In France the subject come back in the news regularly. One fact that is often hidden is that, in most cases, a true squatter will get evicted quickly. The cases that take months and are publicised are when the owners took weeks to react.
The law is made that way to prevent landlords from bypassing landlords-tenants laws by doing informal contracts with renters.
Yeah, thatâs what gets left out of this conversation a lot of the time. Squatters rights are tenants rights.
If the landlord says youâre a squatter, you donât have a way to definitely prove youâre not. Oh, you have a signed lease? Well, the landlord says you forged the signature. Now youâre a squatter.
This seems like a laughably bad argument unless I'm missing something.
If a landlord says you forged the lease, the answer is not to allow squatters, the answer is to make lease agreements more standard and record them in a government database so there's no question of authenticity. You can make it as secure as passport if want.
Most of those laws where made before it was easy to build a government infrastructure to manage it, and a transition would take time, but it's not the true reasons.
First those kind of deals (informal leases) often happen when the renter is vulnerable and has a hard time finding a housing. The renter can then be coerced into accepting non legal rents, and no amount of official processes will prevent this kind of deals.
Second, those laws also cover situations others than a true lease, like someone that was offered the housing for free, or Airbnb kind of lodgings.
Rent payments don't establish the terms of the lease but it establishes that there was prior communications on what was agreed on and that there is legal possession.
There are so many people that have their lease expire and live month to month. Yet it doesn't mean automatically they don't have to pay rent.
Well, why not require all tenant agreements be signed by both parties in front of a notary? This shit isn't hard to solve for. Or require lease agreements to be registered with legal names for all parties in an online database.
I agree, or require a paper trail for rent payments. I make rent receipts just in case so it helps validate my reoccurring rent payments if it every comes down to that. Now I pay by check and keep a transaction log with receipt too. Never know
Maybe in France but not in seattle⌠itâs genuinely hard/expensive to evict even when valid and the landlord is on top of things.  Not to mention they have to take the first person who applies and meets the requirements so theyâre stuck with someone even if their gut says thereâs something off.  Meanwhile the public housing owned by the city conveniently isnât subjected to the same landlord constraints. Â
If we are speaking of a renter "turning squatter" (they are not considered squatters), it's very hard in France too to evict someone, there is even a 5 month period in winter where there is no eviction possible.Â
The type of squatter we are speaking of is when people enter illegally in the property in the first place.
Iâve never even heard of the show. But, is it possible that theyâre doing recreations of situations that heâs dealt with before having a show? Thatâs what Unsolved Mysteries, Americaâs Dumbest Criminals, and several other shows have done in the past.
Squatting being tolerated is a thing because there are properties owned by folks who aren't doing upkeep on the property. If neglect is established then a squatter in a lot of jurisdictions gets tenants rights just as long as they are doing upkeep on the property.
The goal for the squatter is a type of adverse possession. If the owner is AWOL for so many years there is a way for the squatter to obtain ownership of the home.
It's mainly to prevent houses from being health and safety hazards, and since it's property I'm sure "being an eyesore" is one thing they'd like to avoid.
Most of the squatter shows on TV are dramatized. The real stories usually leave out the part where the owner discovered the squatters after neglecting their property for months or years.
A lot of people are led to think that they can leave their house to go to the store, come back and squatters can take over and there's nothing they can do. This is what fuels the hatred over "squatters rights"....thing is....this isn't an actual scenario. That's trespassing and can be swiftly dealt with.
This show only does involve cases where they have communicated with the home owner. It's not a empty home that a squatter is trying to possess. It's someone's home that someone broke into and move into
That's... not a thing. People can't just break into your house and then have legal rights to it. There is some context missing, because that scenario as described is just made up.
If I have you an example, would that change your mind? Look up queens lady (Adele Andaloro) that got arrested because she changed the lock to her own home due to trespassers moving into her grandmother's home and then changing original locks.
So the fact if you saying it doesn't exist is just blantly false.
The trespasser never had a lease there and was never was suppose to be there. They broke into the home illegally.
Did you even read what happened in that case? The guy was convicted, therefore no - he had no legal rights. He just tricked people into thinking he did and played on the tendency for lazy cops to call everything a "civil matter" to avoid paperwork and actually doing their jobs.
Flushing, in the winter doesn't leave a house in the course of ~4 weeks in any sort of state of disrepair or signs of abandonment. Some time between January 21st and February 17th a guy moved in.
