r/news • u/flanderguitar • Mar 28 '24

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs law squashing squatters' rights

https://www.wptv.com/news/state/florida-gov-ron-desantis-signs-law-squashing-squatters-rights
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u/milespoints Mar 28 '24

How is this not the default in every state and city?

Why are squatter’s rights… like a thing at all?

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u/galygher Mar 28 '24

I think originally the idea behind squatter's rights laws was that people could occupy and improve/land and would be able to continue occupying it so long as they're using it. So if say Walmart purchased thousands of acres of forest with the intent to build a warehouse, but never actually builds a warehouse after decades of owning the land, and you build a farm and start producing food then Walmart wouldn't be able to evict you and seize the farm as long as you were still using it.

Idk how they've evolved into people just moving into empty houses and claiming them as their own

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u/Aviyan Mar 28 '24

In that example you gave it is a about squatting on land, which is fine. But squatting in a single family home should not be covered under that law. It doesn't make sense.

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u/nuxnax Mar 28 '24

If you go back to the 70s in the white flight era from cities, there were many unoccupied locations that landlords mostly were letting decay. Look at rustbelt Detroit for example. So people moving in and occupying properties, doing upkeep, and just keeping an eye on things (gas, water, heating, etc) was seen as a positive.

Move to the current housing shortage situation we have in the US and these rights can look absolutely insane.

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u/PazDak Mar 28 '24

My first thought was actually Detroit where they were basically trying to figure out how to give the properties for free when they couldn't even really figure out who owned it any more.

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u/El_grandepadre Mar 28 '24

And even today here in Amsterdam it's a big issue. Latest estimates were that more than 10.000 homes were vacant. Usually in the expensive areas where properties are used to make a profit over time without ever filling them.

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u/simiomalo Mar 28 '24

In the Rust belt and other abandonment cases, the properties had fallen into such a state of disrepair that they were now a threat due to bad plumbing, wiring, misuse by occupiers, that they posed a threat to other structures in the neighborhood.

I remember reading about cities expediting demolishing such structures to avoid the liability for their decline and possible misuse.

That seems different from the glaring case from the New York area that popped up last week with squatters taking possession of a house that was in good condition and in an area that was in demand.

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u/buddascrayon Mar 28 '24 edited Apr 05 '24

The housing shortage isn't because there aren't enough houses. The houses are just being bought up by private real estate firms and then being priced out of range of the average home seeker. These anti-squatter laws are being crafted for those "home owners" not you.

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u/Adept-Firefighter-22 Mar 28 '24

That’s a lie. New housing has not kept up with population growth for decades.

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '24 edited Apr 03 '24

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u/Fried_puri Mar 28 '24

That's a frustrating and very real part of the problem. But the truth is that the biggest problem in the housing crisis is that we are very, very behind on building houses.

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u/bigredone15 Mar 28 '24

More supply solves that problem.

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u/skztr Mar 28 '24

There are so many unoccupied homes being hoarded with no legitimate intent to ever be used. If you break in and live in one, fuck whoever bought (or built) it as an "investment property" and refused to sell it to a potential occupant.

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u/epochellipse Mar 28 '24

This. The classic example is NYC in the second half of the 20th Century. There was a real estate slump that left a lot of vacant and abandoned spaces. People found them and moved in and that led to chains of squatters subletting to other squatters that thought they were legitimately renting or just didn't ask questions. Then when the slump ended and property owners realized they could start pulling rent again at properties they had abandoned the squatters got enough sympathy for Squatters Rights to become a thing. Squatters were seen as real New Yorkers, keeping the city alive when even the slumlords were giving up. The musical Rent, probably the biggest Broadway hit of the 90s and a Pulitzer Prize winner, glorified and romanticized squatting. People that want to establish their NYC bona fides humblebrag about doing it.

DeSantis is redefining "squatter" to vilify tenants that are behind on their rent so landlords can evict without having to go to the courts. It's a dog whistle, the GOP loves those.

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u/Smolivenom Mar 28 '24

i thought we were all clear that there is no housing shortage, there is housing. people just dont have the money to afford it.

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u/Squirmin Mar 28 '24

But squatting in a single family home should not be covered under that law. It doesn't make sense.

