“I’d much rather make a squatter homeless than have a landlord lose property,” James added.
Keeping it classy.
wanted to say the same thing. what a dickhead, simping for landlords.
Hear me out: I don’t blame landlords for wanting to protect their investments. But, I do have a problem with them (and guys like James here) who do it at the expense of the downtrodden. Being a landlord should not have to be mutually exclusive with helping people.
Landlords protecting their investments is always at the expense of the downtrodden. The role of landlord is one that exists solely at the expense of the downtrodden, and it is mutually exclusive with helping people.
I disagree, though I know I’ll get roasted for it… Landlords do serve a purpose to a point. Not everyone wants to own property. Owning property ties you to a particular place, makes it difficult to leave. If you know you want to stay in an area for the rest of your life, or even just the next 10 years, absolutely, you should be able to buy, and not being able to is a societal failure. But if you don’t know where you want to spend the rest of your life, you still need shelter now, and renting provides that, and when you decide to go somewhere else, it’s relatively easy. One of my bigger regrets in life was feeling pressured to buy a house in 2005… Just in time for the subprime mortgage crisis. I had a traditional mortgage, but nonetheless, my house went from $150k to <50k in months. I was stuck. Couldn’t sell without coming up with extra money to pay off the mortgage, but I wasn’t in as bad shape as some people, I could afford the payments, so I couldn’t justify walking away, just had to wait for it to rebound, which took another 5 years roughly. Had I been renting, I would have been able to leave much more easily.
There are ways to meet that particular need without landlords. Tenant unions buying out their apartment building and making it cooperatively owned, for example, or municipally owned public housing. The alternative to private property is public property. That kind of thing isn’t available because private property owners are the ones calling the shots, and that would undercut their parasitic lifestyle.
I’m not seeing it.
For there to be squatters, the landlords had to have this property open and unrented for a while. The only way that happens is if the rent is too high.
What kind of landlord can afford to have a rental property vacant for a significant period of time and not accept a lower rent? Ones who own lots of property and would prefer to lose income rather than reduce the average rent price in the area.
In the industry, withholding housing from people because you want to make more money, when you can clearly afford to get no income from it, is called “a dick move”.
Counterpoint: some people would rent an Airbnb and stay after the two weeks they rented, effectively preventing the homeowner to return to their homes after a vacation. There’s little legal recourse to speedily remove them, as two weeks of occupation requires a lengthy judicial process to evict them (IIRC in California).
I dislike rent seekers too, but it happens to people with only one home as well. They think they could put their home to use while they’re not there (effectively reducing the problem of real estate under occupation), only to be exploited.
The thing is, what you describe is incredibly rare, to the point of being a statistical anomaly.
Also, if you take the “low income” piece out of it, abusing others and cheating the system to save money is “just good business.” Ask all the millionaires doing immoral but TECHNICALLY legal things on their taxes.
You’re mistaken, sadly. It doesn’t happen more often because people got smart to it and no longer put their houses for rent for longer periods.
And I don’t get your whatabout millionaires comment. My comment was that not all squatting hurts landlords, some hurt regular people. I don’t need to ask millionaires about it because it’s not about them, it’s about middle class people.
Everyone here sucks except the squatters.
Edit: This is very contraversial for some reason nobody cares to defend but consider that a house is first and foremost a tool and squatters are the only people in the story correctly using a house for its only real purpose. I’m not saying they’re good people, just that they’re the only people not enganged in some kind of elaborate fraud or thinly vieled attempt to murder humans.
This fool is going to get shot.
I’d much rather make a squatter homeless than have a landlord lose property,” Jacobs added
I’d much rather make poor people without an option homeless than have a rich asshole lose some money!
Do you think broke people should feel the same way about banks? Just take their assets because they’re in need? Besides, I’m not sure most squatters are poor. They tend to fill a captured house with new furniture quickly.
You seem to know a lot about them, what are their names? Are they squatting in the room with you right now?
Shadija Romero has been making the news recently turning a 30-day or less Airbnb rental into a 9-month drag out fight, but she’s a probably only made the news because she’s mentally not all there. Most squatters aren’t delusional enough to try to defend themselves publicly or lie about things to the press.
