Squatters rights are an important part of common law and they serve as a foundational means of ensuring valuable real estate remains in use. Adverse possession requires openly living somewhere for years without permission or resistance from the owner
The current issue with squatter’s rights is the time. A squatter can draft a fake renter’s agreement and change the locks while you are on vacation, and then it takes a long time to evict them the “proper” way.
I’m totally on board with expedited eviction of squatters from a primary residence, and even harsher penalties for it. I believe squatters are valuable and I’m generally in favor of all sorts of crust punk bullshit, but they should have a duty to do reasonable reconnaissance. The difference between someone getting into an old boarded up building or a house nobody has used in years vs one where people are just on vacation (even if it’s a few months) is massive. The former is an attack on property believed to be abandoned with good reason, and the latter is an intimate violation of someone’s home.
Yep, and this guy is one form of “resistance”. But doesn’t reporting the squatter to the police count as “resistance” as well? Surely you don’t need to hire private goons to chuck them out?
The time frame it takes to resolve this issue is the primary problem.
It should be fast and easy to determine if a rental agreement is invalid. I don’t know what that system needs to look like exactly, but we’ve been setting and improving standards for document validation for generations so it shouldn’t be that hard.
Squatters rights are an important part of common law and they serve as a foundational means of ensuring valuable real estate remains in use. Adverse possession requires openly living somewhere for years without permission or resistance from the owner
The current issue with squatter’s rights is the time. A squatter can draft a fake renter’s agreement and change the locks while you are on vacation, and then it takes a long time to evict them the “proper” way.
I’m totally on board with expedited eviction of squatters from a primary residence, and even harsher penalties for it. I believe squatters are valuable and I’m generally in favor of all sorts of crust punk bullshit, but they should have a duty to do reasonable reconnaissance. The difference between someone getting into an old boarded up building or a house nobody has used in years vs one where people are just on vacation (even if it’s a few months) is massive. The former is an attack on property believed to be abandoned with good reason, and the latter is an intimate violation of someone’s home.
Yep, and this guy is one form of “resistance”. But doesn’t reporting the squatter to the police count as “resistance” as well? Surely you don’t need to hire private goons to chuck them out?
Squatters is a civil issue in California, and can take many years to have them evicted if the squatters know how to game the system.
The time frame it takes to resolve this issue is the primary problem.
It should be fast and easy to determine if a rental agreement is invalid. I don’t know what that system needs to look like exactly, but we’ve been setting and improving standards for document validation for generations so it shouldn’t be that hard.