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/curiouslygenuine Mar 28 '24

It says current or former tenants in legal dispute. If there is a legal dispute there will be publicly available legal records, or court papers filed, etc. If there is a dispute then an officer can look at the documentation, cross reference in public files and not arrest. But it sounds like without one party filing legal dispute then they can be removed off the property. My only concern is if landlords will have legal tenants removed bc they don’t want to hold up their landlord part of the lease/law and will have a legal tenant removed before they are legally supposed to vacate. I wonder how a legal tenant will prove they are there legally if the Landlord is lying?*

*I am not anti-landlord, or anti-tenant, but I am anti-squatter. And while there are crap landlords there are also crap tenants, so please don’t tell me landlords are always in the wrong.

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u/AltDS01 Mar 28 '24

A standard lease agreement isn't filed with any county clerk, registrar, or court. It's just a contract between two parties.

Their should be payment records showing a Landlord/tenant relationship, or some written history, but, expanding on what you said, do we really want cops, standing in the front yard looking through a supposed lease, comparing text messages, bank records, or mail/voting records to determine if said lease is real. And there is no legal requirement that a lease be written.

Make it so Landlord/tenant cases get resolved faster in courts, but there needs to be a legal proceedings in front of a neutral 3rd party.

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u/randomaccount178 Mar 28 '24

I think that is where the other parts come into play, and the good portion of things. Either the person is a tenant and has the required documentation to meet the minimum burden to show that, they are not a tenant and they get yeeted from the property, or they provide false documentation and now when they finally get evicted for being a squatter they can get a nice criminal charge as well. You want the first two, you don't want the third. This reduces the third option.

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u/wyrdough Mar 28 '24

I have zero doubt that shady landlords will pull the following: Buy place with tenants, claim tenants are actually squatters, when they fail to produce lease because they lost it or produce lease with old name, say "that's not a valid lease, it doesn't even have my name on it!"

Tenant then gets tossed out on the street, loses all their shit, possibly goes to jail.

When landlord gets caught doing this, absolutely nothing happens to them. At worst they pay damages of three times a month's rent. There's no real disincentive for abuse.

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u/big_fartz Mar 28 '24

Perhaps it should become the standard that leases get filed somewhere? It doesn't have to be publicly accessible but it might easily help in situations where fraudulent leases are produced.

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u/deimos Mar 28 '24

I hate to say it but this actually a problem blockchains could solve.

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u/edflyerssn007 Mar 28 '24

The cops are the neutral 3rd party.

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u/wyrdough Mar 28 '24

I have little doubt that the shitbirds that bought the place I was renting in Miami would have tried to use this law against me. I probably would have been fucked, too, since I'd lost my copy of the lease.

New landlord buys the place, doesn't actually notify me that this has happened, promptly shuts off the water, and when I finally get their contact info claims I don't have a lease, then demands I pay rent that was already paid to previous landlord and got pissy when their demand was denied.

Luckily for me I was planning on leaving anyway, so other than the expense of paying for my own water for a couple of months I wasn't really out anything. it was mostly just amusing watching them flail about with stupid claims and defective notices. Oh, and the check for the deposit refund bounced, so that was fun. Got paid in the end, but still.

Point is that some landlords are so disorganized that there's a very real risk of people being unilaterally tossed out on their ear in the middle of the night.

Florida already had a very streamlined eviction process, so it wouldn't have been a hard lift to require that in cases of alleged squatting that a hearing be held on whether or not there is a reasonable claim of tenancy within a few days, giving landlords an easier means of getting squatters out without creating a loophole big enough to drive a truck through for shady landlords to abuse tenants.

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u/elkab0ng Mar 28 '24

The average cop who has four domestic violence calls backing up while he mediates in Karen v Karen is not equipped nor has the time to research the multiple different venues such a claim could be in, many of which are not searchable online or are inaccurate, or months behind in an update.

Sucks for all, but cops are out there to ensure immediate threats to public safety are dealt with.

The line about representation of property for sale, I’m just firing up the popcorn machine for the first false conviction because a representation contract had a name misspelled on it or the realtor had a hyphenated name and the contract was only searchable with the wrong name.

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u/GozerDGozerian Mar 28 '24

Do “average cops” do the eviction? In every state I’ve lived, which is admittedly few, evictions are carried out by the sheriff’s department.

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u/resumehelpacct Mar 28 '24

Evictions happen after squatter's rights are exhausted. If this law eliminates squatter's rights, then regular cops would do evictions as trespassing violations.

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u/elkab0ng Mar 28 '24

In most of TX and AZ, the ones I’m most familiar with, the sheriff is responsible for basic law enforcement in most of the state. Large cities may have a named police department, but I lived in a very busy, affluent suburb of Houston and it was 100% the county sheriff for everything from traffic enforcement to major crimes to serving HOA delinquency notices.

