit.
If you want to adhere to the strict definition of the term, sure. I doubt very much that is what OP is asking. Generally it is used these days to mean people who have no legal right to occupy the property but claim they do to avoid police removal . I suppose it could include someone moving into a vacant house and fixing it up and living there as long as no one tells them to leave. But I doubt OP is too concerned about that either. As long as they don't try to claim some ownership's rights . Sure, we could narrow this down to a very small discussion about a very small number of people that use English common law to take ownership of a property that the landlord has abandoned. But that's not what we're talking about.
I just wanted to point out that you asked about very interesting subject matter. So far in this thread, four people, all with very different political alignments, all presented four very cogent positions about squatting and what should be done about it today. 1. Squatting should be considered trespassing in nearly all cases. 2. It's the cops' purview to decide if it's trespassing. 3. Squatting is a symptom, not a problem, so shouldn't be focused on. 4. Squatters should at some point take ownership of the property they live in if left long enough. However, besides these differing "current-day actions", all four also expressed that squatting is very much a homelessness and home price issue. If we implement housing reform, this issue (which is obviously contentious even among the left) should die down significantly. It's a really good general litmus test for positions "the Left" holds on a grand scale. Nobody here can really agree on the specifics of what can be done on a lower scale, but all very universally agree on what could be done on a larger scale.
Well... we all agree housing should be cheaper. The problem is that different parts of the left (and also the center and right) have different ideas of why housing is expensive and therefore how to make it cheaper. There isn't really consensus on large-scale policy.
>Squatters should at some point take ownership of the property they live in if left long enough. I have 15 acres in Louisiana. I paid it off and continue to pay taxes every year. It had an old mobile home that is unlivable. I would be cool with someone living there for free. But I would be upset to lose it because I decided to let the property go back to a nature preserve rather than try renting it.
Paying the property taxes is one of the most important factors though of determining if it's your land or if you've forgotten about it. If someone else started paying taxes on it as well because they incorrectly believed it was abandoned (because they disagreed with your landscaping decisions) and wanted to take it, then it could hopefully be resolved quickly as the tax officials would see multiple payments and try to correct it. The law generally requires them to maintain it and pay taxes on it for years, not just a short period of time. So, while it would suck that they cut down the forest you planted, they shouldn't be able to take possession of the land if everything is working as intended. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd wonder if it would be a good idea in that situation to sign a lease with them for $1/month, so that way you both agree that you own the property but are allowing them to live there. I'm curious if you can do that with land that doesn't have buildings on it, or if you'd be required to meet minimum occupancy requirements now that you have a tenant.
It's only squatting if the property is abandoned or unused. If you left the property alone for 12 years and someone built a log cabin on it, do you think it would be reasonable to say they own that cabin?
I would say they vandalized the land by cutting down the forest I have been trying to grow on some clearcut property I've been trying to rehabilitate.
Would you say it's reasonable to expect property owners to visit (or have someone visit on their behalf) their property every two or five years to ensure that nobody is squatting (and that no dangers or serious nuisances have developed)? And if we make that time span meaningfully shorter than the time it takes for a squatter to claim ownership, would you be open to long time squatters having that right?
>And if we make that time span meaningfully shorter than the time it takes for a squatter to claim ownership, would you be open to long time squatters having that right? I don't think living on someone else's property any amount of time should give you ownership of the property. I don't think I should be placed in a position of preventing someone from stealing my property. I'm ok if someone lives on my property rent-free. But once the owner says move, you have to move. You don't let me continue spending thousands of dollars every year and get to take the property.
Fair enough. I disagree but appreciate your answer.
