Tag: private property

New York Governor Signs Squatter Law in Favor of Homeowners

In the wake of a series of high-profile squatter cases making national headlines, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has signed into law a bill that will make it easier for homeowners across the state to evict unlawful occupants.

State Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz, a Long Island Republican, spearheaded the bill. It modifies a section of New York property law that describes a tenant as an occupant of a home “who has been in possession for 30 consecutive days or longer,” clarifying that squatters are not tenants and, therefore, not entitled to tenants’ protections under a landlord–tenant relationship.

“A tenant shall not include a person who enters onto property with the intent of squatting on such property or who otherwise settles on land or occupies property without title, right, permission of the rightful owner, or payment of rent,” the law now reads.

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A Florida Judge Says $165,000 in Fines for 3 Minor Code Violations Is Not ‘Excessive’

A Florida judge yesterday ruled against a Lantana homeowner who faces more than $165,000 in fines for three minor code violations that harmed no one. Sandy Martinez, who is represented by the Institute for Justice (I.J.), argued that the financially crippling demand, which stems from driveway cracks, a storm-damaged fence, and cars that were parked partially on her own lawn, violates the Florida Constitution’s ban on excessive fines and its guarantee of due process. But Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Luis Delgado granted the city’s motion for summary judgment, concluding that the fines were not “grossly disproportionate.”

Martinez hopes to persuade Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal that Delgado is wrong about that. “Six-figure fines for parking on your own property are outrageous,” says I.J. attorney Mike Greenberg. “The Florida Constitution’s Excessive Fines Clause was designed to stop precisely this sort of abuse—to prevent people from being fined into poverty for trivial violations. The court’s opinion renders those bedrock protections a dead letter. We will appeal.”

Martinez’s debt to the city began accumulating in 2013, when she was cited for cracks in her driveway. For a single mother with a modest income who was living from one paycheck to another, the cost of laying a new driveway was hard to manage. But in the meantime, daily fines of $75 continued to accrue, eventually reaching a total of $16,125 with interest—”far greater than the cost of an entirely new driveway,” she notes in the lawsuit that she filed against the city in February 2021.

In 2015, Martinez was cited for a fence that had been knocked down by a storm. Again, the repairs necessary to bring her into compliance were more expensive than she could immediately afford. While she waited for her insurance company to pay her claim for the fence, daily fines of $125 accumulated, eventually hitting a total of $47,375 with interest—”several times the cost of the repair and substantially more than the cost of a completely new fence,” according to her complaint.

Finally, Martinez was cited in 2019 for improperly parking cars on her own property. At the time, she was living with her three children, her mother, and her sister. Martinez, her two adult children, and her sister all had cars that they used to travel from home to work and back. Her street has no curbs and is not wide enough to accommodate parked cars. Since Martinez and her relatives could not legally and safely park on the street, the driveway seemed like the only viable option. When all four cars were parked at Martinez’s home, two of them sometimes extended slightly beyond the driveway, which is flanked by her lawn and a walkway.

As Martinez’s complaint notes, “parking on one’s own front yard space, even a tiny bit, is illegal in Lantana.” The penalty is $250 per day and fines continue to accrue until a city inspector verifies that the violation has been corrected. Although Martinez says she promptly fixed the parking issue by making sure no car was touching her grass and left a voicemail message with the code enforcement office requesting a compliance check, no inspector came by. Unbeknownst to her, the fines continued to accumulate for more than a year.

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It’s Time to End Squatter’s Rights

Last month, New York City homeowner Adele Andaloro was arrested after changing the locks on a house that had been seized by squatters. According to The New York Post: “Andaloro was charged with unlawful eviction because she had changed the locks and hadn’t provided a new key to the residents. The residents, however, are squatters.

Fortunately, Andaloro’s arrest was filmed and went viral, reviving an ongoing debate over squatters “rights,” under which trespassers can take over an unoccupied house or piece of land and attempt to establish legal ownership.

Not long after the Andaloro video surfaced, an immigrant TikToker with 500,000 followers posted a video encouraging other migrants to squat in private residences in the United States. The immigrant, Leonel Moreno, explained to potential squatters that under US law, “if a house is not inhabited, we can seize it.”

These videos have fueled increasing concern among property owners who have witnessed the explosion in the numbers of aggressive homeless residents in both central cities and suburbs. This, coupled with millions of new foreign nationals flooding into US cities in recent years, has further increased concerns about a sizable, rootless and impoverished population searching for opportunities to seize unoccupied homes.

