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This issue has really blown up all of a sudden. I was completely unaware of how insane the situation had gotten, until just a few days ago.
Here's a good short Stossel video describing the problem and a solution.
In short, the police in several major cities are protecting the "rights" of violent home invaders to stay in the homes they've invaded. All the invader has to do is claim to have a lease. The police aren't even allowed to ask to see the lease. In some places, the invader is protected even if they don't claim to have a lease.
As if that weren't sick enough, the actual homeowners have been arrested for locking the invaders out. It seems obvious to me that the presumption needs to be on the side of the property owner. If they do wrongfully evict a real tenant, then the owner should face civil consequences.
If left unchecked, this is going to go to a dark place. People will not tolerate having their homes taken over by criminals. People are already resorting to vigilante services to reclaim their homes. I'm sure this will only accelerate the mass exodus we've been seeing from these cities, which will cause a death spiral for what used to be the most productive places on Earth.
How does this end? I just don't see any political will for a correction in those places.
Sats to @Bell_curve for mentioning this a couple of weeks ago, before I knew about it.
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This is a major problem in Spain. They are called okupas. It can take owners years to get the squatters out. Even worse, the owners have to pay not only the mortgage but all the utility bills related to the house. Usually when they manage to get the squatters out of the home it's completely wrecked. It's well known for owners to pay the squatters off to leave to the tune of thousands of euros. So it is basically a form of extortion. The government keep extending the ridiculous emergency laws that were put in place during covid so landlords could not evict tenants. But many of these are not genuine tenants - they can move in and take over when you just go away for the weekend - and yet they are treated as tenants.
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And, once they're in, I think it's about 48hours before they are considered tenants and you can't evict them! Absolutely mental!
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That's horrific. Thankfully, there are parts of America where property rights are pretty strongly protected, as well as the means to defend them.
I do wonder if this is largely a result of covid era eviction protections in American cities as well.
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Yes. It definitely depends where you are. In Florida I have just changed the locks on commercial tenants.
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New York and California are awful for mom and pop landlords
Some counties and cities have friendly squatters laws.
How can a fake lease be treated like a real contract? It’s madness
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Apparently, in LA the cops aren't even allowed to ask to see the lease.
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Ain't this something you could fix by beating them up?
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there's a group of heavy looking guys in Spain (I forget their name) who you can hire to go around and "deal" with them. Not sure exactly how it works lol but they're on facebook haha They reckon to get rid of them, but it costs..
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43 sats \ 0 replies \ @Fabs 27 Mar
That's exactly the kind of "service" I had in thought, if legal doesn't work (well enough), people have to do it themselves.
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As long as you don't call the cops first, there are lots of options for how to deal with the situation. People are learning that calling the cops is a mistake.
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I agree. think it thru first
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Yeah, really makes you think twice about landlording. At this point, it really doesn't seem like a good idea.
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This isn't just affecting people who are trying to rent out homes. People have had squatters move into their homes while they're trying to sell them. People have returned from vacation to find squatters in their homes. The legal process for getting them out takes months and there's no way to recover the costs you had to incur in the process.
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Again. It depends on the jurisdiction.
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It's crazy. I suspect it's part of the global plan to get people to relinquish property ownership and put regular people off investing in property. The property rental regulation changes in the UK have seen landlords selling at an alarming rate, apparently. Just put "landlords selling up in the uk" into youtube...
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I tend to be dismissive of these sorts of globalist conspiracy theories, but communists do always come for landlords early in their revolutions.
What's more likely to me is just that landlords are outnumbered by tenants in most urban areas, so they make easy political scapegoats.
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Definitely correct on the political scapegoats. The UK media have been beating up on landlords for many years to the point most people think they are the sperm of the devil.
Have you seen and/or read The Great Taking? I've been wanting to read watch/read it for a while.
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Have you seen and/or read The Great Taking?
No, I'm not familiar with it.