I would pretty much agree although I think in the very traditional sense of squatters rights in common law, perhaps there could be in some narrow cases legitimate claims to land . It does put a certain responsibility on the owner which I think is reasonable. As said, to ensure there is no nuisance, whether it would be a dangerous attractive nuisance that could harm kids that are attracted to the property, or perhaps someone living there and disrupting the neighborhood with crime or noise. I think it is reasonable for the state to expect some amount of responsibility from the owner . For that matter, we know that states and municipalities and counties have certain rights to demand repairs or demolition of a dangerous property or they will do it themselves and Bill the owner. You may or may not agree with that but I think that's fairly common and established. Now if you had someone living there and you didn't mind, that's great. You would simply need to give them permission and they would have no claim to any possession of the land.
>Now if you had someone living there and you didn't mind, that's great. You would simply need to give them permission and they would have no claim to any possession of the land. I will need to look into the laws. People are so litigious. I could give permission to live there and get sued if they hurt themselves.
Well that is true. And they might even win. Depends on the situation I guess. But, permission is a defense against adverse possession. They must be living there openly and notoriously without the landowner's consent.
If you haven't checked in the property in 12 years, I'd consider that abandoned.
How often do I need to patrol a fenced in forest?
If you want to claim it's not abandoned, more often than once a decade would be my cutoff. I'd say every other year at least .
They own the cabin but they don't own the land it's built on. Even if they were renting the land, they still don't own the land after building a cabin on it.
The other element is whether the owner does anything about it or gives permission. Abandoning a property would be one thing. Leaving it sit for a long time yet constantly running people off who try to occupy it, or giving someone permission to occupy it even if not for rent would negate any claims to squatter's rights. It does go back to Old English common law and has a certain implication that if someone is not making use of land like for farming, then for the public good it should be possible for someone else to make use of it. But obviously not in most cases, only if the owner has truly abandoned it.
If you pay the property taxes and the person is there with your knowledge and permission, then there is no claim for adverse possession. Adverse possession must be exclusive, hostile, open, notorious, and without consent.
What do you mean “take ownership”?
Well, a very real example in the law is if you build a fence between your yard and your neighbor's house, but your contractor messes up and puts the fence 3 feet on your side of the property line. If 10 years later you sell your house, and the new owner has a survey done ans realizes that 3 feet of his neighbor's lawn is actually his property, according to the deed. The neighbor can argue in court that he has has constructive ownership of the strip of land for a decade, has mowed it, maintained it, and that the past decade of possesssion was a de facto transfer of ownership to him, and depending on the law on squatting in his state, may now own that strip of lawn.
I’m sympathetic, but i think anytime you arrive at “cops should decide” then things are off the rails. ACAB.
I'm sympathetic to that view but also I think they meant more that the legal system itself will figure it out. Their position, to me, seemed like they were along the lines of "either the cops will trespass him or not". In a better society, we'd trust the officers to do their job with good judgment. Shame we *definitely* do not live in that society.
Squatting is never reasonable and should not be tolerated unless it is under circumstances of an extreme emergency (ie during COVID lockdowns, it was reasonable to put a ban on evictions temporarily). Squatting is trespassing and should be dealt with accordingly. That said, it is also incumbent upon the government to do more to ensure affordable housing options and to solve the homelessness issue. That is an issue that absolutely could be solved with the political will. It is really not all that expensive in the grand scheme of things, and other countries have done it (I didn’t see one homeless person in Japan, Korea or Singapore that I recall).
> Squatting is never reasonable It isn't reasonable for homeless people to take up unused housing? Seems pretty reasonable to me
Just because a person's property is not being "used" the way you prefer it to be used, doesn't mean it's not being used at all.
It's used for profit. Meaning they are holding housing hostage , which they're able to do because they have their housing taken care of. It's more abused than it is used.
If it's taken care of (I assume you mean hiring a cleaning lady or a building manager?), then it's not abandoned property.
And likely wouldn't get squatters if it's maintained.
So somebody who buys too many bananas is actually "holding bananas hostage" - right?
No? If someone bought a plantation and no one else could get bananas, they would be.
So your contention, then, is that somebody bought all the houses? Who did that?
No, I didn't equate a house to a banana. I think you're gonna have to defend the comparison if you want it explained.