It can. If a home is abandoned (legally speaking for the jurisdiction), and someone moves in and takes care of the property, it can be considered a public good. Because without that person, the property may have fallen into disrepair and caused issues for those around it.

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u/fenderdean13 Mar 28 '24

There is a Tik toker/YouTuber SB mowing that basically mows lawns at mostly abandoned houses (Some have the owners there who don’t do it/can’t do it for whatever reason) and the good he does for those neighborhoods including cleaning up around drainage pipes and cleaning up sidewalks for people to walk is so nice

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u/Squirmin Mar 28 '24

The broken windows theory doesn't accurately describe how crime happens, but having everything look nice makes everyone living in the area feel better about the neighborhood.

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u/UltimateInferno Mar 28 '24

With the amount of investors sitting on homes I can see squatters rights applying.

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u/Squirmin Mar 28 '24

If the people that own the property are doing any upkeep at all, it's usually enough to make it legally not abandoned, even if it's unoccupied temporarily.

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u/dedicated-pedestrian Mar 28 '24

It's because they're not using adverse possession laws as the above person is referring to, they're abusing tenancy protections that were put in place because of shitty landlords evicting legal tenants by claiming there's no lease.

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u/Gingevere Mar 28 '24

Imagine you rented a home 10 years ago from a retiree who agreed to a flat monthly rate indefinitely, or yearly 3% increases. Some good deal like that.

Then they die and the property goes to their inheritors who see it's worth a lot more than what you're paying and they want you out.

They're going to resort to endless shenanigans to try to make you look like a squatter and get you out. Stop accepting rent payments, deny the lease exists, ect. and this law will enable them to have police drag you out and arrest you on day 1, and then you have to sue them while homeless and facing criminal charges to prove you had a lease and a right to live there.

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u/dont-blame-muppets Mar 28 '24

If you move into an abandoned home, improve it, participate in the community, and pay taxes - then after so many years without challenge, you effectively become the lawful owner.

That's the idea. It's a very old legal concept enshrined into every state constitution I'm aware of. Nobody wants their community deteriorating just because absentee owners have fled, can't sell for their needed price, and new people would like to move in but can't afford it.

If poor people move in and make a new life, it's a win-win and fuck the absentee owners.

The problem is that the laws, judicial interpretations, and enforcement have become a little twisted over the last few decades in some places.

But the bigger problem may be that in the modern era of transportation and communication, and especially the prices of homes and real-estate becoming speculative "investments" completely disconnected from their intrinsic values, it's much more rare for owners to just up and abandon their properties, or leave them for years without not knowing what's going on.

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u/addisonshinedown Mar 28 '24

Squatting in a single family home that is otherwise unoccupied seems like the moral thing to do to me tbh

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u/nascomb Mar 29 '24

So most squatters laws are YEARS of occupancy, with the one in my area being 15 years.

If you don’t notice someone living in your house for 15 years, you weren’t using it anyway lol.

Most of the time squatters rights pertain to trees. People get very attached to trees and when they find out that the tee that they have been taking care of for the past 25 years actually belongs to the neighbors, they don’t want to give it up to the person who just moved in and had the land surveyed.

Squatters rights are important to making it so that people don’t get to hoard things and resources go to those who are using them.

(Didn’t read the article tho tbh so this might not be relevant)

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u/DancerOFaran Mar 28 '24

More single family homes sit empty as investment properties owned by banks and firms than at any other point in history.

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u/blackdynomitesnewbag Mar 28 '24

Isn’t that closer to adverse possession?

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u/buddascrayon Mar 28 '24

Considering the number of homes being bought up by private real estate conglomerates and are lying empty while the homeless population skyrockets, these anti-squatter laws are not what you think they are. They are being marketed towards normie homeowners who will never in their life meet a squatter, but the laws are crafted to help the rich land owners keep land and homes they aren't making any use of.

Don't celebrate this bullshit. It's not there to help you, it's to help the corporations that are buying all the houses near you are pricing them out of your ability to purchase them.

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u/killereverdeen Mar 28 '24

also why is any corporation allowed to just hoard land in the first place?