When I look up squatters most of the info seems to pop up around DC and Maryland so if I wonder if it’s a particular issue around there.
I imagine squatters are more common in any big/desirable metro area, where a lot of housing is unfilled for months or years at a time because a property owner just wants to have “a place in DC” in case they need it.
I think it’s probably more the legal regime, but a higher than normal number of well kept but empty homes could also contribute.
It’s a horrible quote, but most squatters from what I’ve seen are just scammers. They squat, they muck up the eviction process with fake documents, and they generally extort money from the property owner in exchange for leaving early and not damaging the place.
Ads for this type of services show up in craigslist regularly where I live. Named organizations like Viking Acquisitions or FAFO LLC post weekly. I bugged the local newspaper about it, but they were disinterested.
He stabbed me with a sword Mal … How weird!
Ok…but what happens when a squatter has a gun?
“The average sword-wielding man has no firearms experience.”
There seems to be the implication within that quote that because he’s brought a melee weapon, the party being attacked is bound by honor not to use a firearm.
In fact he’s probably putting himself in much more danger by bringing a sword (thereby providing a self-defense defense) than if he showed up unarmed.
Aren’t most of squatters are relatevely poor people, who cannot easily buy a gun unless they are a part of a gang?
Most, sure. But all it takes is one that’s not.
This is a country where there are more legal guns than there are people. You don’t think ANYONE ina bad economic situation is traveling with the gun they owned before they lost their housing?
Assuming that this law even exist in such country, your statement does sound logical. Still, I cannot understand why then no one is trying armed revolution against the current government if everyone knows about current USA president? I mean, in other countries people do such protests without guns in many cases and achieve success. Like in Ukraine, for example.
P. S. Yeah, I kinda changed the topic. Sorry.
Because huge chunks of the country continue to love him. He might be leading us into economic collapse, but at least he’s being shitty to brown and queer people, which is obviously the most important thing.
If you were a tenant and you are getting kicked out you should have different rights like a proper eviction and a court date.
If you just broke in you should simply be removed by the cops on penalty of law if the landlord lies and you are actually a tenant who was illegally evicted.
This is what the law in liberal wa state is.
In theory yeah, but squatters rights do exist for a purpose of keeping abandoned buildings from just decaying if you can show you’ve been maintaining it in the owners absence. Now I’m not saying that they’re used like that now but that is their actual purpose.
I wish to God squatters would quietly drill out the locks on an old abandoned property, occupy it and slowly fix it up and just go over to whatever agency 5 years later with the documentation to show it and say “by right of labor and occupancy this house is mine.”
I just doesn’t seem to be how it works in places with tolerant squatting laws. The way it seems to go is some enterprising criminals will run off some fake leases, gain entry to a home that’s only temporarily unoccupied, and then when the owners come back they ask them for money to leave. And then the owners give them money, and the squatters either leave or they don’t.
It takes a long time up to 20 years in some places and it’s normal if the situation is legally unclear to make a court handle it.
At that point after a court finds the lease fabricated it is up to the law to punish people if they don’t they are as much at fault as the bad guys
Nah fuck squatters too. Everyone sucks here but squatters are just as trashy. We need to have a vacant homes penalty desperately but yeah that won’t happen anytime soon if ever in my lifetime.
We need to have a vacant homes penalty desperately
Technically that’s what adverse possession or squatters rights actually is.
The general criteria(without state specifics) for legal squatting is incredibly difficult to fulfill though. It’s not reasonable to achieve in the majority of situations.
Right now there is a penalty for not keeping it vacant. Say you’re an elderly homeowner in Los Angeles. Your husband died 15 years ago when the property you bought in 1970 for $35,000 was worth $500,000. The tax basis resets from $35k to $500k. But now the property is worth $2 million and you need to move into a retirement home due to your health. If you sell the house now, your family takes a capital gains tax hit on the $1.5 million of appreciation. If they wait until you die, the tax basis resets to current market value. If you make the qualifying event the move to the retirement home instead of death it would save on taxes but would give your kids a powerful incentive to move you out. Tl;dr most of the vacant homes I’m personally aware of are owned by elderly people with health issues.