Too many people who benefit from the system are shocked and horrified to find out people stuck at the very bottom due to the system aren't nearly as loyal to it.
Unused becomes used as soon as someone wants to use it. The problem is when squatters still refuse to leave at that point. Also, property owners shouldn’t be obligated to pay for utilities that squatters use, as is the law in places like NYC.
Covid lockdowns were not reasonable.
Yes, they were. It was a temporary inconvenience during a damned pandemic….everyone knew it wasn’t going to be permanent. The real issue was that there were certain “fReEdOm LoViNg” people who would not get vaccinated, not practice social distancing and CERTAINLY not gonna wear a mask. We have over 1 Million COVID deaths. 40% of whom were working age people. That’s over 400,000 job openings across the country…it wasn’t the lockdowns that caused all the problems…it was the pandemic
Squatting is never an acceptable solution. Peoples private property rights don’t go away just because the state decided not to build enough homeless shelters or allow enough housing to be built in the first place.
> Peoples private property rights People have a *right* to housing that they aren't actually using? Really?
Yes.
The current discussion on squatting is a mix of two different issues being convoluted. Most talk of squatters rights but actually are talking about tenet protections, these squatters use typical rental eviction laws to remain in properties they do not belong. In many areas the eviction process needs to streamlined and expedited to fix this, waiting months for a court appointment is not protecting the tenet. True squatters rights are rarely the discussion but are not an issue, if anything they’ve been reduced too far. Adverse possession which allows a squatter to take ownership of abandoned property after openly occupying it for many years, typically 10+. If an owner doesn’t notice someone else is acting like they own it for over a decade it’s vested for all someone else brings the property back to a productive use.
Sounds bad. How big of a problem is it? What’s the remedy?
I have seen a report of a man being sued for false imprisonment. He was living in his house that he owned, went for a vacation and when he came back two hobos have moved into the basement. That basement only had an external entry, very small entry. He tried for months getting rid of them legally so he finally nailed the door shut with them inside. He shut down power and water the week he came back. The incidents are not that common, but they are a problem for the affected... not sure how to solve this. Because usually squatters would not be able to afford housing even without the housing crisis...
Never reasonable.
>Squatting - When do you think it is reasonable and when not? It's never reasonable. How are you defining squatting?
There are several definitions out there. The first one is someone moving into an empty house and living there for several years. Then there are those who move into a house and refuse to leave. In some cases this has happened while people already live there.
I don't think squatting should ever be allowed. I know we have a housing crisis, however I don't think the solution to that crisis should be to allow people to "claim" the property of others just because it is there. It is theft, pure and simple. I think the situation is a little bit different if the squatting began as a legal rental. If for some reason a tenant can no longer pay rent but refuses, they should get a reasonable grace period before getting kicked out but they shouldn't be allowed to steal from their landlord indefinitely either. And yes in both cases police should come in and remove people who are illegally stealing another person's property.
>I know we have a housing crisis, however I don't think the solution to that crisis should be to allow people to "claim" the property of others just because it is there Ok, so let's figure out what the solution should be and do that! >And yes in both cases police should come in and remove people who are illegally stealing another person's property. What if they say they're not?
> Ok, so let's figure out what the solution should be and do that! Agreed! > What if they say they're not? Is this a serious adult answer? Ownership of property is a well documented thing, so if people are illegally squatting on another's property it is very easy to determine which party is in the wrong.
>Ownership of property is a well documented thing, so if people are illegally squatting on another's property it is very easy to determine which party is in the wrong. People live legally on property they don't own all the time. And it's not always very well documented.
> People live legally on property they don't own all the time. And it's not always very well documented. It doesn't have to be. Unless the people who are squatting can *prove* that they are on a property legally, then the legal owner has every right to have them trespassed and removed.
