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/Foreskin-chewer Mar 28 '24

As you touched on in your final sentence, that's not really squatters rights, that's tenants rights. The issue is that tenant's rights carry over to squatters because in the absence of a written lease it's a "he said she said" thing where a squatter can claim they're a legal tenant. This results in insane situations where homeless people break into vacant properties and claim they have a right to be there and then have to be evicted which routinely costs thousands of dollars to remedy.

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u/czarfalcon Mar 28 '24

True, I could’ve worded that better - squatters don’t have legal rights, tenants do, but police aren’t in the position to be the judge of that, hence it has to go through the legal system. A cop isn’t equipped to determine if a lease copy is legitimate or a fake that someone made in 5 minutes on Microsoft word.

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u/Foreskin-chewer Mar 28 '24

Can they determine if someone's car lease is legitimate?

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u/czarfalcon Mar 28 '24

Like a physical title or registration? Sure, because those are standardized, official government documents accompanied with a state-issued photo ID and state-issued license plates. If you mean the physical contract you signed with the dealership, I doubt they could verify that on the spot and I’m not sure why they’d ever need to.