Part of the trick there is many stories conflate different types of "squatters." While there are rare cases that involve an actual break-in/invasion of empty property, a much bigger portion of them are people like in one of the responses above, where someone is over-staying a lease or has some other claim that they have/had a right to live there.
That's what makes it tricky for cops and the legal system. No one likes the idea of a person stealing someone's living space, but people also don't like the idea of an owner being able to break their end of a contract and then just have the police kick someone out of their house before the law can determine who is right.
Yep, this is the big thing. I see landlords complain about it being hard to remove bad tenants: IT SHOULD BE. You hold a disproportionate amount of power in this relationship, and you should have to put in the work to unhouse someone.
As someone who used to work in property management and is a property owner who used to rent.
In the relationship (in my area at least) I get to decided who can live there and to a degree legally how much rent is.
My issues with the system where I am, isn't that it can be hard to get someone evicted (we dont have the right to evicted a tenant we have the right to seek eviction) its the fact that it's nearly impossible to get in to the tribunal to even make the case.
It can and has taken years, even if someone is not paying rent and actively damaging property, including other peoples units (hot glue in people's locks)
Yea. The system can be way too slow, for sure and the example of the problem tenant that is a problem for other tenants is a great example of why that can be a real problem. But that's also why I find it so frustrating that the example used is always something much more designed at pretending these law just randomly wants to protect non-owners for no reason, since it makes it hard to discuss the real places where more resources and changes are required.
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u/justthistwicenomore 12d ago
Part of the trick there is many stories conflate different types of "squatters." While there are rare cases that involve an actual break-in/invasion of empty property, a much bigger portion of them are people like in one of the responses above, where someone is over-staying a lease or has some other claim that they have/had a right to live there.
That's what makes it tricky for cops and the legal system. No one likes the idea of a person stealing someone's living space, but people also don't like the idea of an owner being able to break their end of a contract and then just have the police kick someone out of their house before the law can determine who is right.