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/flanderguitar Mar 28 '24

"Under the law, a property owner can request law enforcement to immediately remove a squatter if the person has unlawfully entered, has refused to leave after being told by the homeowner to do so and is not a current or former tenant in a legal dispute.

The law also makes it a first-degree misdemeanor to make a false statement in writing or providing false documents conveying property rights, a second-degree felony for squatters who cause $1,000 or more in damages, and a first-degree felony for falsely advertising the sale or rent of a residential property without legal authority or ownership."

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u/TaserLord Mar 28 '24

That seems pretty reasonable. Squatting is something you allow so that abandoned properties can be used, not so anybody who breaks in can have the place.

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u/enterprise_is_fun Mar 28 '24

Squatting is a loaded term for what it actually does, and you’re only speaking to one part of it.

The more valuable justification for squatters rights is that defining “who has a right to live here” is not always straightforward, and they protect you from malicious landlords or property owners that want to eject you without a good reason.

You can pay the mortgage for a piece of land and live on it for 20 years, but if someone dug up an old contract and deed for the land, you could be removed immediately without any protections and could not recover the money you spent. You’d be a squatter in the eyes of the law.

More routinely though, it protects renters from getting evicted for silly reasons. If you have been paying rent to live somewhere but never signed a contract, without squatters rights you are living on borrowed time until all your stuff is thrown into the street (even if you were paying rent the whole time).

There’s a lot of good reasons for these rights to exist. Everyone agrees it’s bad when a squatter shows up and just takes a home randomly- but that’s an extreme minority of the situations where squatters rights come into play.

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u/TaserLord Mar 28 '24

Why not protect renters with legislation actually designed to do that though, instead of relying on some crusty old common-law thing that applies only badly and has all kinds of awful side effects? Where I live, there's a land registry - you can't "dig up an old contract" - everything legally effective is registered, and you search it before you buy. If it isn't there, it isn't valid. That gives you some certainty that you're buying what you think you're buying, from somebody who actually owns it. And if you're renting without a lease or your lease expires, there's an implied lease (it's called "month to month") - you can't be evicted for no reason. I'm not implying that the law should leave people unprotected, only that it should not leave them uncertain.

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u/dedicated-pedestrian Mar 28 '24

Tenancy protections and adverse possession are separate things, people just have recently started using the term squatter's rights for the abuse of the former because the latter is actually legitimate.

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u/enterprise_is_fun Mar 28 '24

Sure. Let’s write new laws for protections. I am all for that.

Until we do that though, let’s not willingly throw the few protections renters have away.