These recent examples have prompted many Americans to wonder why squatter’s rights exist at all. Historically, there have been some arguably reasonable justifications for the practice, such as in times past when real estate records were far less precise and well preserved. In modern times, however, squatter’s rights have little purpose beyond redistributing property to favored interest groups. Moreover, squatter’s rights in modern settings bear less and less resemblance to the squatter’s rights of history.

Thanks to all this, it is becoming increasingly clear that squatter’s rights have outlived whatever usefulness they may once have had. The time has come to end squatter’s rights altogether.

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Squatters sell Texas woman’s belongings at yard sale — turn home into ‘drug den’

Squatters turned a Texas woman’s home into a “drug den” and sold her possessions at a yard sale — but police told her they couldn’t do anything about it.

Terri Boyette was in Florida caring for her sick mother when a friend called to tell her someone had squatted her Dallas-area home.

She had previously hired workers to renovate her house, but after she left a painter had broken in and wrecked the place, leaving crack pipes in her oven and needles in a drawer, Boyette told The Post.

It took six months for Boyette to get her home back and now she says her belongings have been either damaged beyond repair or sold, with her bed now situated in the backyard, a bike and scooter in her shower and trash and dirty dishes all over the home.

“All my stuff has been sold through the yard sale and online,” Boyett said, adding: “Apparently he was letting people rent from him.”

Boyette had told the workers to leave before she left for Florida, but the squatter broke in and wouldn’t leave.

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NYC couple are sued by squatters who allegedly took over their $930K investment home and won’t leave: ‘It’s absolutely absurd’

A pair of alleged squatters accused of unlawfully moving into a Queens duplex are suing its rightful owners after refusing to vacate the $930,000 home.

It’s the latest logic-defying chapter in the ongoing squatter saga in the borough, which in recent weeks has seen multiple homes occupied by unwelcome invaders who claim rights to the properties under New York City’s permissive laws.

“It’s absolutely absurd,” said the owner of the latest targeted home, Juliya Fulman — who so far has racked up more than $4,000 in legal bills fighting the suit — to The Post on Sunday.

“These people literally broke into my house. It’s not fair to us as homeowners that we are not protected by the city,” said the Jamaica property owner.

“You can’t really even blame them in a way because it’s handed to them on a silver platter,” Juliya’s husband, Denis Kurlyand, said in a phone call with The Post, calling the squatters “opportunists.

“Something needs to be done because the issue is getting worse. People are taking advantage of these laws, manipulating the laws, and our hands are tied,” he said.

“What did we do? Nothing. We put up a property for rent, and that’s it, now we’re dealing with a nightmare.”

The couple spent $530,000 renovating the Lakeside Avenue investment property and secured tenants for both rental units when their real estate broker, Ejona Bardhi, discovered March 5 that the locks on the property had been changed.

After determining the lock change was not authorized, Bardhi returned to the home and saw through the window a silhouette of a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and holding a drill, the broker told the Daily Mail.

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Californians Take Squatting Crisis Into Their Own Hands

Agroup of Californians has taken the squatting crisis in the state into their own hands and created a business in which you can hire someone to get rid of illegal tenants on your property.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several states updated their rules to allow renters more leniency if they were unable to make their monthly payments. However, in states like California and Washington, this has given rise to unforeseen problems in which squatters stay on property they don’t own permanently, and the homeowners lose thousands of dollars in the process.

Lando Thomas, one of the business owners behind Southern California-based Squatter Squad, has been removing squatters since 2018. In 2023, though, he decided to team up with a few others and start a branded company all about removing unruly and illegal tenants from homeowners’ properties.

“Because squatting seems to be on the rise, the courts are backed up from months to years, police can’t or won’t help, property owners feel helpless and are told taking the squatters to court is the only path to getting their property back,” Thomas told Newsweek. “Even the neighbors can be victims because where there’s squatters, there’s usually bad activities going on such as drug dealing and other crimes.”

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Woman Threatened With Prosecution For Putting Gender Critical Notices On Her OWN FRONT DOOR

A 68-year-old woman in London has been threatened with fines by her local council after she put up posters expressing gender critical opinions on her own property.

The pensioner was served with a Community Protection Notice (CPN) and threatened with a £2,500 fine by Hammersmith and Fulham Council after just eight complaints, including someone claiming the material is ‘transphobic’.