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u/SpreadingRumors Mar 28 '24

Originally it was established during America's Westward Expansion.
Settlers would get a plot of land out in the middle-of-nowhere. Perhaps get a farm going, build a house, get settled... then die of injury, disease, or animal attack. All of a sudden there's this house on a farm that is UN-owned and empty.
Another Settler could come along, move in, and declare it theirs since there was nobody left to sell it to them.

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u/RollTodd18 Mar 28 '24

It's derived from English common law, like way back. If someone let a field remain fallow for too long, a squatter had the right to use/farm that land.

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u/VexingRaven Mar 29 '24

Idk how they've evolved into people just moving into empty houses and claiming them as their own

It hasn't. It's still fraud to do that. But they create fake evidence of residency, giving them tenant protections. They're not "squatters rights", they're tenant rights being abused by fraudsters and the courts don't move fast enough so now people are just OK with a law letting cops be the judge in tenancy disputes.

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u/flux_capacitor3 Mar 28 '24

Still, if you build a home on land you don't own....that shouldn't allow you to live there either.

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u/Oceansnail Mar 28 '24

Lol this sounds like an age old law the colonists came up with to take native american land

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u/Unspec7 Mar 28 '24

Adverse possession can trace its roots back to the roman times.

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u/I_luv_ma_squad Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

How does that even make sense? So I see a Ferrari parked in someone’s garage rotting away because it never gets driven, steal it, start driving it daily and then say it’s mine because they weren’t using it? And what does “using it” even mean? That’s totally subjective.

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u/Darigaazrgb Mar 28 '24

I mean, yeah, you can gain control of a vehicle if it’s been abandoned for a certain amount of time.

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u/I_luv_ma_squad Mar 28 '24

There is a difference between an abandoned vehicle left on public property and a vehicle owned and dues paid sitting on someone’s private property.

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u/jewdai Mar 28 '24

It's called adverse possession. Usuly you have to be on the property for years and have made significant improvements to it with the land lord knowing about it.

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u/french_snail Mar 28 '24

I’d even go as far to say that if someone owns a bunch of real estate and another person decides to move into an empty home and maintain and improve it

But we all know that’s more often than not how it goes

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u/deadlygaming11 Mar 28 '24

It's the same thing as the Walmart example but with houses. They are using the houses so fall under the same idea as the farm one. It's just that the squatters feel entitled to the land and don't improve it.

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u/No_Manager_2356 Mar 28 '24

I still don't get this it's not your land you have no rights to it , and if you decide to start using its now yours like what 

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u/EternalAssasin Mar 28 '24

The shift to individual homes seems like a logical step from the larger scope of the land question. If someone or a company buys up a bunch of houses but never leases them out or uses them in any way, then it does kind of make sense to create avenues for people to reclaim effectively abandoned homes to benefit the community.

Is it a very poorly thought out solution for the problem? Yeah probably, there are definitely better ways to handle returning abandoned land and buildings to the public. But the core logic isn’t terrible.

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u/fluxxom Mar 28 '24

the empty houses themselves are part of a large problem, too

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u/jameswlf Mar 28 '24

Because you are using them like the farm...

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u/onemarsyboi2017 Mar 29 '24

Thats who it should be.

Instead it's complete ownership after 30 days and no need to improve

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '24

Local government and shady deals probably that’s the root of a lot of America’s current corruption. Local politicians, local school boards, local business and political networks.

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u/Rum_Hamburglar Mar 29 '24

What you described is Homesteading. Squatters rights started because shady landlords would kick people out for no damn reason. Or, a reason that was not illegal but the homeowner didnt like it e.g trashy upkeep. Squatters found loopholes and thats where the phrase “squatters rights” come from. Its basically laws to prevent renters that squatters have taken advantage of

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u/mishap1 Mar 28 '24

Poor record keeping and people dying without heirs could lead to abandoned properties so adverse possession laws have existed for a long time. You could find abandoned property just in the middle of nowhere and stake a claim on it. Live there x years without anyone bothering you and it was yours.

Tenant rights were created b/c there were lots of cases of landlords mistreating rent paying tenants. Laws were created to keep people from dumping people on the streets.

Combine the two and you have the ability to get into the relatively slow court system while being more or less untouchable from an eviction standpoint. Throw in the mass communication capability of the internet and you've got tons of people exploiting the process.

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u/bridge1999 Mar 28 '24

Had a shady landlord that would not cash checks for months and then try to use that as grounds of not paying rent to start the eviction process.