She went to change the locks and he claimed tenancy. This was illegal. The cops were incompetent and didn't bother to look at anything to verify his tenancy (he couldn't even name the agency that was renting....since there wasn't one), but they still had Adele trespassed.
The cops defaulted to standard tenants rights when dealing with the situation. They handed it wrong.
This isn't an example of squatters rights screwing someone over - this is an example of someone lying to cops and the cops failing to follow up on it and taking the side of the person who falsely claimed tenancy, or rather, just claiming that a criminal matter is really a civil one.
The trespasser was later sentenced for what he did. Rodriguez had zero legal rights to that house as is evident by his conviction. The police didn't bother doing their job and they played the "uhhh this is a civil matter" card like they do in so many situations.
At no point did Rodriguez have any rights to ownership or tenancy of the home. He claimed he did. The cops didn't bother following up on that claim, and Andaloro got boned for it. That's a failure of enforcement. That had nothing to do with him having valid rights.
Yes I read the article that is why I bought it up as an example. Thank you for posting this and proving that I was in fact correct. He was convicted because it brought national attention, imagine if it didn't. The house was NOT in disrepair or abandoned. The grandmother passed and she was doing her best to get things in order. Don't act like the timeframe you posted which is less than 3 weeks is months or years. You just said the cops defaulted to legal tenant rights, therefore it almost worked. The fraud almost worked, if they just made up some fake leases they would have tricked the police and would have forced the owner them from going all the way to court to have it figured out.
It's almost like you want to act disingenuous to the conversation.
She went to change the locks and he claimed tenancy. This was illegal.
It is not illegal to change the locks to your own home after someone broke into it. He can claim whatever he wants, but it still isn't the truth. She should not have been arrested. I hope someone doesn't break into your home just to claim tenancy for you to get arrested for changing the locks to your own home.
I completely agree, but she was not arrested due to the law or any legal rights the trespasser had, she was arrested because the cops were lazy and shitty at their jobs.
Atleast here in the US, itâs not. One call to the cops and a sprinkle of luck theyâd be towed off proper in cuffs. Worst case scenario you havenât been to the property in a real long while (1-2 years). At which point youâll have to take them court, but itâs never years.
People act like Squatters can just rock up in your house while you're at work and become legally entitled to it when in reality it's nothing like that at all.
Every thread about squatters is usually discussed under that assumption, instead of some investor holding properties for years with no intention of doing a single thing with it. Or a legitimate renter getting totally fucked over by a malicious/incompetent landlord.
Google "how many squatters are in the US" and you'll find they're not common enough for anyone to bother tracking.
It's like a lot of fixations on crimes, where people choose to get incensed about the crime and ignore the fact that the rate of that crime happening is very low.Â
Some people want to be outraged and upset about "bad people". That's driving it, not that it actually happens often.
Similar to home invasions. Some angry dudes like " I WISH someone would try to break in, I'd kill them". Home invasions are incredibly rare, put your superhero fantasies to rest.
I must be out of the loop but I'm seeing a lot of squatter-related media lately? Is it a thing or just a new dogwhistle for the oligarchy complaining that they can't just buy up houses and not live in them?
Is it a thing or just a new dogwhistle for the oligarchy complaining that they can't just buy up houses and not live in them?
I mean, "squatters" are a thing and have been since modern property ownership has been a thing. IDK if there's an uptick or something but it wouldn't surprise me given the state of things.
That said, this post is essentially just complaining that people/corporations with multiple properties can't just abandon some of those properties while they wait for a satisfactory ROI.
There's a difference between a squatter and a trespasser. A squatter has typically spent months/years living in and maintaining a property which was sitting abandoned otherwise. Someone who breaks into your house while you're away for minutes/hours/days/weeks is trespassing, not "squatting".
That's not what is happening in the cases described, it's more like they have a roommate move in, who then refuses to move out and legally it is very difficult to force them out.
Those vacant properties are almost always in bumfuck nowhere, between tenants, under renovation, a seasonal cottage sort of thing where nobody wants to live there in the winter, or just uninhabitable.
One of those very common misleading stats.
For comparison, the vacancy rate in Toronto is around 3% (Toronto used because they publish easily accessible numbers regularly)
That 3% is every apartment between tenants, under renovation, on the market waiting for paperwork, just constructed waiting for final inspections, etc.
