As I reported in a previous article, America is about to experience an epidemic of ‘squatters.’ There have already been cases in New York, and I am sure other states are also experiencing people with no right to a property deciding to live there rent-free. Well, at least one state is prepared to take action.
On Thursday, Legal Insurrection reported the following:
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.
The article cites a few examples. This is only one of many:
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.
There is a solution:
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.