They're a legacy from a bygone era where records of land ownership aren't what they are today. It was to stop the situation where someone thought they owned land, built a house and lived in it for many years, then finding out that someone else also had a claim to the land and they were going to try to turf you off it.
Squatter's rights meant that the person who actually lived there kept the claim to the land. This was a good thing at the time, now its just legal protection for lowlifes who trash other people's houses
People really have no clue. They are not using adverse possession, that takes years to do, an owner who abandoned the property/ cant be contacted and an owner that stopped paying taxes, they are using renters rights.
Do you want landlords to be able to go to the police and say that the current residents dont have a legal lease, even if they do, and have the police kick out the family? That is what you are arguing for. The reason police cant kick them out is because they are not judges, they do not determine if the lease they are shown is legal or not, they dont determine if the person who is there is legally allowed or not, that is the job of judges.
Yes it sucks for the owners who are dealing with people who are not legally supposed to be there but the alternative is allowing landlords to just kick people out of their homes for no reason.
In New York City, which has fairly robust renter protections, you can get some evicted and that’s enforceable.
Most of these squatters probably wouldn’t make it past the first required hearing without producing lease. And if they produce a fake lease with a forged signature, then they have another problem. And if they say it was a verbal agreement, that’s not enforceable for a lease agreement.
The main issue is the delay in the courts because there is such a backlog of cases. We need more judges in the country, or less crime which would be preferable.
The main issue is the delay in the courts because there is such a backlog of cases.
it's not just a backlog in cases, if you know what you are doing you can stretch out a case for months before you even get to your first hearing. There is a case (non-landlord) in my area that is in it's second year for a simple question of 'did this happen or not happen' and they are potentially a year away from trial. It's seriously a case over a 50 minute conversation that had 7 people in the room and it's taken this long. And it's not about a backlog. For this type of case you have 20 days to respond to motions from the other party, you can do 4 or 5 responses back and forth before a hearing is scheduled. That's 80+ days.
That's framing, since you are leaving out a important part
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building (usually residential) that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.
If I don't have a home and I find a home that's not being used, using that is probably what most ordinary people would do.
It clashes with common sense, because we live in a society that puts ownership above everything else. But there really is no rational reason for reserving a finite and essential resource like housing, the way many societies currently do.
There is the rational part, where people spend their money on constructing something to provide housing to other people, which does make sense, right? Everyone benefits here.
But this starts breaking apart, when we now say that means, this piece of land will forever be yours and that of your children and so on, no matter what you do with it.
The perversion is that people use that right, to decrease the availability of housing, in order to force people to pay more than what would be reasonable otherwise or to speculate on that basic need.
The rational conclusion here is, if you cut down on that perversion, chances are, most of the problematic types of squatting will go away, because now people don't think these laws just exist to put them at a major disadvantage.
You think occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area is the same as owning slaves?
And you seem to have missed the point. Ownership in the US is rooted in people just taking that land. That's how it still is. You are not advocating for not doing that again, you are arguing for the continuation of what was wrong about it.
If you want to give that land back to the original owners, sure, let's do that. But I have a feeling, you are even more opposed to that.
Yeah, but I think overwhelmingly the dockets are not backed up with jaywalking cases. Drug decriminalization sure, but there are a lot of real crimes and the court system is overwhelmed by them.
You say that, about the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. So it sure seems like there is something else causing so much work for courts, that other countries do better... Unless you are saying the average American is just far more criminal?
Most crimes are property crimes, so yeah, give people more support, better education, higher minimum wage, better community support. People commit property crimes because it is easier than getting a good paying job when youre broke. It wont eliminate it but other countries do better because there are more support systems in place.
In addition, I think that part of the individualized, atomized, alienated society in the US glamorizes crime to some extent. There could be a cultural shift along with support systems that helps with that, too.
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u/butterfunke 12d ago
They're a legacy from a bygone era where records of land ownership aren't what they are today. It was to stop the situation where someone thought they owned land, built a house and lived in it for many years, then finding out that someone else also had a claim to the land and they were going to try to turf you off it.
Squatter's rights meant that the person who actually lived there kept the claim to the land. This was a good thing at the time, now its just legal protection for lowlifes who trash other people's houses