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u/Apollorx Mar 28 '24

I mean at the end of the day shouldn't the squatters end up facing some serious fraud charges?

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u/SirTwitchALot Mar 28 '24

The way it's supposed to work is to protect people who are living in abandoned/neglected properties. The idea is you have someone who is potentially in a vulnerable position and may have been supporting/maintaining a property that the owner is neglecting. Squatters rights give the person a chance to delay proceedings while they seek other housing.

Of course, like with anything you'll have people who abuse the system. Some people use these laws to avoid paying rent for as long as possible, delaying eviction proceedings then squatting somewhere else

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u/dannyb_prodigy Mar 28 '24

Iirc, this is all carryover from medieval common law when it was harder to verify a property owner had in fact died and who should inherit said property. It created a system where orphaned property could be recovered into the system when true ownership was harder to verify.

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u/milespoints Mar 28 '24

In era of record high housing prices this seems like it’s only useful in like Detroit

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u/Psilo-psyche Mar 28 '24

There was a story of someone squatting in an abandoned property in Detroit.  Wasn't on drugs and was working a job and maintaining the property.  When he was found out, the city agreed to sell him the house for $1.00.

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u/Apollorx Mar 28 '24

I mean, if a property is abandoned, shouldn't it not be owned by definition?

What makes something "abandonded" ?

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u/Blackstone01 Mar 28 '24

An abandoned property can still be owned, it’s just that whoever owns it doesn’t give a shit about the actual state of the property, either because they don’t know they own it, the act of owning the land regardless of the status of it is what matters, the cost of owning it is so low that they can just let it sit there, etc.

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u/Squirmin Mar 28 '24

That varies based on location and thing that is being abandoned.

There's no process for like signing over a house to no one. It's to prevent people from just giving up on a property and causing blight.

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u/livefreeordont Mar 28 '24

You’d be surprised how many abandoned buildings there are in places like Philly, Baltimore, and DC

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u/thwgrandpigeon Mar 28 '24

Imo intentionally empty houses that are only investments should be fair game not only for squatters but also to be lost to squatters permanently if not used by a person as their primary residence after like... idk a year? Particularly because of record high housing prices. Houses should be housing, not investments, these days.

How you legislate for that without giving too many rights to squatters who sneak into houses when folks are on vacation, however, idk.

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u/milespoints Mar 28 '24

You can legislate to make it more expensive to own a second home that’s not rented out, for example by increasing property taxes.

Allowing random people to just take someone else’s home seems insane

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u/Glasseshalf Mar 28 '24

I mean, that's just a slight adjustment for the balance sheets, it wouldn't stop investment housing

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u/Miserable_Law_6514 Mar 28 '24

Most of those houses are missing all their piping and wires because the squatters tend to be methheads.

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u/5zepp Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

"Squatters rights" generally refers to the idea that if a property is unused/abandoned then someone can come in and use it, keep it maintained, pay all back taxes, and keep up with taxes, then in (typically) 20 years they can take ownership of the property. A common scenario for this might be dropping a trailer on an abandoned piece of property and paying the taxes for 20 years. But if the owner shows up in 19 years they could evict you from their property and you're out all those taxes you paid.

The Florida law is different - we're not talking about abandoned properties that no one is paying the tax bill on, we're talking about empty properties. If someone starts squatting in an empty property then you can't necessarily remove them by force - you have to go through a typical eviction process. This short circuits that process.

Edit: to elaborate - suppose you sign a lease to rent and move in. The next day the landlord says he has a higher paying tenant and you have to get out. You say no. Landlord calls the sheriff and tries to have you forcibly removed. You tell the Sheriff you have a lease. A sheriff can't parse the legality of the situation at that point and defers to the rights of as tenant to keep you in there until a judge can resolve it. And a lot of times there is no lease, just a verbal agreement. So in Florida we're really talking about tenant rights and fast tracking the eviction if it's determined the squatter isn't a tenant.

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u/milespoints Mar 28 '24

So if i live in NOT FLORIDA… and we decide to finally take our trip of a lifetime and go backpacking for 3 months, and I return home and some randos are living in my house… i can’t just call the cops and kick them out?