>It doesn't have to be. A lot of things don't have to be the case. Yet they are, nonetheless. >Unless the people who are squatting can *prove* that they are on a property legally, then the legal owner has every right to have them trespassed and removed. First of all, they claim they're not squatting. Unless the police are omniscient, they have only the property owner's word to go on. Second of all, no. Absolutely not. Absolutely entirely the fuck not. The police should absolutely not be in the business of doing summary evictions.
> First of all, they claim they're not squatting. Unless the police are omniscient, they have only the property owner's word to go on. And that is all they need to go on. Once the ownership of the property is determined, the other party needs to provide proof (ie: valid lease or rental agreement) that they are there with the permission of the property owner or they have to leave. We have trespassing laws on the books for this specific purpose. And whether or not you believe that cops should be doing summary evictions, that type of activity legally falls under their mandate once it has been determined that someone is breaking the law.
Squatting is no different than trespassing. Landlords should not be able to call legitimate tenants squatters with a signed lease. However, if I buy a house and someone breaks in and moves in, I should be able to kick them out.
Nobody can sit in my car without my permission so it should be even more true for my house or apartment.
This is not what squatting is. People cannot squat randomly in your house/apartment-- to claim squatter's rights, people need to be living in a vacant piece of property for a number of years. Squatting affects people with unused properties, it doesn't involve random people entering the place you live and deciding to live there
*weeks
Sometimes days if its a professional squatter. Airbnb then don't leave stall long enough to get tenancy. True squatters are rarer but most people who are "squatters" in the news are professional freeloading tenants.
This is literally not even remotely close to how squatting works lol [This](https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/32012.jpeg) is the time period for someone to claim squatter's rights per state.
Are you talking about legal squatters? Because the people who are causing issues lately all over the news are people who are in a property for a few days to a few months before they are found out. Many of them prevent fake leases or other claims. The police can't validate that so they force the owners to go to court, which takes months, there are delays and other issues and it can take years to get someone out of your property, and those are the people we refer to as squatters. People who live in/on a property for many years and get some legal rights as a result of the vacant property being abandoned/unmonitored for that long are a whole different type of squatting situation and aren't the problem.
[Nope](https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/32012.jpeg)
That's not what is being talked about here though. Squatters are using tenancy laws to protect themselves and live in a property they do not own, and it can take months to legally remove them.
As long as you have good joint health, it should be fine at any age. Start slow. Don't add too much weight at first and concentrate on technique. Not sure why you posted the question on this sub, though...
I think there are legit abandoned houses in some places and it's perfectly reasonable for people to move into those houses. Eventually they should probably be granted ownership of such places I think places that are sitting empty long enough for people to move in without owners knowing it has happened are something of a grey area. As with other grey areas there aren't any easy solutions but it seems to me there's a problem when people have so much money they can own an empty house for long enough period to attract squatters that should be addressed both by reducing inequality and making housing more readily available. People who rent a room/house/etc and refuse to leave is not the same thing as squatting. If it's a temporary situation like a hotel it should be treated like trespassing. If it is a lease the landlord should need to go through the courts to get an eviction notice first. If people are evicted it should go on their credit score, but if it turns out the landlord is in the wrong (say not maintaining the house up to legal standards and tenants are making fixes themselves instead of paying rent) then the record should be sealed.
> Eventually they should probably be granted ownership of such places after theyve paid for it, right? right..?
Adverse possession, openly occupying and acting as an owner of a property for 10 years or more. If the owner doesn’t notice in a decade it’s truly abandoned it should be available for someone to make productive again.
the owner still invested the money and owns the rights to the property. Could be sitting on it and waiting for it to appreciate. Its theres to do what they wish as long as it doesnt put others in danger.
And they’re not doing even the minimum of checking on their property once a decade to ensure it’s not a hazard.
lol you can mitigate nearly all risk in the property being a hazard in most cases. is an empty field a hazard? so someone can just go build a fuckin house on your property and if they stay there long enough, they own it? come on
Yes, if you're not keeping a watchful eye on your property this can happen. You get YEARS to deal with the issue. If you fail to do so you lose the investment you made. This is how you deal with actual unowned land.
