First, squatters of this type are taking advantage of laws intended to protect renters from predatory landlords. Wherever you stand on people appropriating unused property, these laws need to stay in place even if they’re made more specific.
Second, news outlets like this will always quote a “guns and drugs” case and not the mom with three kids seeking employment or homeless vet cases.
Third, with security cams and doorbells being so cheap, there’s no reason why this should be an issue, especially for a large real estate rental company. That alone puts me in “cry me a river” mode. Notice again that the article lists interviews with individual homeowners but is actually profiling the impact on a rental company.
IMO owning an unoccupied house thats off-market, or prohibitively-priced is probably a gambling chip.
IF there are ANY families in the same county that are homeless, it should begin being taxed as a gambling-chip. Sell-it very soon or it may used for a free shelter for however it remains unoccupied by the owner.
All good points—did you mean “tiny violin mode”, or have I been misunderstanding that song for a long time?
No, they mean the same thing, at least in my familiarity with the phrases. “Cry me a river” means that I don’t care to hear about their complaints, even if their tears were enough to fill a river, because I think they’re not legitimate.
“Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it.” Is a favorite expression.
>squatters of this type are taking advantage of laws intended to protect renters from predatory landlords.
what makes you think that’s the intention?
Being from California (and earlier from New York), that’s very much the intention. Both states (and municipal laws in places like LA, SF, and NYC) make the landlords have to jump through a lot of hoops before an eviction can take place, and the tenants can file for protection.
I know that things vary from state to state, but I’ve only been a renter in NY, NJ, and CA. I’ve also successfully sued a landlord for over $100k in damages and expenses.
squatters rights precede the founding of the United States and have nothing to do with renters rights. You’re just wrong about why these laws exist.
Holmes told Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray that he used his life savings to buy a DeKalb County home out of foreclosure eight months ago as a rental property.
Aaaaaaand there goes all my sympathy…
But he just wanted to find someone else to make all the payments for him and eventually provide a passive income. These damn squatters are just trying to get something for free.
(Corporate wants you to find the differences in these photos…)
When I was homeless and super desperate for a roof over my head I’d pull up some real estate app and filter by foreclosures. They were always empty and I never got bothered by anyone. Do gotta be super sneaky in case there’s neighbors or something but there was almost always a window unlocked or something.
Note: This doesn’t work in Toronto where the police are aggressively pro NIMBY and just pieces of inhuman filth anyway.
Source: Experience.
I don’t know much about American laws, and I strongly believe that basic housing should not be for-profit.
With those caveats, if a house is empty for such a long time that squatters can claim it (7-20 years according to Google), then I think it’s not only okay to claim residence there, I think it’s the morally correct thing to do.
Obviously, there are exceptions to anything, but generally speaking, it sounds like society could use more of this.
The 7-20 years you’re seeing is probably for adverse posession, which is a step above squatter’s rights. If you can show that you’ve been maintaining the property for that entire time without the landowner stopping you from being there, in some cases you can gain ownership of the property through adverse possession.
Squatter’s rights is more about the right to remain where you are as opposed to owning the place. Typically being given similar rights to a tenant.
You googled the wrong thing. You wanna squat, have your mail sent to an empty place, move in. Tell the cops you live there if they show up. Then you can’t be touched. The real owner files and pays to have you served eviction papers saying you have to leave in 30 days. Then if still there, it has to go through Court system that the homeowner once again has to file for and can take several more months.
It’s an abuse of Tennant protection laws.
i HIGHLY doubt the houses being referenced in the article have been vacant for 7-20 years.
On the other hand, I can’t imagine they’ve only been “vacant” for 6 months or something.
Again, I’m far from an expert on American law - much less on a state-by-state basis, but I have to think you’d need to live there for quite some time for it to count for squatters rights.
In these situations 6 months is exactly what I’d imagine. Where I live I can’t imagine any house staying vacant for 6 months. It costs more to rent a house here than it does to buy one. My mortgage payment is $1400/month, but I could rent my house for over $3k a month. it’s ridiculous.
You know who probably won’t have a problem with squatters? People who buy houses to live in them.
Hard to feel bad for a fucking landlord. Get a real job loser.
Little more sympathy to the lady that got squatted on while she was on active duty though.
Unspecified in the article. Just said she returned from active duty to find someone living in her home. But any job that keeps you away from home for long periods of time could suffer the same. Even if you have people checking on your place, what are they going to do differently other than know sooner?
Hard to feel bad for a fucking landlord. Get a real job loser.
“I don’t have empathy for others who are better off than I am. Work hourly as a W2 like the rest of us instead of using systems, tax codes, and laws in place by the government to generate a better life for yourself while growing society.”
Ah yes, all I have to do is pretend landlords are “growing society” instead of buying up properties with the sole intention of making money off of people who cant for a myriad of reasons out of their control. One of those reason being real estate “investors”.
And what about the squatters? They are doing what you said, using the local systems and laws(squatters rights) to generate a better life for themselves. So it’s fair game right?
Sure, I’ll give you that. The squatters are also taking advantage of the system for gain. But then I ask, imagine your home, or your workplace. Do you possibly work in construction? In an office? Perhaps in a leased retail space? How would you feel if a squatter took residence in your employee break room? Could you honestly say you would feel the same way?
They aren’t growing shit. They are leeching off of people who actually work qnd majority of them do as little to improve these as they possibly can.
Explain to me who then takes responsibility to repair derelict properties into livable condition? The city? Local government? Would you take this on? What would you expect as compensation to take this on?
edit below
Not one yet, I just understand how landlording and real estate investing works. Sure there are scum landlords out there, but what good do we bring the situation by demonizing an entire group, complaining online and cutting ourself off from the greater understanding of how things work and interplay in a complex society?
This could apply to any news or situation. Have you ever considered that maybe there is more to understand than what you currently know? Have you considered the strength of the force that the way information is presented upon you can have on your perspective, attitudes, and beliefs about a situation? News articles have a tendency to use this in an effort to weaponize your emotions against something or someone, or to distract you from other causes.
In this case, perhaps it has succeeded in manipulating your emotions to blindly attack me without fully and coherently understanding the situation.
Edit: take these arbitrary downvotes for example. They communicate what is called a “social proof” to you that I am wrong, subverting your own free thinking and making potentially yourself as well as others stop and simply shortcut to agree the same.
while growing society
How is increasing the price of housing (by pulling houses off the market and renting them out to make a profit) “growing society”?
Take the money from small projects like single family rentals and use them to fund larger projects by using leverage. That’s the only way cities and apartment buildings, or commercial spaces like shopping malls are able to be funded and built. Same as you taking money from a small thing (e.g working and saving a down payment) and using leverage to finance a new car. A profit is needed in these cases as it maintains incentive for maintaining homes and investing in the creation and rehabilitation of additional living spaces.
The primary issue right now from my best knowledge is that there simply isn’t enough supply of homes and living spaces available, leading to increased demand, and willingness to pay a higher price. Investors partially solve this issue by funding new developments and high density dwellings like apartment complexes. If you ever take an economics class, you will learn the simple truth that the value of something is only up to what people are willing to pay. If demand is lowered, people, as a whole are less likely to pay for the price being asked, and the seller will need to continue lowering, and lowering their price to find what the buyer will willingly pay. This is part of the reason that we have the consequence of high interest rates at the moment as well.
If rentals were useless they would not exist in a given market, but they serve a need.