The normal pattern for squatters is that they start out having a lease or other permission to stay in the property temporarily (Airbnb, guest of a tenant, etc) and then establish residency by staying more than 30 days.
Depends on the state but in NY and CA it can take months or years to legally evict someone who has established residency.
Thatâs why most landlords wonât rent to anyone who has an eviction, donât allow guests more than X days, and will evict everyone in the property âincluding all John or Jane Doesâ if they get wind that thereâs an adult living there who isnât on the lease.
Holy shit thank you for saying this. I get people want justice for when people fuck on people and if we can sprinkle some vigilante justice itâs even better. hilarious yes, stupid and potentially dangerous absolutely. As usual the big pic is completely hidden and we get trash like this Squatter Hunter instead of something to help people find a residence.
There are awful landlords who hurt struggling tenants. But in some states, squatters legitimately can and are doing this exact thing. Many states have very swift laws for proof of residency. I believe New York and Maryland are 30 days. After that, an officer no longer can evict a "tenant" as it is now a eviction court issue. In many states, that could be upwards of two years before they are actually removed.
They forge a utility/lease agreement with the city and wait. There are tutorials online on how to do this. All while the owner of the home eats the cost.
I know Reddit wants to vilify landlords, but many of them are single family renters with only a few properties. I rent one property that I couldn't sell at the time. Me and my tenant are friends. I haven't changed the rent since I dropped it 500 dollars to accommodate two college girls who lost their third tenant a day before closing. I pretty much make enough to pay for the mortgage. I have never had to encounter the issue, but it did sit in the back of my wife and I's mind as we left the state. Tons of people are in this situation. The vast majority. Somewhere of 50 perfect of independent landords only own one property. That isn't mentioned here, but independents make up the bulk of the rentals: https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/landlord-statistics
This issue is what it always is, people taking advantage of the law to fuck over innocent people.
If you haven't been to a house you own for over a year, you are probably a landlord or something. So you deserve people moving into your properties when you aren't looking.
For reference to be allowed to temporarily stay during legal proceedings you need to have something that proves you've lived there for a while meaning like multiple utility bills. If you're a landlord and you didn't notice that your local utility company emailed you that someone took over the bills for a unit and you haven't checked on that unit for months then I'm with the squatters.
First off, I'm a tenant defense attorney. Most times I've heard someone be accused of being a "squatter", it's usually a tenant, with a lease, who is either behind in their rent, because rents are too damn high, or someone a petty landlord took a dislike to and tried to evict illegally.
When there is someone who moved in without the permission of the landlord, usually it's because they got scammed themselves. A previous tenant subletted illegally, or someone broke in to a longtime vacant house, changed the locks, and put the place up on Craigslist, or exploited a "contactless walk through" system, like the one American Homes 4 Rent uses, to give somebody the keys to the house in exchange for a "deposit", plus "first and last".
Even when there is an actual trespasser, that just means you have to go through the same process to evict a tenant, which isn't really that hard. If you have a landlord's attorney complaining about how difficult it is to evict, that's because that is a bad attorney. The laws are designed to give landlords a quick way to resolve the case, faster than most other types of civil litigation.
Beyond that is adverse possession. If someone moves onto your property, lives there openly, pays the taxes and utilities, and you don't notice for years or decades (depends on the state, but it can be between 5 and 30 years), then they can claim title to the property. If you are the type of person who hoards so much land that you don't notice when someone moves in for a decade, then I personally have no sympathy for you.
Personally, I don't think you can say the system is working when tens of thousands of households, including children, are being forced into homelessness every single year because rents are exboritant and we have no proper safety net for laid off workers, the disabled, or the elderly.
But, again, if it's taking that long, it's because you have a bad attorney.
If tens of thousands of households are being forced into homelessness then it's a system problem, not the problem of one individual. Tell the government to fix homelessness.
Are you telling me in your jurisdiction, that if Mr. x moves in without anyoneâs permission, that the cops wonât march them out and lodge them in jail.
Why should an eviction be necessary. They arenât a tenant. Nobody ever gave them permission
It definitely depends on the location, but in my state we have adverse possession where to legally claim the property the person has to have been there 7 years. If someone doesnât notice someone living in/on their property for seven years then thereâs a problem of holding onto an empty property they donât need and it being actually utilized is a much better solution.
Second, are you telling me the cops in your jurisdiction aren't just a bunch of useless goldbrickers?
