Tag: private property

California Handyman Finds Way to Get Rid of Squatters

Squatting is a widespread problem, says Flash Shelton, a handyman and anti-squatting activist from Northern California. But he says he’s found a solution.

Shelton said he successfully got his mother’s house back from a group of squatters in 2019. He has since turned his experience into a career, helping others facing similar situations.

Shelton said on a recent episode of EpochTV’s “California Insider” that in 2019 after his father passed away, he moved his mother into his home. However, when they tried to sell her house, he discovered that a group of people had broken in and taken over.

After contacting law enforcement, he quickly learned that since the squatters had moved in with furniture to make it appear they lived there, it was considered a civil matter rather than a criminal one, leaving the authorities unable to act.

Although squatting or trespassing on a vacant property is illegal in California, the situation becomes complicated when law enforcement are unable to determine whether people are trespassers or have a legitimate claim to the space.

The presence of furniture and personal belongings can create the appearance of a tenant-like situation, which may force the property owner to follow formal eviction procedures rather than having the squatters removed as trespassers.

Instead of enduring the lengthy eviction process, Shelton found a “backdoor” solution: becoming a squatter in his mother’s house to oust the squatters.

“I figured that if I could become their squatter and switch places with them, that I would assume those rights,” he told the show’s host, Siyamak Khorrami.

He asked his mother to sign a lease granting him legal rights to the property. He then returned to the house and set himself up as the new “tenant.”

“As soon as they left the driveway, I went into the house, secured the back door, put up cameras, set up an alarm system, and then when they arrived back, I told them I have possession of the house,” he said.

The squatters eventually left.

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Above the law: Secret Service agents get caught picking the lock of a local business to use the facilities and snack on the candy

What does a “progressive” government think of private property rights? Well, they’re just temporary privileges granted by the all-powerful state which can be tread on and revoked at discretion.

Immediately after Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden on the Democrat ticket after a successful coup—Biden’s first interview since the switcheroo, which aired yesterday, described being pushed out by colleagues—she held a fundraiser in Massachusetts, during which time Secret Service agents allegedly broke into a nearby business, a small local hair salon, so they could have access to private bathroom facilities. Porta potties are just so below their station, and of course planning ahead with private mobile bathrooms would have required competent preparation, something we all know the Secret Service seriously lacks, from the top tiers of leadership to agents on the ground. 

Agents reportedly kept the door open all day allowing other “haves” to use the business’s restroom, snacked on the candy by the reception desk intended for salon customers, and when they were done, left the doors unlocked and camera lenses covered by tape.

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The Rule of Law and Property Rights

Respect for the rule of law cannot simply mean a moral obligation to obey legislation. History is replete with too many examples of tyrannical legislation for that notion to pass muster. But if the rule of law does not mean obeying whatever legislators enact, what does it mean?

Murray Rothbard argued that this question must be answered by reference to ethical guidelines, which he constructed around the concepts of self-ownership and property rights. Rothbard conceptualized property rights as inalienable and absolute natural rights. Seen in that light, eminent domain legislation is unethical and unjust. The example of New York illustrates the significance of this point, as explained by the Institute for Justice:

“In New York, eminent domain gives the government the power to take your property, even if you don’t want to sell. But under the Fifth Amendment, eminent domain must be for a ‘public use,’ which traditionally meant projects like roads or bridges. Meanwhile, the government must pay the owners ‘just compensation’ for their property.

“Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted federal protection against unconstitutional eminent domain when it handed down its decision in Kelo v. New London in 2005. By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court dramatically expanded the definition of ‘public use’ to include private economic development. In other words, local governments can condemn homes and businesses and transfer them to new owners if government officials think that the new owners will produce more taxes or jobs with the land.

“As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned in her dissent: ‘The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.’”

South Africa has gone even further with its expropriation laws, by providing in its constitution that “public purpose” can include anti-racism, equity and protection of “vulnerable groups.”

“In terms of section 25(4)(a) of the Constitution ‘public interest includes the nation’s commitment to land reform, and to reforms to bring about equitable access to all South Africa’s natural resources.’ Section 25 (8) further states that the state may take ‘legislative steps and other measures … in order to redress the results of past racial discrimination.’”

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Judge Rules Rancher George Alan Kelly Who Allegedly Killed Illegal Immigrant on His Property Can’t be Retried for Murder

Arizona rancher George Alan Kelly, 75, will not face a retrial for the alleged killing of Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, a Mexican national found dead on the elder’s property in January 2023. 

The New York Post reported that Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Thomas Fink made the decisive ruling on Tuesday, denying the prosecution’s request to keep the case open.

Kelly’s case sparked an intense debate over border security and property rights.

It initially ended in a mistrial in April when jurors failed to reach a verdict, Resist the Mainstream previously reported.

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Australia: “Managed retreat” is a scam to take people’s homes and replace them with smart cities

Shocking evidence is emerging from Australia and New Zealand of how the climate scam is being used to impose a techno-totalitarian smart-city future.

