Re: Squatters there’s a guy in CA that’s earning money by getting rid of squatters for property owners. The owner gives the guy a legit lease, then he moves in and makes the squatters lives miserable. After the squatters leave the owner pays him and he leaves. He first did it for his mom, then branched off doing it for others. It’s cheaper than litigation and the repairs for damage the squatters inevitably cause.
While the abuse of the system is wrong, squatters rights are actually a good thing.
The system allows people who are willing to take over abandoned property and fix it up and pay the taxes to get title to the property. Yes, the state can put a lien on the property and finally sell it to pay the tax debt but that takes years. (Rightfully so. It *should* be hard for the state to take property.) By the time the state gets control, often the only thing that can be done is to demolish any structure that has deteriorated due to neglect.
There are rules to how it happens. You have to live there. You have to be making improvements. It takes a long time before you actually get title to the property.
If anything, they should make it easier to take over abandoned properties. We have entire communities that have just fallen to ruin. We have empty properties that attract vandals, thieves and drug addicts that endanger nearby properties.
In Italy and other countries in Europe, they have programs where you can buy properties for trivial prices to entice people back to these abandoned communities. When the population drops to the point where it can't support local businesses, the communities fall into a death spiral. There are no taxes being paid to maintain services, police, firefighters, sewage and water treatment, waste disposal. No jobs. No grocery stores. That drives out the remaining population.
These people don’t live in abandoned properties. They watch for, and show up in homes when the owners are on vacation. Or are in-between properties during a buy-sell process. Or any number of legitimate reasons a home happens to be empty for a period of time. They’re fucking scumbags who are knowingly stealing what doesn’t belong to them. In a perfect world they’d be shot and thrown in the bin for trash pickup.
That is the abuse part. The laws are in place for a good reason.
If you live within a community, you have responsibilities as well as rights. One of those responsibilities is securing and monitoring a vacant property so it doesn't create a public nuisance. With these stories in the news, we have no idea how long the properties sit empty. Odds are, they ignored it for a long time and only took an interest at the last minute when they had the opportunity to sell it, rent it, or move into it.
Back when the mortgage financing crisis occurred, there were properties that were parts of investment portfolios that the banks couldn't sell and sat vacant and unmaintained for years. There is one in my neighborhood that has been vacant since the owner died years ago. Finally, they are going to foreclose on it for delinquent taxes but all this time, it has been falling apart and has been attracting thieves and stray animals in the neighborhood.
There are abuses on both sides of some of these cases. The police cannot and should not be making decisions as to who is in the right. The media only makes it worse by not giving a reasonable scale to the problem or presenting only one side of the issue that is more compelling and gets more clicks and ratings.
Vigilantism isn't the solution either. The only way we can have a chance at a civilized society is to resolve disputes is in court and not base things on who shoots first or more accurately.
Re: Squatters there’s a guy in CA that’s earning money by getting rid of squatters for property owners. The owner gives the guy a legit lease, then he moves in and makes the squatters lives miserable. After the squatters leave the owner pays him and he leaves. He first did it for his mom, then branched off doing it for others. It’s cheaper than litigation and the repairs for damage the squatters inevitably cause.
While the abuse of the system is wrong, squatters rights are actually a good thing.
The system allows people who are willing to take over abandoned property and fix it up and pay the taxes to get title to the property. Yes, the state can put a lien on the property and finally sell it to pay the tax debt but that takes years. (Rightfully so. It *should* be hard for the state to take property.) By the time the state gets control, often the only thing that can be done is to demolish any structure that has deteriorated due to neglect.
There are rules to how it happens. You have to live there. You have to be making improvements. It takes a long time before you actually get title to the property.
If anything, they should make it easier to take over abandoned properties. We have entire communities that have just fallen to ruin. We have empty properties that attract vandals, thieves and drug addicts that endanger nearby properties.
In Italy and other countries in Europe, they have programs where you can buy properties for trivial prices to entice people back to these abandoned communities. When the population drops to the point where it can't support local businesses, the communities fall into a death spiral. There are no taxes being paid to maintain services, police, firefighters, sewage and water treatment, waste disposal. No jobs. No grocery stores. That drives out the remaining population.
These people don’t live in abandoned properties. They watch for, and show up in homes when the owners are on vacation. Or are in-between properties during a buy-sell process. Or any number of legitimate reasons a home happens to be empty for a period of time. They’re fucking scumbags who are knowingly stealing what doesn’t belong to them. In a perfect world they’d be shot and thrown in the bin for trash pickup.
That is the abuse part. The laws are in place for a good reason.
If you live within a community, you have responsibilities as well as rights. One of those responsibilities is securing and monitoring a vacant property so it doesn't create a public nuisance. With these stories in the news, we have no idea how long the properties sit empty. Odds are, they ignored it for a long time and only took an interest at the last minute when they had the opportunity to sell it, rent it, or move into it.
Back when the mortgage financing crisis occurred, there were properties that were parts of investment portfolios that the banks couldn't sell and sat vacant and unmaintained for years. There is one in my neighborhood that has been vacant since the owner died years ago. Finally, they are going to foreclose on it for delinquent taxes but all this time, it has been falling apart and has been attracting thieves and stray animals in the neighborhood.
There are abuses on both sides of some of these cases. The police cannot and should not be making decisions as to who is in the right. The media only makes it worse by not giving a reasonable scale to the problem or presenting only one side of the issue that is more compelling and gets more clicks and ratings.
Vigilantism isn't the solution either. The only way we can have a chance at a civilized society is to resolve disputes is in court and not base things on who shoots first or more accurately.