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A Man’s Home Is His Castle, Right?
[Link] Homeowners call them “criminals”, but law enforcement refer to them as squatters.
They break into your home, move their stuff in and refuse to leave!
Thankfully, some lawmakers see this as a travesty and seek to restore the Constitutional protection over private property rights:
District 10 Sen. Owen Hill and House District 16 Rep. Larry Liston are also sponsoring this bill they hope will send squatters packing.
Under the proposal, law enforcement would have the authority to immediately remove squatters. The bill also goes a step further by making it a class 1 misdemeanor if the squatters alter or damage the homeowner’s property.
From the Cato Institute:
America’s Founders understood clearly that private property is the foundation not only of prosperity but of freedom itself.
Thus, through the common law, state law, and the Constitution, they protected property rights — the rights of people to acquire, use, and dispose of property freely. With the growth of modern government, however, those rights been seriously compromised.
This seems to be just one more example of a woke culture out of control. Up is down. Right is wrong. Black is white. And property, gender, and everything is fluid. Daily. Good grief. What is next? With this kind of ‘thinking,’ where does it stop? Why not allow a ‘D’ student to sit at an ‘A’ student’s desk and appropriate all of their grades. Is nothing respected and inviolate anymore? This is simply crazy and chaotic and turns the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness completely on its head!
There needs to be a federal solution to this attack on property rights and freedom and clearly set out their inviolability. Perhaps we need to sic a mob of squatters to the Obama Martha Vineyard estate in order to provide proper motivation to fix this outrage?
Published in General
All of the leases I signed were standardized forms that were signed by the owner, the tenant, and a witness. You are telling me that squatters can just forge the document, and this cannot be detected? Do we need to require leases to be notarized?
Here’s a thought – have a dated and notarized document on file with the county stating that your property is available for rent. Tenants can request to see this at the lease signing. You could also draw up the opposite statement.
I’m not the OP but I did not get the sense that this post was about Davis’ apparently helpless and seemingly illiterate victims of shifty paperwork, but about the malice-afore stealthy home invaders who simply decide to SQUAT on property, which is not the same as getting bamboozeld, and which is called by its rightful name, SQUATTING.
Different topic.
I don’t suppose anyone should be surprised at the conspicuous display of accumulated wealth. It is all pretty typical of Communist/Socialist oligarchs. After all, all of the heirarchy of the Soviet Union had their dachas in warmer climes while their subjects froze their pettuties off in Moscow. Some farm animals are more equal than others. Does anyone really expect that a squatter would get anywhere near Obama’s dacha?
Right now that process is way too complicated and takes too long. It should not be that hard, including proof that the home has not been validly rented.
Yeah, that’s why we’re reading about those stories happening every day! /s
It can be detected, but a police officer on the scene is not in a good position to do that. Even with a notary’s seal, you may have to check a the notary register to make sure that is valid. It’s a dispute best suited to a civil court, which is why police pass the buck on to that process.
That would be great, but part of the problem is that people, landlords and tenants both, just aren’t that careful in their daily affairs. There are a lot of handshake deals out there. “I’ll let you live in the house if you do some work for me. We’ll put it in writing eventually.” Those type things: Cops aren’t in a good position to sort it out on the scene.
Just transport all of the squatters up to Detroit, tell them to take their pick. Nobody will bother them. They can each probably have a second home too!
Hey, I’m a solutions guy.
Notarizing – assuming that’s actually done correctly and not also forged – doesn’t prove a document is real/true. It just shows that parties to it legally affirm that it is. Such accuracy/truthfulness can still be disputed and overcome in court. And if shown to be false, the parties are subject to legal sanction.
I could make up a document that says I own your house – hell, I could make up a document that says I own YOU – and get it notarized.
So what?
Comment #14.
Ibid.
And I’ve covered the timing issues before too. One court hearing should really be enough to establish whether there was a valid tenancy.
If that kind of situation became recognized, you think it wouldn’t happen?
Do you use Firefox? You could whomp up a GreaseMonkey script to auto-insert this argument everywhere you go.
This is an existential level of unknowability, and if you lived by these standards, you would burn all of your cash.
At present, notarized documents tend to be true, because there are penalties if they’re not.