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And you can download the book for free here
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In the New York area, the New York Post has been giving these cases a lot of publicity. I honestly think the reality has been distorted for political gain, but it is a crazy issue. A realistic scenario is the following: A squatter offers rooms in the house for rent, claiming to be the owner. Then he enters into a signed lease with an innocent tenant. I have seen cases like this. It becomes complicated and involves a legal concepts like attornment and privity of contract.
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How are squatters not guilty of trespassing or breaking and entering? Contract fraud for a fake lease?
Where is the attorney general? Apparently civil cases are the main focus today
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How are squatters not guilty of trespassing or breaking and entering?
I know it's crazy. But in many countries they will charge the owner for trespassing or breaking and entering if they break into their own home whilst the squatters are out and changing the locks! It's fucked up, that's for sure. In Spain the squatters usually make sure someone is at the house at all times to prevent this happening, so you have no chance.
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They are guilty, but they don't have any assets to cover the damages they've caused the owners.
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It's easy to imagine how lots of different types of odd scenarios could arise, but if people stop feeling secure in their homes, they'll stop paying for them.
If someone steals your car and then sells it, the police still return it to you if they find it. This would be like allowing the car to stay with the person who bought it from the thief.
Even if this isn't a widespread problem (yet?), it's another straw on the camel's back. The camel being our civil society.
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I agree. I remember there was an old expression that wasn't close to being accurate, but is sometimes relevant: Possession is 9/10s of the law. I have had a few instances over the years where a landlord would let a tenant rent a place in a bad neighborhood for close to nothing. The signed lease protected the landlord and the tenant ensured that squatters didn't destroy the place. Obviously this is unusual, and involves a large degree of trust.
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In situations where the owner gets arrested for "wrongful eviction", despite the squatter having no evidence of being a tenant, how are the police justifying having probable cause to make that arrest?
Do they not have to or is simply being in possession of the property enough evidence of tenancy?
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I don't know. One thing I can tell you is it matters a whole lot where you are. Staten Island outcomes will be far different than the Bronx. On Long Island landlords will be given the benefit of the doubt.
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Its a thorny problem to resolve: Consider
  • Should all leases need to be notarized to be valid?
  • What about squatters making fake IDs of owners and getting fake leases notarized?
  • Should all leases need to be registered / recorded to city/state?
  • Again what about squatters registering fake leases with fake IDs?
  • Should the state create some type of registry of properties and owners be required to update registry upon lease? How to secure that?
All of those options unfortunately increase the power of the state and involve it evermore in private contracts.
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I have a terrible idea that will work.
Shoot squatters.
Hire professional to shoot and kill squatters
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That is 100% where this is heading, if it doesn't get fixed. I have very little sympathy for these people, but I don't want anyone to have to live with having killed someone.
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Hire a professional from Russia or Israel etc
Outsourcing alleviates guilt.
Diffusion of responsibility
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I'm confident that almost nobody knows how to do that and most can't afford it.
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Obviously I am half kidding emphasis on half
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That's why I think the presumption needs to be on the side of whoever owns the property.
If they say someone is trespassing, then the law should initially recognize their right to remove the person. If the removed person can show that they were wrongfully evicted, then the property owner can be held liable.
One of the big problems here is that there's no prospect of compensation for the victims of these home invaders. They have no assets for the owner to go after, so it's all just costs on top of costs for the victims.
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Well....what about the concept of a valid contract?
If you as owner willingly signed a lease with someone allowing them to stay in your house for 6 months, can you just break that contract at month 2?
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You have to file a formal complaint with the sheriff. If sheriff can verify your complaint, he sends officer to remove squatter
Owner must pay sheriff civil eviction fee plus any additional for keeping the peace
There is also a penalty for a false complaint or illegitimate removal
So it’s not call the police and they can remove
The bill first passed the Florida house in November.
The actual bill , pdf copy, is available at the bottom of the page I linked
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This makes more sense. Obviously this will take some time for them to verify everything.
Owner must pay sheriff civil eviction fee plus any additional for keeping the peace
Thats a curious bit, I understand that generally in normal evictions there may be a fee since its a civil procedure (ie contract dispute).
However, this is criminal trespassing. There is no "violation of contract terms" its no different than theft. Do robbery victims need to pay a fee to get the sheriff to arrest the aggressor?