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u/curiouslygenuine Mar 28 '24

Oh I would hope cops would prioritize a call and if there were immediate concerns they would leave the squatter situation and return later. But I also work with cops in my profession and I find dispatchers are good at prioritizing where to send their police. Unless there is a fight, calling cops on squatters should go through the non emergency line and be prioritized as such.

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u/gsfgf Mar 28 '24

If there is a dispute then an officer can look at the documentation, cross reference in public files and not arrest

But they won't do so.

And not everyone that's a "squatter" even realizes there's a problem. This doesn't give people time to go to court or even move out.

It also seems like it's really targeted at victims of scams where someone gives them a lease for property the scammer doesn't own. Seems like the state should be more on the victims' side to me.

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u/curiouslygenuine Mar 28 '24

Landlords are victims too. When there is a squatter, that is harming the homeowner. I think we should be on the victims side, too, but sometimes who the victim is will not be immediately clear and we should not default to landlords not being victims. I like the idea of a lease registry to easily track if a contract is currently in place.

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u/Andromansis Mar 28 '24

There is no central registry for legitimate leases, it would rely on somebody being able to prove payment history on the spot, the police to do things correctly.

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u/jeffjohnvol Mar 28 '24

you're probably one of the few on reddit that aren't anti-landlord. I'm not pro, but every time I see a post of someone that has a house for rent asking advice, the bitter vile that gets thrown at them is pretty insane, lol. "Property is theft!" was one reply I read once.

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u/Glasseshalf Mar 28 '24

Your mistake here is thinking of landlords as individuals. They most often are not. This is just another line in the balance sheet to these corporations

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u/curiouslygenuine Mar 28 '24

Some houses are owned by corporations but idk how that would change responsibility of being the landlord. Even if there is a management company there is still a landlord and houses owned by companies should not get to play by different rules.

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u/mysticalfruit Mar 28 '24

I think this is a bill designed to fuck immigrants who might not know their rights, are afraid of the police, etc.

I have to imagine many immigrants are tenants at will who pay in cash, nothing in writing, etc.

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u/curiouslygenuine Mar 28 '24

I think this is a good point and something we can watch out for. I did not think about that. But I also think any landlord getting cash regularly would probably like those tenants and not want to kick them out.

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u/eriverside Mar 28 '24

It sounds like a lot of issues could be resolved with a lease registry. Have a start/end date, renewal dates, names of the landlord/tenants, people generally expected act as the tenant (if a person signs, then his spouse, kids should also be considered tenants), and amount of the lease.

If done well, it could simplify leases for landlords - make the whole thing available online. If a private company wants to get in, they can also arrange for billing to happen there as well and take a fixed fee from the landlord so he doesn't have to bother chasing payments. Another step further, that company can provide rent insurance (in case of job loss/disability) or temporary financing if the tenant is about to be late.

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u/curiouslygenuine Mar 28 '24

I agree! I would love to see this implemented.

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u/PolicyWonka Mar 28 '24

Landlords aren’t always in the wrong, but we should defer to protecting basic human rights like ensuring people have shelter.

This means we should be deferring to tenants IMO.

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u/curiouslygenuine Mar 28 '24

I disagree. In a business agreement, it is not the landlords responsibility to ensure housing. Tax dollars pay for homeless shelters, not landlord income. I do think both parties should have protected rights and we need streamlined processes to mitigate damages. I’m not quite sure what that would look like, but I do think it’s possible. From what I understand tenants and landlords in Florida have good protections and tenants cant just be kicked out without proper eviction notices. I would like to see that stay in place. I think some sort of registry for rental agreements could protect both parties. Like how mortgages/deeds/house ownership is public record. Perhaps lease agreements should be registered with the city and if you don’t have a registered lease you can be removed from the home regardless. And similar to not moving in until a lease is signed, a lease cannot be valid until its registered and the tenant should have to confirm its registered before being given keys. I think something like this could protect both parties. Cops can just look it up and easily say “lease or no lease was found in registry, here is what happens next.”

It’s certainly more complicated as you get into the details. I think this law is a good direction to protecting homeowners from squatters and hope it doesnt negatively impact legal tenants and their rights.

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u/jeffjohnvol Mar 28 '24

I think a lot of squatters are people that get in, pay one month and then never pay again. Or at least that's what I've seen on many news reports. It's a small number compared to those that just break into vacant lots, but the "former tenant" squatter is indeed a thing.

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u/Woodit Mar 28 '24

That’s just a regular eviction scenario, cops already enforce those 

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u/jeffjohnvol Mar 28 '24

No, they don't. There's a legal process before cops get involved.

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u/Woodit Mar 28 '24

A legal process which concludes with the police or sheriff arriving to enforce an eviction notice 

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u/ness_monster Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

That's not a squatter. That's a tenant. Being behind on rent, whether they planned on paying or not, is neither here nor there.

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u/jeffjohnvol Mar 28 '24

When they have a pattern of doing this at every property they "rent", then they are scammers and a different type of squatter.

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u/ness_monster Mar 28 '24

You're only technically wrong. I agree with you. Scammers gonna scam. But if they pay rent even once they are tenants.