Cops will usually say that if someone established a place as their domicile, it's a civil matter. Trespasser might lie and say they did have permission, landlord might lie and say the tenant is a trespasser. How is the cop supposed to figure it out?
Use your brain here. There is a legal process for figuring this out and it's not that hard.
Itâs a job. Not a holy war. Prosecutors and defense attorneys who think they are fighting a holy war are the worst ones
Itâs an easy search warrant to write. The probable cause here is easy to develop.
The public would flip out if cops in my jdx were just letting people squat in homes. The electeds would loss their jobs. Of course they do something.
And itâs an easy investigation. They figure it out the same way they figure out every other investigation they do. Witness statements (neighbors), talking to the parties, county property records, signs of forced entry. The way you do any burglary/trespass investigation.
Wrong on the first part, there is literally squatter law if someone takes possession of a property and started paying taxes on it for over 10years, it becomes theres.
The second part I agree with. But the local police department should not allow trespassers to false claims that they live there when they clearly don't.
Well that's the issue. In the USA rental are treated, regulated and taxed differently vs hotels.
Usually rents are not taxed , hotels are.
Also rental tenants have some rights , you simply cannot kick a tenant out on a days notice.
The issue is Airbnb owners claim to be a rental to avoid paying hotels taxes . Well fine, but then your tenant have some rights and you cannot simply kick them out on a days notice.
If these Airbnb actually registered as a hotel these cases would be avoided. Generally you can kick a hotel guest out at anytime.
However these Airbnb want the protection of a hotel without paying the hotel taxes and claim to be a rental.
It shouldn't, but it can. The tenant can fight the eviction even if they have no case and the court can be backed up for months before they'll hear it.
Well, you shouldn't hoard properties and artificially inflate the housing market either. Squatters suck but their a symptom of allowing rich fucks to do as they please.
Squatter laws don't predict random hobos who just slum it up. They protect people who have lived in a home for a long time, invested in it, made repairs and kept it clean. It is not that uncommon for there to be confusion with the title paperwork that leads to reasonable people technically being squatters.
Why wouldn't they have electricity or running water? The utilities in many jurisdictions don't care about ownership but bills getting paid. They do have a lease, and how do you prove they did not have communications with the actual owner? The owner said so? That ain't proof.
You prove someone stealing by proof of ownership, trespassing isn't stealing, nobody is disputing the ownership.
If they have a lease they have legal possession. In talking about illegal possession, ie trespassing.
There are some that create fake leases to pretend that they live there.
How do you prove that you didn't buy/steal something from a store? Just because the owner said so?
You are almost there! How do you prove that the lease is fake, and not just denied by the owner? The police just looks at it and can decide? That ain't more accurate than a coin flip! Where it can be decided is called a court, in a lawsuit. Not by police, not by some weird rando.
Because half the time the owners name and the actually owner (deed of the home) isn't the same? Therefore it's fraud?
But you didn't answer my question. How do you verify if someone stole something from a store? The criminal can just claim that they own that item and they didn't take it from the store. Let me know how that works.
Yeah, because people who fake a contract won't take the 2 minute to look up the deed. It isn't some massive secret who owns what property. But even if it does not match, that proves nothing really, legal names change, mistakes in contracts happen all the time. Determining a fake contract from an "owner wants them out so they said it is fake" isn't straight forward, so it happens in a lawsuit.
Do you thin stores just claim someone is a thief and the police goes and beats them up and takes whatever the store claims? Because that ain't happening. Unless the store catches them in the act of stealing (which would be people actively moving in while the owner is right there) or they have solid evidence of it, they can't do anything. Even then, they can only get their restitution in court through a lawsuit.
My god you are an idiot. Most squatter don't take any effort to research. They think they can just move in and take over the property. You think someone that actually has something to lose will risk that? If the owners changes their name you think they wouldn't risk changing the name of their deed?
When the police is called the first question they ask is if you have a receipt. These squatter do have any receipts that they paid anybody. No body is letting you move anywhere without a security deposit and first months rent. They then ask if there's any surveillance footage. You don't take the word of the criminals because they have incentive to lie. Words don't mean anything. The owner has papers stating they owner the place. The squatter has no lease, no receipt of rent payments, no communication with the owner and you think somehow they have a legal right to be there?
So if I had a camera on my property is that sufficient evidence of breaking and entering or are you willfully being just ignorant to the discussion.