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It’s like a high deductible insurance policy.
To deter false complaints
My 2 cents
You’re right it’s criminal trespassing
The statute seems like an acceleration of the eviction process. Bypass judge and go straight to sheriff
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I would also assume that legally you could recoup that fee from the trespasser. Of course, practically, you'll never get it from them.
There is also a penalty for a false complaint or illegitimate removal
That's an important piece. Once that's in place, the cops should just take the landlords word and remove the occupants.
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It's good they're taking action, but this problematic clause is still in the bill
The individual is not a current or former tenant in a legal dispute.
My understanding of the issue is that people are falsely claiming to be tenants, so they need to adjudicate that somehow.
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Yes, I'm actually confused by the FL bill as it doesn't seem to actually solve the problem in any meaningful way (Trespassing is already illegal - you can already call cops to deal with trespassers).
The problem is when cops arrive and squatters produces a official looking doc showing that they are a tenant. Its not the job of street cops to validate / adjudicate such issues - thus it will fall to the courts (e.g. expect a few months delay).
I think Desantis is just posturing for political points by pushing a bill that doesn't really do anything new but restate what is already existing law.
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How does one prove he is a legitimate tenant?
Copy of a lease is one way
Driver license showing current address
Recent utilities and gas bill
Renters insurance policy
DMV registration
Run a background check on tenant or squatter
Why is this complicated?
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Why is this complicated?
Driver license showing current address
There is no law that states you need to have a drivers license to rent a house
For everything else, imagine photoshops of said docs.
Again street cops have neither the power nor the ability to authenticate such things.....without some sort of failproof way to authenticate valid contracts this will continue to exist.
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License plate verification if squatter has a car
Squatters are making fake lease agreements and you can switch utilities to your name without actually living somewhere. You can also put down someone else's address when you set up billing for all kinds of services.
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You can check court records if there is pending litigation
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Why would there be pending litigation? They are a current tenant.
"I'm a renter and I've paid the owner every month (cash). Last week the owner got mad at me because I was a week late in rent and called you guys......"
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A renter can verify keys 🔐
Landlord and tenant have matching keys.
A squatter will have different keys or no keys.
You can, but you'd owe them damages.
My point is that the law has to make a presumption about who to side with. It's too complicated to expect a cop to adjudicate these messes on the spot, so they're either going to presume the tenant is legit or that they're trespassing.
The undisputed owner of the property is claiming the person is trespassing, so that's the reasonable place to start.
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You can, but you'd owe them damages.
So you need to pay the squatters to get them to leave?
The undisputed owner of the property is claiming the person is trespassing, so that's the reasonable place to start.
How does the average cop verify if someone is trespassing? Renter has a piece of paper with lease terms on it, supposedly signed by owner.
The point I'm trying to get to, is that this entire problem lays with the inability to authenticate contracts.
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I'm saying that if you wrongfully evict a tenant, not a squatter, you would owe them damages, but you are presumed to have the right to remove people from your property.
The reason this needs to be the presumption, is precisely because the cops can't verify if the person is trespassing. The presumption needs to be on the side of the owner.
There will always be contract disputes, so there will always need to be a presumption of who's right while they get sorted out. The only reasonable presumption is to side with the owner.
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If the state (cops) automatically take sides of owner then that basically ends the purpose of a contract, since it offers almost no practical protection to a renter....
The bigger problem here is DoS-ing the legal system. Sure the police can evict someone today, but the same thing will happen tomorrow and the same squatter will do it elsewhere. It doesn't take much to grind the entire system to a halt....
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Private solution exists.
Hire a professional to shoot and kill squatter
that basically ends the purpose of a contract
I disagree. The owner has something to lose in civil court and damages could be severe for contract breeches. If the cops don't evict tenants who aren't paying their rent, the exact same argument could be made about ending the purpose of a contract. Maybe that's part of your point though.
The bigger problem here is DoS-ing the legal system.
I agree and part of what bothers me about this issue is that the solution is pretty clear and very ugly. People will start violently reclaiming their homes from squatters and the likelihood that invading someone's home will get you killed will act as the deterrent.