But if you set up a legal standard that notarized documents Are True, you’d have much bigger problems than exist now.
Don’t get all reasonable on us now. That’s not your center of gravity in this argument, and you risk undoing all the hard work you’ve put in so far. Apply this standard to your previous comments through this thread and see how you do.
I am more worried about the abuse of property rights. As to the other, produce a lease. And take matters to civil court, if you must. The underlying issue must be address.
Don’t live in blue states.
Okay, but, who takes who to court?
Does the landlord/owner have to go to court to remove those they claim to be “squatters?”
Or can the landlord/owner get anyone in the property arrested and jailed, just on their say-so, and then people who may actually be legitimate tenants have to sue the landlord/owner?
Then it gets into who stands to lose more in each situation, etc. Assuming the “tenants” aren’t damaging anything – and there are other provisions/sanctions available in those situations – the landlord/owner may lose some money. If the “tenants” are immediately forced out without any examination of evidence, they are homeless, possibly including young children etc. And in much less of a position to fight it in court.
Indeed, getting someone arrested/jailed under false pretense could be considered a criminal act, and if landlords faced prison terms for such actions that could help restore some balance. But that would also require the government to step in since individuals cannot pursue criminal charges.
That’s a big part of it too, of course. And even blue cities within red states. (Landlord/tenant issues are usually handled in municipal courts.)
Don’t become a landlord, don’t leave your property empty, and be careful with legal agreements if you rent if you are personally objecting to a fix to the squatter problem.
Well yes, but objectively rental properties are needed, yet many people aren’t well suited to being landlords themselves.
I didn’t get that kedavis was objecting to a fix of the squatter problem. I think he was objecting to the idea that all you need to do is call the Sheriff who will come right down and throw the bums out on the street their first trip down.
But yes, if you own property, don’t leave it empty, be very careful with any rental agreements or leases you enter into, familiarize yourself with state and local landlord/tenant laws.
That is a lot of/most of it,
Ok
@randyweivoda
But isn’t the Colorado state government dominated by Democrats? That means nothing useful will be done until the Republicans regain control of the state government-whenever that is.
@randyweivoda
Concerning Colorado: don’t the Dems control the state government? That means nothing will be done to solve the problem until if and when the Republicans regain control of the state house. The Dems are only interested in sowing chaos to enhance their control.
And Democrats currently control the Senate and the White House at the federal level. Who knows which party will control which body two years from now? At least under federalism, states that elect mostly Republicans have a shot at having sensible government. Asking Washington to fix problems in states is not prudent since we cannot expect that Washington is going to be consistently run by conservatives. Better to have the federal government only do that which cannot practically be done by the states, in my opinion.
This situation is inconceivable to me. A tenant doesn’t get the keys to the apartment or house until he or she signs a lease. I can’t imagine how it would come about. And if someone were in a house illegally, the owner would call the police right away because the only way the person could have gotten into the house would have been to break into it.
A dispute over the title would go to court and not involve the tenant at all.
Yes validly that’s all true. But how would cops – or a court – know that right away, without a hearing, evidence, etc?
Automatically assuming truth of every claim by a landlord doesn’t make sense either.
People saying “here’s my lease” and the owner saying “I didn’t sign that” is not something for police to decide.
The person who offered the lease to the tenant needs to go to jail for fraud.
If the person has the keys to the house, then the police have to launch an investigation into finding the person guilty of the fraud of giving them the keys and the phony lease. The humane response would be for a victim restitution organization to help the tenants find another home. If they have the keys and a lease, they aren’t guilty of anything. I would hope they could help the police find the guilty party. But they still have to leave.
Caveat emptor, I guess. It’s sad. I hope it doesn’t happen often.
It really doesn’t happen often, but when it does, the cries of ownership-absolutists for the police to just throw them out, aren’t really helpful.
The actual squatters, and those who enable them, once discovered, need to be punished, hard. That’s not as likely to happen in a Democrat-controlled state or city, but that’s actually separate from absolute property rights.
My only thought on this was, it would be chaotic if there were 50 different laws regarding this. It should be a relatively simple uniform solution for all. To prove ownership of your asset should not take a multi-tiered process through the courts. This is why deeds and other proofs of ownership already exist.