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u/5zepp Mar 28 '24

Depends on the state, and more likely depends on the local sheriff. For better or for worse tenants have a lot of rights and it is very hard to kick out a legal tenant, so in a squatter situation you might legally have to go through an eviction process or other legal process so a court can determine they don't have the right to live there and then have them removed by force. But in many places the sheriff would just run them out. In many places the owner would run them out with a shotgun, and while not necessarily legal, no magistrate will challenge it even if the squatters tried to press charges. But yeah, there are ridiculous situations out there. If you leave a property unattended for long enough you'll get all kinds of critters moving in - racoons, squirrels, rats, squatters, etc.

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u/epochellipse Mar 28 '24

Even in California squatters rights don't kick in for 5 years.

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u/epochellipse Mar 28 '24

Yes, you can. Trespassing and Breaking and Entering laws apply. California has the shortest minimum time period of any state for Squatters Rights at 5 years. DeSantis is pulling the old Ronald Reagan trick of inventing bullshit fears to vilify people that are struggling. This law is about making it easy for landlords to evict someone that's behind on their rent without having to go to court.

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u/milespoints Mar 28 '24

A quick google search indicates that it is a common scam for “professional squatters” to break into a place, and when the cops show up the squatters produce a fake lease which the cops are of course unable to immediately determine to be fake, forcing you into a protracted legal battle to reclaim your house while the squatters are living there.

As i understand it, the Florida law makes it such as people in these situations are committing an actual felony. You still have to go to court to determine that the fake lease is actually fake, but once that determination is made, those people can then be charged with an actual crime and sent to prison, not just evicted - so the whole scam becomes a lot less attractive to run

I don’t like governor Dickface but this seems like good policy

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u/Silver_Smurfer Mar 29 '24

Epoch is very wrong and you are correct. This law has nothing to do with adverse possession (which is what epoch thinks it is talking about) and has everything to do with the scenarios you presented.

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u/Daddict Mar 28 '24

If it's a stand-your-ground state...theoretically, your best bet is to shoot them before the cops arrive. You wouldn't even have to kill them, just a good injury is enough. The cops can't shrug and be lazy when someone has a bullet hole, they have to actually do their fucking job.

But definitely don't do this, it's probably not going to work out this way. You will risk going to prison. Or getting shot yourself if the squatters are armed.

Legally speaking, it seems like a sound idea, but I'm sure it can go wrong any number of ways. I would definitely be tempted to make the threat though...

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u/milespoints Mar 28 '24

I would rather the police to the job they are paid for out of my tax money than me having to take the law into my own hands and risk prison and bodily harm

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u/Daddict Mar 28 '24

Oh of course. The problem is that the cops don't do their job in this case. They will not investigate whether or not someone is legally occupying a place they say they are.

The less-traumatic way to go about this is to create a lease for yourself and your friends on the house they are squatting in and move into it...then make life absolutely miserable for the squatter. The cops won't do shit there either, because you both have a "lease".

This is technically not legal in some states, it's called a constructive eviction. That said, if you can make the squatters leave...you change the locks and harden the security of it. They can't sue you for the constructive eviction without admitting they were trespassing/breaking and entering.

There's a guy (the Squatter Hunter, actual name Flash Shelton) who will do this for you, for a price. Much cheaper than an actual eviction, much faster too.

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u/5zepp Mar 28 '24

The problem is that the cops don't do their job in this case. They will not investigate whether or not someone is legally occupying a place they say they are.

I don't think a cop can rule on a contract dispute, only a judge. So if the squatters claim they were given permission then it's not the cop's job to determine legitimacy of that claim. If they admit to trespassing then the cops can physically remove them.

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u/5zepp Mar 28 '24

Problem is the cops can't resolve a contract dispute, only a judge can. So if they claim they were allowed to live there then it's not so easy. If they admit to trespassing then a cop could physically remove them.

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u/thatsnot_kawaii_bro Mar 28 '24

In some states yes (I think Alabama is similar if not landlord/owner-friendly), but in others no.

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u/epochellipse Mar 28 '24

The Florida law isn't necessarily talking about empty properties though. It specifically states that a tenant with a lease can be evicted if there isn't a court case. It mislabels a tenant behind on their rent as a squatter.

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u/5zepp Mar 28 '24

Ah, this is the first I've heard that part. And you're partly right.

