Tag Archive for: squatters

FLORIDA: Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Legislation to End the Squatters Scam & Protect Homeowners

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In a March 27, 2024 Newsweek article titled Squatter Demands $190,000 From Homeowner it was reported that,

A squatter in Georgia recently demanded $190,000 from a landowner in response to eviction attempts.

On Wednesday, David Morris, an Atlanta property owner, said on Fox & Friends that before the COVID-19 pandemic, he ran a non-profit and allowed squatters to live on his nine acres of land for free, but he recently attempted to have these individuals evicted.

[ … ]

Morris said that he’s spent $10,000 on cleanup crews across his property as he continues his eviction attempts.

Continue reading.

Well this won’t fly in the Free State of Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation on March 27th that ends this scam and protects homeowners and their property.

WATCH:

In a March 23, 2024 REASON.COM article titled Squatters’ Rights Laws Violate the Takings Clause, reports,

Where these laws allow squatters to occupy houses without the owner’s consent, they qualify as takings of private property that require payment of compensation under the Fifth Amendment.

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of media coverage of squatters’ rights laws that sometimes have the effect of blocking property owners from removing trespassers who occupy their houses without the owners’ permission. Newsweek describes some highly publicized recent cases:

A recent string of incidents in Georgia, New York and Washington has brought squatting, the practice of occupying someone else’s property without their consent, into the spotlight.

In Washington, a squatter named Sang Kim made headlines after preventing Jaskaran Singh, a landlord, from possessing his $2 million property following Kim’s refusal to pay rent for two years.

Earlier in March, a New York property owner was arrested over unlawful eviction after confronting a group of alleged squatters who had taken over her deceased parents’ home in Flushing, Queens, ABC 7 reported. While the woman held the property’s deed, one man said he was on a lease for the house—which meant the property owner was barred from kicking him out [he, in fact, did not actually have a lease].

That same month, David Morris, a landlord in Atlanta, told Fox 5 of a group of squatters who were preventing him from building affordable housing on his nine-acre land and whom he was unable to remove because of a moratorium on evictions.

Morris told the outlet he had agreed to let four people stay on the land without paying rent about 10 years ago, but that he found the number of people occupying the property had grown to about “30 campers.” Though the squatters were taken away from the land, Morris said he spent $10,000 to clean up their garbage.

John Stossel of Reason made a video focusing on the New York case.

As often happens when an issue attracts media attention, it is hard to tell from early reports how widespread the issue actually is. But even a few cases of successful squatting may be problematic, because they could incentivize imitation. Media attention could accelerate that process.

Ideally, state and local governments should make it easy for property owners to swiftly remove squatters, and should subject the trespassers to civil and criminal sanctions. But where they instead facilitate this violation of property rights, the laws that do so violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which requires payment of “just compensation” whenever the government takes “private property.”

This illegal practice is spreading in blue states and in blue areas in red states.

We the people cannot stand by and see our families, our property, and our freedoms taken away from us by squatters, some of whom are illegal aliens.

Enough is enough.

©2024. Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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Detroit’s Blight Creates Market for Squatters by Tyler Cowen

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The Detroit News reports:

Wanted: One good squatter.

It’s no joke. In a remote pocket of northwest Detroit along the Rouge River, neighbors are so desperate to stop a cycle of abandonment and blight they’re recruiting a squatter to occupy a home whose longtime owners left last weekend.

That’s because neighbors fear the onetime farmhouse on Puritan and Hazelton will be stripped and torched if it remains empty for long. Eight nearby houses burned in the past two years. A few blocks away, there are more weedy lots than homes.

A co-founder of one neighborhood group explained:

“You want someone in the house when it’s still functioning. Otherwise, it will be destroyed in 24 hours.”

In this case the homeowners are asking potential squatters for references, so as to avoid drug dealer squatters. How about some Syrian squatters?

Technically, squatting in Detroit is against the law, but it is often tolerated. But not all settlement attempts pass legal muster:

“The over-arching theme is that the city of Detroit does nothing, so we’re forced to do our own thing,” said Brown, 34, a Wayne County Community College professor.

Brown also made headlines last year. That’s when she and her husband, David, bought a $2,000 house in the neighborhood in hopes of forming a kibbutz, a Jewish communal settlement. City officials seized backyard goats and charged the couple with violating ordinances.

The full article is here, hat tip goes to a loyal MR reader.

This post first appeared at Marginal Revolution.

Tyler Cowen