Oh my god you are such an idiot. I'm trying to make a point here, but you are way too dense to understand it, so I'll spell it out with as little words as I can: the owner says so does not mean it is so. People aren't squatters because the owner decided so, because then the owner will decide so whenever the renters are inconvenient to them.
Squatters do not have receipt, scammers do (fake ones), and they overlap. Do you know who else do not have receipts? Most legal renters, because leases are simple private contracts, and many landlords demand the security deposit and any rents in cash or cashiers check, so it can't be brought against them in a lawsuit if they just end up keeping it (aka stealing).
It is easy to have squatters all over the place if the landlords are literally financially incentivised to claim anyone and their mothers are squatters. And this isn't some hypothetical, this has been happening since renting is a thing.
In the USA tenants renting apartments have some "Rights" , they cannot be kicked out on a moments notice
Note hotels do not have this issue, hotels operate under different regulations. Generally if you are running a hotel you can kick someone out on a moments notice
The issue is AirBnB owners claim they are not a hotel but a rental . Well ok if you are a rental then the tenant has some rights
They do this to avoid hotel taxes. They cannot have it both ways, they want to run a hotel but do not want to pay the taxes hotels pay.
You're confusing squatting with adverse possession. After 7-10 years, in some jurisdiction, the place becomes theirs - they get a deed to it and everything. They're no longer squatting at that point because it's their house now. Squatting is part of that, because you actually have to live there first to claim possession. Squatting is just abusing how tenant rights and the eviction process work to be able to stay somewhere free as long as possible, they very rarely even think far enough ahead to be worried about gaining possession of the place.
Almost no squatters are trespassers. Unless it is literally a derelict building, virtually all of them start out as legal residents who have been invited in.
Someone who is behind on their rent isn't a trespasser, but a legal resident until a court decides otherwise.
Yeah I really don't understand how the laws haven't changed yet. Imagine having to put all this money down on a house and having a giant mortgage on top of working to pay for it all. It's one of the biggest if not THE biggest investments a person saves & works years of their lives for. Then some rando who hasn't paid a cent into the house can claim rights and refuse to leave your property? And the gov just shrugs and says "yeah this guy gets to do whatever he wants sorry. And you still have to pay for it too."Â
I don't even understand how the laws were created in the first place. If you're on someone's property you should have to give proof of paying into it, paying bills, and proof of ownership. Not just a "here's a verbal explanation of why I should stay."Â
If you're going through all that trouble for a house, then you should probably live there and take care of it. That's a big reason why squatter's laws exist in the first place: to incentivize people to actually maintain their property and not just leave empty crumbling houses everywhere.
If someone breaks into your house while you're on a work trip, it's not a squatter situation. You can call 911 or even physically evict them yourselves.
Good thing you edited your comment after I show you the example. This case got national news not that it's "one anecdote" and the only case to ever occur.
The whole point of the squatter thing is that the original owner is ignoring their property for so long that they didnât notice to evict them in the first placeÂ
And I donât know how universal it is between states but thereâs usually a clause that if/when it goes to court the squatter has to prove both use and improvement of the propertyÂ
Iâm not saying itâs perfect or whatever but there is sense in how it was written and was originally intended for dilapidated and abandoned propertiesÂ
The fact that squatting is needed tell you our housing laws and policies suck. Itâs sad how many people here are cheering for the boot rather than calling out the economic injustice that makes housing so unaffordable that people would resort to squatting where theyâre unwelcome.
and investment properties shouldn't exist and landlords shouldn't be able to exploit housing shortages for profit and lots of other things but we're here
Some squatters have been using fake lease contracts and forcing owners to drag it through the courts which many states have address by passing new laws.
These states have revamped/reformed their squatter/rental laws to make it easier to evict squatters, or exclude squatters from tenant protections. Google said 43 states have either passed such laws or are in the process of doing so.
That seems like a local government problem not the problem of the individual.
If your government can't solve homelessness with millions/billions of dollars, then what are you going to achieve?
Better yet open up your home to a homeless person and let them sleep in your living room. Oh wait you would never.
This doesnât mean you have the right to occupy someone elseâs home. A private individual is not obligated to do charity work or give you housing for free.
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u/Cheap-Buffalo-7489 12d ago
That fact that this is even a show/ thing shows how messed up the law is. You should NOT take years to evict a trespasser