The criminocratic global imperialists often use their Commonwealth colonies to try out the most insidious escalations of their tyranny – think of Canada, New Zealand and Australia during covid.  We can therefore assume that this is going to be the blueprint for the roll-out of their Fourth Industrial Revolution (“4IR”) agenda across the world.

The sinister scheme in question, called “Managed Retreat”, has been exposed by independent researcher Kate Mason on her excellent Substack blog aimed at “deconstructing 4IR narratives.”  The idea is that exaggerated “modelling” of the imagined effects of “climate change” is being used to define certain areas as unsuitable for human settlement.

Working hand in hand with the state is the insurance industry – long a central part of the corrupt criminocratic empire – which deems homes in these areas to be “uninsurable”.  Banks are also playing their part (of course!) saying they are unwilling to provide mortgages for these “uninsurable” properties.

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Florida Man’s Tall Grass Saga Comes to an End

Retiree Jim Ficken can finally breathe easy. After six years, two lawsuits, and harrying legal wrangling over a $30,000 fine for tall grass in Dunedin, Florida, a new settlement has brought him closure.

The agreement, announced on April 22, ends the city’s pursuit to recover $10,000 in attorney fees that Dunedin officials tried to characterize as “administrative expenses” after reducing Ficken’s original fine by 80 percent. The reduction was only possible because of reforms the city instituted soon after Ficken filed his first lawsuit.

Initially, the city attempted to tack on $25,000 for out-of-pocket legal expenses before realizing it had miscalculated that figure. As a result of this settlement, Ficken will not have to cough up any amount for bogus fees—an important consolation following setbacks in his first lawsuit.

Ficken attempted to reason with code enforcers before going to court—explaining that his lawn had grown long while he was settling his late mother’s estate in South Carolina and that the landscaper he had hired to mow his grass while he was gone had died unexpectedly. He asked for leniency, but the city refused to budge and insisted on full payment: $500 per day for nearly two months, plus interest. They even put liens on Ficken’s home and authorized city attorneys to initiate proceedings to seize it.

In response, Ficken filed a federal lawsuit with representation from the Institute for Justice, asserting that the excessive fines and lack of due process violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. He lost in district court in 2021 and again in 2022 at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals—but he won in other ways. His case ignited a media frenzy and public calls for reform, prompting Dunedin to overhaul its code enforcement regime to prevent ruinous fines for trivial offenses.

After his legal battles, Ficken managed to get the fines reduced enough to prevent foreclosure. He thought he was safe. But then the city hit him with the bill for attorney fees, a retroactive attempt to penalize him for seeking his day in court. Left with no choice, he sued again in 2023.

The city could have avoided both lawsuits merely by treating Ficken like a neighbor instead of a cash machine.

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Democrat Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs Vetoes Bipartisan Anti-Squatter Bill Designed To Protect Homeowners

Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has taken the decision to veto a bill designed to bolster the rights of homeowners seeking to evict squatters from their properties.

This action comes despite the bill receiving bipartisan support and amidst a surge of squatting cases causing distress among homeowners nationwide.

Fox News reports that the legislation in question, SB 1129, aimed to empower homeowners by allowing them to request law enforcement intervention for the immediate removal of squatters from their premises if the squatter had unlawfully occupied the property and asserted a false right to reside there.

Police would have been authorized to swiftly intervene under the proposed law and facilitate the eviction process based on the homeowner’s affidavit.

Hobbs, however, took a decisive step on Tuesday, rejecting the bill in a succinct letter addressed to the president of the State Senate.

“Today I vetoed Senate Bill 1129,” Hobbs penned. “This bill fails to leverage existing legal mechanisms, respect the due process rights of lawful tenants, and minimize unintended consequences such as for victims of domestic violence.”

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Killing the Constitution

In the last days of East Germany, when government officials detected that their power was unraveling, they ratcheted up enforcement of the nation’s reporting laws. The reporting laws made it a felony to know of a crime and fail to report it. It was also a crime to tell the person of whose crime you learned that you had done so. There was no right to privacy and there was no freedom of speech.

This Orwellian tangle resulted, of course, in many false reports of crimes. It also resulted in many prosecutions for failing to report crimes or for warning others that they were being spied upon. As of this past weekend, we in America are headed to the same authoritarian place. Thanks to legislation that fell one vote short of demise in each house of Congress last weekend, America in 2024 will soon resemble East Germany in the late 1980s, where nearly everyone was a spy and no one could talk about it.

Here is the backstory.

The quintessential American right is the right to be left alone. Justice Louis Brandeis called it the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized persons. It presumes that you can think as you wish and say what you think and read what you want and publish what you say, that you can exclude whomever you wish – including the government – from your property and from your thoughts; and that you can do all this without a government permission slip or fear of government reprisal.

This natural right is also protected in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which requires a warrant issued by a judge based upon probable cause of crime before the government can invade your property or spy on you.

The warrant requirement serves three purposes.

The first is to force the government to stay in the lane of crime solving, rather than crime predicting.

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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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