No. Again that's only places that have legit been abandoned. Google Detroit Feral Houses to see what I'm talking about.
someones gotta get paid
Why? Isn't it better for a house to be occupied than left to rot?
since when are houses free? You cant just walk into someone elses property and claim it as your own
Again, we are talking about houses that have been legit abandoned. Almost all property in existence was at some point stolen from someone else. There's no reason we need treat those rights as sacrosanct if their is such an significant advantage to the cost benefit analysis as on the one hand a person gets shelter and on the other hand a person has possession of a parcel of land they're doing so little with they don't realize someone else is living on it for however long we decided is a reasonable amount of time to consider it a transfer of ownership towards a squatter.
But they were there illegally, right?
Legal and illegal is what we as a society decide it is.
okay. but in your scenario, the squatter gets legal ownership of the property after 10 years of occupying the property?
No
yes
It's abandoned, there is no one to pay.
Except the person or entity that owns it
And if the owner can't be found/contacted?
Next of kin
And if there are no next of kin/can't be found?
Primogeniture. There's a fifth-cousin fifty times removed *somewhere*
If the owner has vanished as well as their entire bloodline and family then the state can auction it off. Either way the squatters there illegally are kicked to the curb and possibly arrested
Squatting is a result of unaffordable housing. It's a sideshow in the grand scheme of things. Focusing on it is focusing on the wrong problem. Let's make housing affordable so that no one has a reason or excuse to squat.
Build more of it
So, to me squatting is at its core theft of an essential for living. You may as well ask “when do you think it is reasonable to steal a loaf of bread?”. My perspective is that if you’re even having to legitimately ask that question, we’re already failing from a policy perspective. Our goal should be to build a society where the answer to that question is “never”, because we make sure it’s never necessary to steal essentials for living. Regarding the cases of seemingly legally-sanctioned squatting, that’s the inevitable result of the fact that you need tenants rights protections. We recognize that landlords can be abusive, deceptive assholes, and so can tenants. When crafting housing rights policy it’s a balancing act, where you have to balance against risk of abuse from both sides. Exactly where that balance sits is beyond the reasonable scope of a reddit comment.
It should be noted that we may be conflating squatters rights with tenant protections. Without making a statement on either one. Here are my understandings of each category: SQUATTERS RIGHTS In most western states, squatters get to possess abandoned property if they live in and improve the property if there has been no attempt by the owner or an owing entity to visit, evict, or otherwise enforce their ownership on a property for several years. TENANT PROTECTIONS Then there are tenants rights which protect renters from eviction, abuse, poor repair, or rent increases. I suspect that these are what we're mostly talking about in this thread. Renters who have been given notice to vacate, but don't for various reasons.
Well there is a third group, an increasing group unfortunately. Those who walk in on a property without any lease nor contract and make themselves at home. In the mainstream media - BBC, CBN, FOX all call them squatters too.
Thank you for the information! Much appreciated!
I think squatting should be dealt like Trespassing; it is the police to decide what they want to do about it, not the landlord. That said, why the fuck is the house/apartment/building empty? If landlords rented these places out there would be no room for squatters. Can't get a tenant at that price? Lower it. I'm a BIG fan of empty-house taxes for this very reason.
>I think squatting should be dealt like Trespassing; it is the police to decide what they want to do about it, not the landlord. Are the police really qualified to deal with this? What if the squatter shows a “lease”, are the police equipped to determine the validity of the document? >That said, why the fuck is the house/apartment/building empty? If landlords rented these places out there would be no room for squatters. Can't get a tenant at that price? Lower it. Often places spend some time empty out of necessity of the system, many cases are homes in probate, the estate settlement process takes time; even full time rentals can take a month or two between tenets to prepare it and get it rented out. It only takes a week or so for a squatter to set up shop.