How does this end? I just don't see any political will for a correction in those places.
I just have to remind myself that the electoral process is slow and lags the issues by possibly multiple years. I think this is a legacy of covid, but also of misguided progressive policies that people are finally waking up to.
In California, the rhetoric of local politicians had been more pro-police and pro law & order than I've ever seen in recent memory. In San Francisco, they voted for tougher laws against homelessness, reversing their decades-long trend of permissiveness. So even though progress is slow, I have some vague hope that the pendulum is finally swinging back in the direction of sanity
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I'm glad to hear that local sentiments are turning against this stuff. My concern was that people who realized how screwed up things are were just leaving.
It will still take a long time to reverse all of these policies and replace the DA's and judges supporting them.
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Indeed. One thing that I was surprised by in the last 10 years is how many legal scholars seem to believe that criminals aren't responsible for their own behavior. I'm guessing it's a fad in legal academia, probably reinforced by highly questionable empirical studies, and by their overall lean towards policy-oriented solutions rather than personal responsibility (which, of course, hands more power to the academics).
Ironically, of interest to Bitcoiners: SBF's mother is one such academic promoting these ideas that criminals shouldn't be held responsible for their own actions.
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The problem is fads in academia become the norm
A lot of progressive ideas are being recycled from 1960 when it was considered fringe
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Socialism's a bitch.
In the US this is mainly only happening in NYC & the biggest cities of Commiefornia. The rules vary from location to location, but in NYC it's so pro-squatter that it's even illegal for the rightful owner to stop paying for the utilities for the squatter!
It's particularly easy for squatters now because of how long probate court takes to inherit a property... Leaving many homes empty for a year or more before inheritors can enter.
One trick I've heard that works well is to hire someone to squat the squat from underneath the squatters. It's as easy as making another fake lease doc, watching for the squatters to step out, then have your paid squatter go inside somehow, pushing all the squatter's stuff out. When the police show up the new squatter simply claims that he's the one that's been there for 30+ days, and you, as the rightful owner, can attest to that. ;)
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Yeah. The Stossel video is partly an interview with a guy who reclaims people's homes for them, by out squatting the squatters.
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Just had another idea: Claim asbestos killed your mom there, and that they are in danger!
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When things like this get news coverage all of a sudden (I don't think they are that rare) I am suspicious. I don't have a theory but I am suspicious.
Story time. The first home my wife and I purchased was a duplex. It was livable but in rough shape. We had grand plans of living in one side and remodeling the other side and using it as income to pay the mortgage. Lets just say, I am very glad we ditched this idea right before the housing collapse. We broke even :)
As novices we didn't realize that the people who were renting one side of the duplex were lying about moving out. They had no plans of moving out. They had been renting from the previous owner and we didn't know they had stopped paying rent. I consulted some people that had experience with renting apartments and they explained to long drawn out process for evicting people that refuse to pay. I also learned that this family did this to many other people in the community. They lived on "disability" and basically moved from rental to rental, rent free for many months. It was a major disaster. They did massive damage to the house that took me months and thousands of dollars to repair but we got them out. I didn't involve the police. I found them another place to live as well as appliances, and got some friends to move them out. They lied to me many times and came up with many excuses but using the system was the least efficient way to accomplish my goal. Learned many lessons from this experience. I could write much more about what these people did but you can probably guess.
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I'm sure this will live you both forever! We also had a crazy experience renting a house. The guy turned out to be a con artist. In the end the police did evict him but not for us, because they wanted him for offences. They were going to bail him back to our home and told us we weren't allowed to change the locks whilst they had him in custody. I begged them not to bail him back to the address. He was very posh and well-to-do as well! It's a loooong story, as I'm sure yours is! We were only in our 20s at the time (kids really) but it's affected a lot of our decisions and we probably could've made money on renting properties since then but just couldn't entertain the thought!
