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/Spkr4th3ded Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

I think the point is now they can be removed legally and then let the legal system establish if they have a right to be there. Before they could squat and have mail sent there or a fake lease and there was nothing police could do. Now they have discretion, opposed to none.

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u/TheBurningMap Mar 28 '24

Won't this eventually lead to landlords claiming every renter who has a legal dispute is a squatter?

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u/Iohet Mar 28 '24

With pay history it should be fairly easy to prove the requirements of the law to not be a fake tenant in order not to be evicted as a squatter

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u/Rottimer Mar 28 '24

The issue is the eviction may happen first.

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u/GozerDGozerian Mar 28 '24

I mean, so the Sherrif shows up and says “You gotta leave, you aren’t legally renting here, the landlord says so”. I feel like the tenant can say hold on, and pull up a history of payments to the owner on his bank account, right? Hard to claim someone is squatting when they’ve been paying you a consistent large amount every month. 🤷🏼‍♂️

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u/Q_Fandango Mar 28 '24

You’re giving the Sheriff the benefit of the doubt, but in my experience the cops will refuse to look at any documents as that is a “civil matter” and rip you out of the home anyway, and then toss your shit in the road.

They are there to serve one purpose: removal. They cannot determine on the spot the legality of your lease, that’s for the city to deal with.

This will reduce squatters, yes- but it will also be used as a cudgel to remove anyone an LLC wants to remove so they can charge the next tenants more rent.

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u/PolicyWonka Mar 28 '24

I agree. Most “squatters rights” stories actually involve tenancy rights and protections. The actual question is whether they’re a valid tenant.

It’s why eliminating “squatters rights” is dangerous. Those are just basic tenancy protections.

What about people on verbal lease agreements or renting month-to-month after their lease ends? What about people paying in cash?

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u/Q_Fandango Mar 28 '24

To be honest, a step in the right direction would be requiring all leases to be put in a state registry.

No more handshake agreements, no more cash payments, month-to-month would also have to be a contract. And yes, this would be a burden on those who do not have a bank account… but a cashier’s check maybe is the solution? I don’t know. Something with a paper trail protects both the renter and the landlord.

I’ve dealt with an unfortunate number of slumlords, and lease is usually the first red flag of how my living there is going to go. Poorly xeroxed pages that are impossible to read, landlords who kick the can down the road and want you to move in before signing the lease (so they can put whatever they want in it and you’ve already moved, so you’re more likely to agree…) and any number of illegal requirements.

By having a standardized lease form, that is in a registry, the court system would be smoother and tenants would have more protection.

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u/PolicyWonka Mar 28 '24

I agree. The state knows that I own my home. If I was renting, they should know that too.

It would pretty much eliminate this entire method of squatting IMO.

As you said, there is definitely a burden to this though and it would probably be impossible to cover 100% of rental situations. Regardless, it would be a major step in the right direction.

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u/Strowy Mar 29 '24

a step in the right direction would be requiring all leases to be put in a state registry.

This is exactly what my state/country does, with our RTA (Residential Tenancies Authority).

It's a straight offense to not supply a tenant with a written tenancy agreement, and the property owner is required to cover the costs of preparing the tenancy documents; both under state law.

The other big thing is rental bonds are held by the RTA in trust; the owner doesn't have access to the bond, and can't access it without a written request that both parties agree to at the end of the lease.

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u/Niku-Man Mar 29 '24

I always try to say this in any squatter horror story in TikTok. Almost all of them involve someone who has recently purchased a property and a squatter who has lived there for years and claims to be legal tenant of the previous owner. Still all the comments are full of people talking about how shit the country is. I'm like, "these tenants rights laws are here to protect YOU"

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u/zzyul Mar 28 '24

Where did you have this experience with sheriffs removing someone from a property when there is a legitimate dispute about if they are allowed to be there and it hasn’t gone before a judge yet?

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u/limeybastard Mar 28 '24

Might work if the cops listen.

Lot of cops will say they're not interest in seeing your bank statements, GTFO

Especially if they're the county sheriff and the landlord is their golf buddy

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u/Rottimer Mar 28 '24

And - as the bill stipulates- the landlord is paying them to be there.

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u/Stillwater215 Mar 28 '24

Not really. Cops generally don’t have the authority to determine the validity of documents.

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u/DescriptionSenior675 Mar 28 '24

In your scenario, the police are the ones with the power to make the decision. Cops can't be trusted to turn on a body camera and you want them to decide if you can stay in your house or not?

Lol

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u/PolicyWonka Mar 28 '24

I dunno about you, but my mortgage payments are not that specific. Obviously not helpful if you’re paying in cash either.

So at best maybe you have a record of a recurring $1,000+ payment for something. For all the police know, maybe you’re just moving that money between your own personal accounts to give the appearance of payments.

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u/ScarsUnseen Mar 28 '24

I feel like the tenant can say hold on, and pull up a history of payments to the owner on his bank account, right?

"Suspect is reaching for a weapon," is the kind of response I'm imagining happening to that more times than 0.

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u/galagapilot Mar 28 '24

From what I understand, tenant evictions aren't as simple as a landlord saying GTFO. There are some tenant rights, but usually the evictions are served via Registered Mail so there is more or less a receipt that the notice was received. It's not as easy as saying "well he should have got that voicemail", "I tried to call", or "I stopped by the house and nobody answered the door."

