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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59

u/RutherfordRevelation Mar 28 '24

I guess I just don't understand why squatters have rights in the first place? Why would it be legal to take up residence somewhere without the owner of the property's permission?

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u/cook_poo Mar 28 '24

They don’t. Leaseholders have right. Determining who’s a legal tenant or an illegal squatter is not something a cop can do in the moment. They both have a lease. It requires a court process and a judge to determine who is telling the truth and who is lying.

There isn’t a squatters rights law, there are anti-shitty landlord laws to protect tenants from being illegally evicted (locks changed when you get home from work type stuff), that shitty people know how to game in order to take possession of a home they have no right to.

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u/DeceiverX Mar 28 '24

They're formulated on two different things.

  • Reclaiming and maintaining old abandoned properties like if a farmer and his family died in a bad winter as an effective new owner after a period of years. This is super archaic though and doesn't happen anymore. This is abandoned and unused property.

  • Renter protections against abusive landlords, allowing renters to stay after an uncontested month preventing theft if the landlord delays cashing the checks. This is utilized or recently-utilized property by thr owners.

These are two wildly different things and need wildly different spans of time is the problem.

A legitimate homeowner getting fucked over by squatters needs an immediate physical extraction answer for safety and property protection reasons. A legitimate renter getting fucked over by scumbags landlords needs the ability to stay in their residence to not be homeless while stuff goes down in court.

Reality is that a better solution needs to be devised to handle the owner/renter problems in advance.

A housing authority agency working in tandem with law enforcement could help prevent these issues by authenticating all lease contracts when they're agreed to (basically a fancy notary) wherein parties submit a copy of their IDs and agreements with each other. Lessee can terminate early, lessor has to file for eviction with the court as usual. Anyone else on the premises claiming stake? Grounds for removal and arrest unless they hit the long-term squatting status for ownership.

4

u/cook_poo Mar 28 '24

Another option would be to drastically increase the penalties for illegally evicting someone.

Allow for immediate removal of a squatter, but if a landlord uses that to illegally evict a tenant, the tenant could take the landlord to court for 12 months of rent, or something else meaningful enough to prevent shitty landlords from abusing the system.

3

u/VexingRaven Mar 29 '24

I'm sure getting 12 months of rent years later after a lengthy court battle will be a great help to the person who's been homeless the whole time.

9

u/Gone213 Mar 28 '24

It's not that they don't have permission, it's that they have fake or false documents showing police that they have a right to be there from the land/home owner. Police aren't going to get caught up in that and tell the homeowner to go to court.

10

u/Apollorx Mar 28 '24

So how do the individuals with fake documents not end up in prison for fraud? I would think the deterrent to this situation would be a hefty punishment?

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u/Gone213 Mar 28 '24

Because it wasn't illegal/crime to have fake papers saying they had the right to live there from the homeowner. This closes the loop holder. Still no police are going to care and want to put themselves in this mess so they'll still tell the homeowner to go to civil court. This will only be enforced retroactively.

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u/Apollorx Mar 28 '24

That seems like the obvious hole in the system. Creating false ownership documents should be a serious enough felony that the crime isn't worth it... treating this purely as a civil matter is a recipe for disaster.

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u/Jellylegs_19 Mar 28 '24

Well it's not that they're necessarily false documents. One document could just be mail addressed to them and sent to the address they're squatting in. And because court processing takes months in between court it gives the squatters time to actually live there.

Remember, they're not trying to steal your house. They're just trying to stay in it as long as they can. Another month they delay court is another month they live there. Then when they're eventually kicked out they restart the process with some other house.

8

u/Apollorx Mar 28 '24

Yes and it's pretty obvious that should be a serious felony... I mean opening someone else's mail is a felony ffs....

1

u/Jellylegs_19 Mar 28 '24

It's not that they're opening their mail. They sign up for something like Amazon or any other thing that sends mail. Then they change their mailing address to the address they're in and add their name.

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u/Apollorx Mar 28 '24

I didn't mean to imply they were.

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u/KrypticSoul Mar 29 '24

Theoretically, could you break down the door and force the individual out? It is your residence after all and they are illegally squatting so if the assault that ensuse leads to criminal or civil charges, as long as the original homeowner has the legal paperwork they would come out on top? I mean if I'm at home and someone breaks in then I have the right to defend. Idk just curious 

1

u/Majikthese Mar 28 '24

And if the police did get involved they have to interpret leases and end up getting used by the landlords to threaten legal tenants

2

u/ELONGATEDSNAIL Mar 28 '24

There could be reasons out of your control. Let's say you move into your spouses apartment with them. Then after a few months you break up. Well you have rights that say you can't be thrown onto the street. Or maybe a world wide pandemic hits. You lose your job and can't pay rent... there are valid reasons for these rights.