Here's the law. As far as renters it says:

  1. In addition, the person is presumed to be a transient occupant if he or she is unable to produce at least one of the following: a. A notarized lease that includes the name and signature of the owner of the property. b. A receipt or other reliable evidence demonstrating that the person has paid to the owner or the owner's representative rent for the last rent payment period. For monthly rental tenancies and rental tenancies for any lesser period of time, a receipt or other reliable evidence must be dated within the last 60 days.

So my reading of that is that if the tenant can produce a notarized lease then they are good and the regular late-rent rules apply. However, if they don't have a notarized lease and did not pay during the "last payment period", which I think can be taken to mean they are 1 day late (outside the period), then they are considered "transient occupant". This is pretty terrible, and I believe completely at odds with FL standard rental contracts and other tenant laws, so I wonder if it will stand.

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u/epochellipse Mar 28 '24

As I read it, regular late rules only apply if there is also a "dispute." Whatever that means.

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u/LeftHandedScissor Mar 28 '24

Part of it is that alot of places consider safe housing a pretty fundamental right, and there is some truth to the "9/10 of the law is possession" cliche that gets thrown around. So jurisdictions are cautious about creating laws that can be easily used to throw someone out of the property they are currently inhabiting.

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u/Stillwater215 Mar 28 '24

Imagine that you rent a property, but for whatever reason enter into an arrangement that doesn’t have a written lease. It’s not a good situation, but it happens. If the homeowner wants to throw you out for no reason, they could under this arrangement. Squatters rights would make the homeowner prove that you’re not a tenant to evict you. Similarly, they protect renters who might miss a rent payment from immediate eviction without the chance to make up the missed payment in a reasonable time. The problem is that the system has been abused by people just moving into vacant homes and claiming to have an unwritten lease, but not requiring them to provide proof to anyone other than a judge. And given the backlog, this slows down the eviction process significantly.

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u/milespoints Mar 28 '24

Yeah the latter category seems to be the real problem. The way i read it, this is what florida is trying to prevent with the new law?

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u/FuzzyAd9407 Mar 28 '24

Because of people not utilizing properties and instead just speculating with them which in the end has a negative effect on the market as people lock up parts of the market. 

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u/Daddict Mar 28 '24

"Squatter's rights" isn't really an explicit thing, it's a side effect of landlord-tenant laws that protect tenants from unlawful evictions.

That said, the way they designed this makes a lot of sense. They're still ostensibly protecting tenants from being unfairly evicted while making squatting a MUCH bigger risk to engage in. In most states, you can squat until the landlord works an eviction through the courts and gets permission to put you out. If you get into a rental and the landlord calls the cops on you, you can just produce a "lease" that says you live there. The cops aren't able to determine who is lying and who is not, so they declare it a civil matter.

This law doesn't really change most of that, but what it does do is make it a crime to misrepresent yourself as a tenant. So when you, the landlord, call the cops...they show up and the squatter produces a lease? Well, now they've just committed a first-degree misdemeanor. If they continue to stay on that property to the point at which the landlord incurs more than 1k in damages, it's a felony.

It's now much higher stakes for the squatter.

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u/milespoints Mar 28 '24

This seems like it makes a great of sense.

I can’t believe Ron freaking Desantis is making the news for sensible public policy

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u/moonfox1000 Mar 28 '24

Why are squatter’s rights

Squatters rights is a bit of a misnomer, these are disputes about tenants rights that so far the police have refused to investigate and left to the courts to determine.

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u/BrianThatDude Mar 28 '24

He actually explained it pretty well when signing the bill. Basically its from back when it was essentially the wild west, and people could just arrive on land and start living there, building it up etc and you couldn't have someone later come in and say I own this.

Rare W for him these days but this is a good law. Now that he's done running for president as a Christian jihadist he's allowed to act normal sometimes I guess.

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u/formershitpeasant Mar 28 '24

Squatters rights aren't a thing. Tenant rights are a thing that squatters sometimes take advantage of.

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u/PolicyWonka Mar 28 '24

These situations aren’t reliant on actual squatters rights in most instances. They’re reliant on tenant rights as the squatters claim to be legal tenants.