The Daily Mail reports that Una-Jane Winfield, who felt “a duty to speak out,” pinned an A4 sized photograph of a women displaying scars from breast removal surgery, next to an advert for the book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce  of the campaign group Sex Matters.

The report notes that the council ordered Mrs Winfield to remove the material, which she refuses to do. She will go to court next month to challenge the CPN.

She also says “The police came to have a look at my door on two separate occasions.”

“Thankfully they understood that expression of gender-critical views is protected under the law. But the council has ignored the police,” Winfield adds.

She continues, “In a letter I was told my ‘persistent and continuing conduct’ was having a ‘detrimental effect on the public and the LGBT community’.”

The council claims that the image in question is “provocative and graphic,” and features “nudity prominently displayed on a very busy public section of walkway in plain view.”

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Thriving how-to squatter internet forums reveal home takeover secrets: ‘You can’t stop it!’

Thousands of homes across America are being invaded by squatters, who move in and legally live rent-free — and amazingly there’s no easy way for homeowners or the police to evict them.

In Atlanta, the problem is so bad some residents are too afraid to leave for a vacation, for fear of returning to an unwanted visitor or even finding their home converted into an ad hoc strip club.

However, squatting isn’t as simple as turning up to someone’s home and pushing your way in.

This has led to a host of internet forums and dark web pages devoted to the subject offering a fascinating “dummies guide” to getting into someone else’s house and establishing a right to be there.

“I don’t know if you know this, but we have a housing crisis in this country,” a prolific poster told The Post anonymously. “And it’s only getting worse. People are going to do what they have to do. You can’t stop it.”

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“It’s Enraging”: NYPD Arrest Homeowner For Changing Locks After Squatters Break In

Adele Andaloro, 47, was placed under arrest at her $1 million home in Flushing, Queens, which she inherited from her parents after they died.

“It’s enraging,” Andaloro told the NY Post. “It’s not fair that I, as the homeowner, have to be going through this.“

Andaloro claims the ordeal erupted when she started the process of trying to sell the home last month but realized squatters had moved in — and brazenly replaced the entire front door and locks.

Fed up, she recently went to her family’s home on 160th Street — with the local TV outlet in tow — and called a locksmith to change the locks for her. -NY Post

The spat with the squatters, which was caught on camera, rapidly erupted into a verbal altercation until the cops showed up and led Andaloro away – charging her with ‘unlawful eviction.’

As the Post notes, people can claim “squatter’s rights” if they’ve been squatting for just 30 days at a property. This makes it illegal for homeowners to change the locks, turn off the utilities, or remove the squatters’ belongings.

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102-Year-Old Oakland Man Ordered to Clean Up Graffiti on the Back Fence of His Home or Face Hefty Fine

The City of Oakland, California has ordered a centenarian resident to clean up graffiti from his property or face a substantial fine, KTVU reported.

Victor Silva Sr., a 102-year-old wheelchair user who has lived and paid taxes in his Oakland neighborhood for 80 years, was shocked to receive a violation notice earlier this month ordering the cleanup by March 19th.

If he fails to comply, he faces a $1,100 penalty, with additional charges of $1,277 for each re-inspection that finds the graffiti still in place.

His daughter-in-law, Elena Silva, expressed disbelief at the city’s citation: “It was so absurd, it’s like a joke. If you drive around the city and see the graffiti everywhere, it’s just I don’t know what to say.”

The centenarian, who is approaching his 103rd birthday, reminisced about the times he could handle the cleanup himself. “Just had a roller and a paintbrush and just painted it. It was very easy because I was a contractor, you know. I’ll be 103 in two months or so. That slowed it up a little bit,” Silva Sr. told to KTVU.

Now, the responsibility of maintaining the fence graffiti-free falls on his 70-year-old son, Victor Silva Jr. He finds the task increasingly futile: “It’s hard to keep up with it because as soon as we get it painted, It’s gonna be graffiti on it again, and it won’t last.”

The Silva family also owns a nearby commercial property that has been broken into three times over the last year, exacerbating their frustrations with city services. When Silva Jr. tried to report these incidents, he found himself consistently on hold with 911.

“And I’m put on hold every time. So it’s hard to understand where our tax dollars are going. They can’t answer 911, but they can come out and hassle you about a fence?”

In response to the public backlash and media inquiries, a city inspector from Oakland contacted KTVU, indicating an immediate re-inspection would take place, with the implication that the citation would likely be rescinded.

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