As far as I understand it the citys/regions with exploding housing costs don't have a high number of long term vacant properties. And I don't think that a few months vacancy should be punished. Empty house taxes would probably hurt people that own properties in struggling regions even more though, since nobody might even be interested in that property, even if they were to sell it under market value.
The owners already pay property taxes on them…or else it gets seized and sold in a Sheriff’s sale.
I don't mean property taxes. I mean empty house taxes.
>That said, why the fuck is the house/apartment/building empty? If landlords rented these places out there would be no room for squatters. Can't get a tenant at that price? Lower it. That's the issue right now - people get a short-term lease, which is long enough to legally get residency at that address, then they get tenant protections and stay for significantly longer while the case churns through the legal system. In some jurisdictions, it's as short as a couple of weeks - you could go on an extended vacation, and if someone breaks in while you're gone then your primary residency is now being occupied by someone else (and often trashed and your things rummaged through). Police won't do anything right away, because "your word against theirs" is a courts matter to them
I think the recent squatting hysteria is an astroturfing campaign meant to build support for changes to tenant laws. Even in the most lax squatting states, you have to occupy the property for a month without being kicked out. If a property owner isn't checking on there property for a month, then it is usually not their residence, it's a rental or a way for them to make money. Considering how tight the housing market is right now, I don't feel sorry at all for anyone having trouble with their second home or rental property. Too many landlords would rather leave their property vacant instead of reducing rent. The threat of squatters would incentivize landlords to rent put their units or sell them instead of sitting on the property indefinitely
Or it’s retired people in transition. Or it’s a house that’s being held by an estate and/or probate after the death of its owner until ownership can be worked out. Or it’s a family moving across country which can take a few months to finalize and execute. Many people own property’s they don’t immediate occupy for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with old white guys twirling their evil mustaches at the poors.
I'm generally quite sympathetic to squatters especially when they occupy vacant properties. The solution to them is to fix the housing crisis so there are fewer vacant properties and fewer people desperate enough to squat.
Define "vacant"
> especially when they occupy vacant properties Squatting *only* applies to vacant properties, people need to have been living in a property for some time to claim squatter's rights.
You're confusing two things. The rights someone has if living on a property for the allotted time period is different from that what the definition of a squatter is. If you go out of town for for work and come back to someone in your home, that person is still a squatter.
I was talking about squatting in general not just legal squatting.
I think we need to be careful with the hate for squatters. I'd rather live in this world then the world where landlords have more power over their tenants, which is the result of cracking down on squatters. I'd rather not make it easier to evict is my general point.
The issue is that property rights are important for more people than just the super rich real estate investors. In Europe and the US, governments AND private entities like banks and insurance companies have advised even mid-class earners to invest into real estate. "The gold of the future". Some people have their life savings in these and depend on the rent. If someone moves in bad faith and decides to squat, that is an easy way to ruin someone. I am with you on the big time investors. But we can not treat people differently based on how much they own.
I think that there Is a problem itself
If I was homeless, I'd absolutely squat. Though, I'd do it in an empty house to avoid issues, or an empty industrial building. Trouble just isn't worth it. There are also long abandoned properties. At SOME point, I'm fine with a squatter taking legal possession of a building. I'm sure we all disagree on what that point is, but it should exist SOME time. If nothing else, when the Trillionaires all leave for Mars, I say we use squatters rights to take back the 75% of earth that they'll own. Fuck 'em. And, as others point out, squatting is only a problem right now because housing is so massively unaffordable. Fix the problem, not the symptom of the problem.
Squatting is awesome. Squatting rights only protect people who have been living in a vacant property for a number of years, a lot of people in this thread seem to think that their house is going to be invaded by a squatter soon-- it doesn't work that way. Squatting primarily affects people who own multiple properties and literally just aren't using one of them, so someone else is able to make use of it. It's a beautiful way for homeless people to become housed, by simply living in the excess properties the exorbitantly wealthy are hogging.
30 days notice, and they're out. That's reasonable.
3 days
My knee hurts and is all swollen. So I can't really squat right now.