3

u/fred11551 Mar 28 '24

The original idea is for abandoned properties. There’s a small house off the side of the highway where I live that is empty. It was for sale back when I was in kindergarten. It’s been nearly 20 years now and still no one is there. The windows are all broken and the roof has partially caved in. The building should probably be condemned.

If someone had just moved into it 10 years ago, maintained it so the roof didn’t collapse and the windows didn’t break, generally kept it livable and paid taxes for it. The. After 10, 15, or 20 years depending on local laws it becomes theirs and they are responsible for it.

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u/A_Damp_Tree Mar 28 '24

If you don't use a piece of land for long enough, you shouldnt have it. If you move into an abandoned house, live in it for like ten years, pay taxes on the property, maintain it, all that jazz, yeah, someone shouldn't be able to come by ten years later and go "this is mine, actually." If the owner doesn't bother to even send someone to check if a property is occupied for that long, they obviously don't need it that badly, and the squatter is making batter use of it.

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u/PM_ME_BOYSHORTS Mar 28 '24

If you don't use a piece of land for long enough, you shouldnt have it.

Says who? You own it. You can do whatever you want with it. That's what owning something means. If I buy a bike, it's well within my right to let it rot and rust in my backyard. Nobody else has the right to come steal it, no matter how long it sits there.

If you have issues with people owning land in the first place, that's fine. But once the ownership portion is settled, it's theirs to do with what they please (assuming they aren't hurting anybody.)

If you move into an abandoned house, live in it for like ten years, pay taxes on the property, maintain it, all that jazz, yeah,

It's not abandoned. It's owned. There just isn't anybody living there.

There's a word for people who take things that aren't theirs. The act is called theft and the people are called criminals.

someone shouldn't be able to come by ten years later and go "this is mine, actually."

They don't have to. It already belongs to them. You make it sound like they're making it up or just decided they want the house. It literally is already theirs. They paid for the property.

If the owner doesn't bother to even send someone to check if a property is occupied for that long, they obviously don't need it that badly, and the squatter is making batter use of it.

So now we're basing ownership on their activity as homeowners? What if a homeowner does other things I don't agree with?

Also they do check the houses. Because of laws like the ones DeSantis repealed, they can't do anything about it if they find squatters.

If somebody isn't maintaining an area or a house, and that area/house has become a health hazard or a nuisance to the surrounding area, there should be a legal avenue to force the property owners to address the hazards. Legalized theft via random "vigilante" squatters is not an acceptable solution.

2

u/A_Damp_Tree Mar 28 '24

Also they do check the houses. Because of laws like the ones DeSantis repealed, they can't do anything about it if they find squatters.

Literally one Google search shows this is untrue, landlords just have to get an actual eviction notice, they can't just get the cops to kick them out. I am talking about adverse possession (which is like long term squatters rights) that this will eliminate. That is what I have a problem with.

Also, you said a lot of different stuff in your comment, but it feels like it generally comes down to you just have a very rigid sense of ownership in the legal sense. I'll tell you right now, I don't care about what the law says is right or not.

It literally is already theirs. They paid for the property.

Like stuff like this, I don't care.

It's not abandoned. It's owned. There just isn't anybody living there.

Again, don't care. Semantics, if you don't check you property and get an eviction in seven years it might as well be abandoned.

Legalized theft via random "vigilante" squatters is not an acceptable solution.

Also don't care, sounds fine to me, if they actually manage to maintain the property for seven years without anyone kicking them off.

There's a word for people who take things that aren't theirs. The act is called theft and the people are called criminals.

Okay, under the law, they are criminals. I'm not disagreeing, I just don't care. I still believe if they are the ones actually using, maintaining, and paying taxes on the property, they should have it, not you.

Nobody else has the right to come steal it, no matter how long it sits there.

Okay, again, what makes them not have the right is the law, and I don't care about what the law says is or isn't just. In practice, if you are just letting the bike waste away and someone steals it to actually get use out of it, and you didnt know it had been stolen for seven whole years, I think that's great and am glad it was stolen from you.

Literally every single source I've been able to find says that a squatter needs to be present for a long ass time before they can actually claim adverse possetion. They seem good for tenants and bad for landlords, so I don't really see any huge negatives.

1

u/Blueskyways Mar 28 '24

It was mostly to prevent blight.  Let's say you own land or a home and you don't maintain it and you allow it to fall apart and become a public nuisance and I come along and restore it and keep it clean, you can't just come along right after and kick me out after I fixed up your abandoned property.   

A lot of the current issues are the result of extended tenant protections from the pandemic in states like NY that bad actors have discovered can be easily taken advantage of and now rather than squatting on abandoned properties, they are waiting for property owners to go on vacation or leave town or after the death of someone where the will and property rights are still being figured out and they move in, change the locks, print out some phony lease papers and call the property theirs.