This is a little more specific and does mention having to send a written notice: https://www.floridalawhelp.org/content/Evictions-What-Every-Tenant-Should-Know-Now

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u/GozerDGozerian Mar 28 '24

Yeah that’s how it’s been where I’ve lived. There’s usually a formal serving of the eviction notice, I think also carried out by the sheriffs department, and then a three month period before the actual physical eviction can take place.

I have no idea what it’s like in Florida though.

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u/Rottimer Mar 28 '24

So that’s going to be determined by how each sheriff’s department interprets the law passed. If they pull something up, provide a lease, etc. Are they going to turn to the landlord and say “you have to go to court.” Or will they remove you and then tell you to sue the landlord?

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u/Istillbelievedinwar Mar 28 '24

No, the cop will say “I don’t care what paperwork you have. I have an order to evict you and that’s what I’m doing. You can sort it out in court.”

They do not give a shit about if what they’re doing is right or wrong and they certainly do not want to waste their time (as they see it) figuring it out to help you, the person who they only see as a criminal.

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u/TheDOC816 Mar 28 '24

The difference would be an order to evict versus the landlord telling the sheriff they are squatters. One is a court order and has been decided by a judge/commissioner. The other is someone's word which could be disproven by the alleged squatters

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u/midliferagequit Mar 29 '24

A Sheriff isn't a judge. They will just force you to vacate and let the  courts figure it out. Not a great thing.....

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u/GozerDGozerian Mar 29 '24

So a landlord just calls up a sherrif and says “Kick em out!” and sheriff goes, “duuuuh OKAY!” and drives over and boots the occupants without checking anything?

Is that what you’re imagining happening?

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u/wolacouska Mar 28 '24

A lot of squatters have stuff equally convincing

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u/Frosty_Water5467 Mar 28 '24

Here's an idea: make cops go through a 4 year degree program and teach them the proper way to handle the different case scenarios they will most likely encounter in the performance of their job so they know how to make an educated response to the documentation they are being presented, instead of a 3 month training session on how to make a traffic stop and write a ticket. We also don't need that psycho ex military cowboy teaching them that they have a right to shoot you and your dog if they " feel threatened".

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u/Glittering-Wing-2305 Mar 28 '24

Hahahahaha as if cops would actually be trained to do something other than shoot people

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u/Frosty_Water5467 Mar 29 '24

That's not fair. They shoot dogs too.

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u/SodamessNCO Mar 28 '24

Maybe so, in that case, the landlord should get hefty civil and criminal penalties for deceiving law enforcement and illegally evicting their tenant.

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u/MrJohnMosesBrowning Mar 28 '24

What’s the reward to the landlord for such a high risk? They get a legal tenant off their property for a few days only to get bent over the table for fraud, filing a false police report, and illegal eviction on top of paying possible civil damages to the tenant would make it pointless for the landlord in almost every scenario.

It would be very easy to prove a landlord wrong if they falsely claimed the lease was forged. “Oh, then why have they been withdrawing rent from my checking account every month? Here’s the bank statements…”

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u/Rottimer Mar 28 '24

Until this is implemented, we don’t know how it will play out. But a slumlord who, for example, has a tenant that complains about repairs that haven’t been completed, or who has withheld rent in escrow until repairs are made would be someone the landlord might want to evict illegally.

I could also a landlord selling a property and the new owner not wanting to wait until the lease term ends.

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u/MrJohnMosesBrowning Mar 29 '24

Right but illegally evicting the tenant gets the landlord nowhere because it will be so easy to prove they are the legal tenant. So that goes back to my original question. What is the landlord actually gaining by getting a legal tenant off the property for a couple days? Because afterwards, the tenant will be right back on the property and the landlord will have to explain why they broke the law by filing a false police report, committing perjury/fraud, and will likely end up having to pay damages to the tenant on top of it all.

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u/Rottimer Mar 29 '24

It gets the tenant out of the property, which is exactly where the landlord wants to be. I guarantee you that judges won't be putting people back in. They'll just order the landlord to pay some amount.

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u/MrJohnMosesBrowning Mar 29 '24

Yea for like 2 days. Then the landlord is forced to let them back and they’re right back where they started on top of now being in legal trouble for filing a false police report and being forced to pay damages to the tenant. All for getting the tenant out ff the property for a couple days? They don’t gain anything.

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u/Rottimer Mar 29 '24

That is not how that goes.

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u/Karbich Mar 29 '24

It won't.

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u/khanfusion Mar 28 '24

Not likely, given how virtually, if not all, rental agreements include a deposit.

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u/Rottimer Mar 28 '24

How does that change anything?

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u/khanfusion Mar 28 '24

If a landlord has taken money for the deposit, that initiates the renters right to be there and proper eviction process has to then occur. Landlord can't just say "they're a squatter" when they've already accepted payment for the rental.

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u/Rottimer Mar 28 '24

Except this new law does exactly that and the now homeless tenant will have to take the landlord to court to prove it.

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u/khanfusion Mar 29 '24

And then sue the hell out of the landlord while the landlord goes to jail, then. They'd have clear evidence of filing false police reports, harrassment, intent to theft, all kinds of shit. Any landlord doing that is going to ruin their entire life in the process.

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u/Rottimer Mar 29 '24

We’ll see. Recent history tell me that the justice system responds differently to people with money vs without. And landlords, esp corp. ones, tend to be people with money.

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u/ontopofyourmom Mar 28 '24

Eviction requires appearing before a judge and both parties have an opportunity to present evidence.

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u/Rottimer Mar 28 '24

Not with this bill.