2024-03-21 16:30:51
For some inexplicable reason, squatters’ rights laws are commonplace throughout these United States. In many states, a person or persons can enter and inhabit another person’s vacant property, set up house, and after—in most cases—a mere 30 days claim some form of bizarre “right” to inhabit the home in which they did not pay a day’s rent nor a single mortgage payment: a home they do not own, did not buy, and have no right to occupy.
But states, including red states, have an array of “squatters’ rights” rules and laws that will offend—nay, even assault—the senses of all normal, law-abiding Americans.
A former live-in Queens handyman has refused to leave the $2 million home where he once worked for several years, leaving the rightful property owners out in the cold — and it’s totally legal.
In Georgia, a property owner who left to care for his sick wife returned to learn that interlopers had moved in and changed the locks on his home, and he’s not allowed to kick them out.
The reason is a curious legal loophole that gives would-be trespassers the right to stay put if they only stay in a property long enough to claim legal residency — otherwise known as “squatter’s rights.”
Squatter’s rights, also known as “adverse possession” under the law, allow an individual to occupy a property and remain there without the owner’s permission.
Recently, there was great outrage when the public learned that a home owner was prevented from turning off utilities to his own squatter-occupied home. This makes NO sense. Who votes for this? Oh, right anyone who votes for Democrats.
But I digress.
In Georgia, a man was unable to claim his own home because squatters slunk in while he was away caring for is ailing wife.
A Georgia man claims he returned home from caring for his sick wife to find that squatters had changed the locks on his home and moved in — and now local laws are blocking him from evicting the alleged freeloaders.
“Basically, these people came in Friday, broke into my house and had a U-Haul move all their stuff in. It’s frustrating. It’s very frustrating. I can’t even sleep,” DeKalb man Paul Callins told WSB-TV.
Callins had sunk thousands of dollars into the home and renovated it with his own hands after he inherited it from his late father, but since squatters moved in, he’s found himself facing nothing but obstacles to evicting the alleged intruders.
. . . . Rather than forcibly evicting the squatters, Georgia law requires homeowners file an “Affidavit of Intruder,” which then needs to work its way through the court system before police can act, Callins explained.
Situations like Callins’ have become all too common in Georgia.
About 1,200 homes across DeKalb County are occupied by squatters, according to the National Rental Home Council trade group.
In New York, a homeowner was ordered to continue paying all utilities for the criminals who occupied her home.
New York homeowner is in a complicated battle with squatters who have taken over her property. She was arrested for trying to get them out.
Adele Andaloro, who put her $1.2 million Flushing, Queens, residence that she inherited from her family for sale, realized that someone randomly changed the locks, WABC reported. It was squatters that had been occupying the home where she grew up since February. In the city, squatters are considered tenants after living there for 30 days.
. . . . Police warned Andaloro that changing the locks could result in her arrest, but she called the locksmith anyway and said she wasn’t leaving her home.
. . . . Andaloro was arrested for unlawful eviction. In addition to changing locks on tenants, it’s also against the law for a homeowner to remove tenant possessions or shut off the utilities, per the New York Post.
That’s just the tip of the squatter property takeover movement, though. Illegal aliens are being taught how to take over American citizens’s homes via squatting, including learning how to turn their squatting ‘clam’ into “legal” theft of the rightful owner’s home.
A Venezuelan migrant has gone viral after he posted a video to social media that explained how illegal immigrants can take advantage of squatting laws and stay in American homes.
“I have thought about invading a house in the United States,” a man identified as Leonal Moreno said in the TikTok video. “I found out that there is a law that says that if a house is not inhabited, we can seize it.”
The man told his followers in Spanish that he anticipated his next business would be “invading” abandoned houses. He claimed that some of his African friends have told him they have already taken seven homes in the U.S.
Moreno also said that for migrants to avoid living on the street and not be a “public burden,” the law says deteriorated homes can be acquired by others, repaired and lived in. The man also claimed the new inhabitants can then sell the house.
. . . . Squatters and tenants’ rights laws vary across the country, with some states providing protection for non-paying individuals, allowing them to occupy a property for extended periods. In areas where complex laws bar police from taking action, homeowners have few options to reclaim their property beyond pursuing a civil case, which can take months.
This is pretty much unimaginable to most of us, but you really (and I mean really) need to look at the laws in your state, no matter how “red” you think i is, with regard to squatters’ rights to your property.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis is making great strides in protecting Florida home owners from this clearly organized and criminal squatter nightmare.
Fox Business reports (archive link):
The Florida Legislature unanimously passed a bill that would allow police to immediately remove squatters — a departure from the lengthy court cases required in most states.
“It gives me a real feeling of positive hope that we still have the ability to discuss challenges in our society and work with our legislatures in a bipartisan way,” Patti Peeples, a Sunshine State property owner who was barred from her own home after squatters refused to leave, told News4Jax.
The legislation, which passed both chambers earlier this month, would allow police to remove squatters without a lease authorized by the property owner and adds criminal penalties.
And that, my friends, is how it’s done.
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