I'm also suspicious about the media coverage. Perhaps they want to put people off owning property. I heard some of the big asset managers have been buying-up-big single family homes. And maybe they want to frame it that we don't have property ownership rights. Who knows?? 🤷🏼‍♀️
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Also in Spain the squatters are gaming the system in a similar way to your tenants but basically extorting money from people. They know that, rather than spend 5 years (which it can take!) trying to evict them, the owners pay them a few thousand to leave. Of course, they then go do the same thing to someone else and on it goes... These people are claiming poverty. They must be freakin rolling in the wonga 🤑💰
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One of my neighbors would do things like replace a window in the middle of winter. He'd do construction in the apartment that made the tenet very uncomfortable. People get creative when the system starts falling apart.
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That's it, you have to start finding ways to fuck with them. But with squatters or non-paying tenants you are often screwed over to a point you can hardly go near the house. Or they have big dogs or big men or whatever... Some of them are really dangerous fuckers!
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No doubt
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I knew there were messy eviction problems and we do need functional courts to adjudicate them.
Allowing people to break into someone's residence and occupy it, is qualitatively different. I'm sure things like this have always happened here and there, but I doubt home invaders were as protected by the cops and the courts in the past.
Alaska passed a very misguided law back in the 70's that prohibited evicting tenants in the winter. It was eventually reversed, because people were sneaking onto private residences the night before winter started and setting up camp sites.
Also, I'm totally with you about being suspicious of stories that all of a sudden capture everyone's attention.
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Yeah, I don't doubt it is getting worse for the reasons Stossel outlines. As poverty increases we are gonna see this getting worse. And when I say poverty I mean the cost of living increasing. The money being debased. More theft and violence are in our futures. I believe it will get much worse before it gets better.
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This is what happens when a society refuses to learn how property rights work, how value is created, and basic morals. This is also one of many reasons why I oppose the state. These problems are not new, they are only getting worse. Politicians will always seek to get the most votes and when the currency is debased and more people are in need they fall for the seductive lies of socialism and politicians. Lies that give them excuses for their poverty that are not their fault. A villain to blame, anyone with more money than them. It is a corrosive ideology that is coming primary from the government indoctrination system called "higher education".
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Yes for once US laws (at least in certain states) seem more insane than Canadian laws.
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Now that it's in the news, I'm sure Trudeau will give it a shot.
My wife and I have just been in shock that this is being allowed to happen. Fortunately, not anywhere near us, but we have family in places where it's a problem.
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Oh yes. If Trudeau finds out he is not the most progressive he will be aghast.
A buddy of mine isn't married and has no kids and he bought his childhood home from his parents when they retired and downsized, so he is living by himself in a 5 bedroom house for a decade now. I told him once Trudeau gets wind of that he is going to make you house 4 refugees. I am of course joking but only kind of.
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I am of course joking but only kind of.
There needs to be a word for these sort of dark half-joke half-prophecy statements.
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This type of situation has GOT to make people think, "Why the hell am I paying taxes?"
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First it will probably make them think "Why the hell am I paying taxes here?"
Baby steps
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31 sats \ 1 reply \ @kytt 26 Mar
Anonymously hire someone else to do the dirty work.
Or
Create a new "lease" with someone you trust. Wait til a squatter leaves for necessities. New leaseholder goes into the house.
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As I understand it, people are trying both of those approaches.
The issue is that the cops won't attempt to adjudicate this stuff on the scene, so they just tell the owner to let everyone stay. You basically have to drive the squatters off somehow.
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Stossel is undefeated.
You mess with the stache at your own peril.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @okpj 26 Mar
If the police can’t enforce property rights for the average person with the powers they already have (which includes killing people) what are they really for?
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This also applies to the ability to fire someone. In California for example it's gonna be harder than elsewhere
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I'm quite familiar with that problem. It's very bad, but not as intimately horrific as someone invading and occupying your family's home, while "law enforcement" sides with them.
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Oh definitely, fully agree
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Illegal alien from Venezuela has been arrested by ICE.
He was squatting and teaching others to squat on TikTok
Squatters have become Lebron neighbors. I hate squatters but I also can’t stand LeBron and his political grandstanding.
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The fastest way out of this is if it starts inconveniencing "important" people.
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So true especially in California
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