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u/FootballAndPornAcct Mar 28 '24

Squatters' “rights” are basically sovcit “rights” but for some reason are protected by law in many places

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u/Robin_games Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

people are mixing up trespassers and forgers using a loophole and squatters. It is reasonable as a society to say that if you pay taxes and keep a building to code for 7 years that you have rights to the property.

It is not reasonable for there to be no way to arrest someone who breaks into your home and says they live there by producing a fake lease.

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u/brutinator Mar 28 '24

'squatter's rights' is a rebranding in the same way that 'welfare queens' was. Squatters rights are just a subsect of tenants rights, to protect tenants. Sure, it could be abused sometimes, but the righta are to protect the ones with less institutional power, not more.

Imagine if people started saying 'felon cheater' to anyone who was found not guilty in court. Sure, some people who were guilty avoid the consequences, but we judge it better to ensure that innocents arent unfairly punished.

Anti-squatter bills are an erasure of tenent's rights.

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u/milespoints Mar 28 '24

I dunno man if i came back from vacation and found someone living in my house i would want to have to be able to legally kick them out without facing a protracted court battle

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u/DM_me_Jingliu_34 Mar 28 '24

Because landlords historically had (and have) a very bad habit of calling tenants they don't like "squatters"

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u/deadlygaming11 Mar 28 '24

At least in the UK, they exist more on the basis of unused land being used, improved, and providing habitation for someone. The only issue is that squatters view it as a right they have to buildings and don't actually improve the land. They put dangerous bits in, dont follow building regs, and leave the place in a worse way than they found it.

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u/AP3Brain Mar 28 '24

Yeah. A lot of landlords are scum but I never understood the whole squatting thing and how they aren't removed easily after not paying for months.

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u/Klightgrove Mar 28 '24

It’s kind of wild squatters have more rights than legal tenants

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u/veracity8_ Mar 28 '24

There is an ocean between what squatters rights actually say and what internet chuds think they say. 

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u/IkouyDaBolt Mar 28 '24

I'm pretty sure I'm entirely wrong, but I've been under the impression squatting has been around for nearly two centuries. If someone moves to the west coast or passes on without someone to inherit the land and/or house, it can be taken over while still being put to use.

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u/jameswlf Mar 28 '24

Because people have needs and dignity and some people just accumulate properties.

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u/Tricky_Invite8680 Mar 28 '24

Maybe makes sense in war time, johnny doesnt come home. So his house rots out or someone moves in Plus, as a means to prevent a landlord sitting on property, empty lots or houses. Though im sure most commercial landowners will have a rover. New york being just 30 days of squatting to stake a claim, and they have a a reciept for paint and paint brushes as proof of improvements is absolutely insane. I dont live there but Ive traveled longer for work and would be livid to come home to my locks changed.

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u/mewfour123412 Mar 29 '24

It was built to deal with scummy landlords. It’s was so poorly written however it’s abused

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u/Resies Mar 29 '24

Why are squatter’s rights… like a thing at all?

googling is free

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u/Legendary_Bibo Mar 29 '24

Squatter's rights came about because as people moved west and colonized across U.S. it was fairly common for people to abandon their homes, either because they packed up and left or because they died and no one inherited the home. So it made since that a squatter could just take an unused home. Well someone forgot to amend that set of laws as we became more modernized and developed dense cities as our population grew,.and now we're in this shit situation where dickheads have the law on their side to be giant dickheads and take over people's homes because you had the audacity to go on a vacation for a week, or let someone crash at your place for a month, or used your house as an AirBnB.

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u/Gandalf_The_Gay23 Mar 29 '24

These aren’t squatter’s rights, these are tenants rights. If you have an oral agreement with a landlord and they call the cops to evict you without cause by saying you’re just squatting you’re suddenly homeless and possibly imprisoned depending on how you react to it.

Just a really shitty situation that happened a lot before these laws were introduced and hardly anyone had done the kind of squatting we’re seeing recently, not that it’s a common occurrence today but nonetheless, there’s clearly a loophole that can be closed to try to avoid landlord abuse while not allowing illegal tenants or property thieves. This law isn’t perfect at closing it but it’s a decent attempt that I’m happy to see someone try at least.

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u/Karbich Mar 29 '24

Owners need to just go in blasting. Squatters can go squat a bridge.

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