Posted on 04/12/2024 9:38:47 PM PDT by Libloather
You would think Gordon Ramsey has the money to hire the Squatter Hunter and fly him to his London pub. Do it, Gordon! Do it!
He voted for it so he can live with it.
Mercifully, in most US states and communities, law enforcement will act against squatters, especially if the correct person is approached. Some years ago, I helped an acquaintance with a problem in his blue collar, mixed race neighborhood where a foreclosed house had become drug den. The patrol deputies sympathized but claimed that the problem was beyond them.
Fortunately, by chance, I knew that the local sheriff had a policy of accepting and returning all calls made to his office that asked to speak with him personally. I also knew enough about law enforcement and the local sheriff to coach my friend into the right approach.
Two days after my friend spoke with the sheriff by telephone, a team of deputies in several squad cars arrived along with a work crew in a van, arrested the squatters, and boarded up the house. After that, the formerly helpless local patrol deputies checked regularly to make sure the house remained vacant.
That was in Florida, which is conservative and has locally elected sheriffs. That suggests that where squatters are a problem, larger changes may need to be made.
Ramsey is a liberal. Suck it up buttercup
It’s been a long time, and I was just a kid, but my impression of the UK problem in the early and mid 1970’s was that it was a bunch of Common Law decisions, some going back centuries, which over time had turned into something that was able to be manipulated by squatters which made it difficult to legally evict them.
Then Labout revised the Criminal law in 1977 (?). Which was supposed to solve the problem, but didn’t. (may have been deliberate)
Regardles of the letter of the law, if there is anarcho-tyranny in the way that police enforce the law, it doesn’t matter what the law is, only how the police are instructed. Who is let go, who is the law strictly enforced against.
That’s where the UK Met is now.
Last time I was in the UK was 2014. They were evicting anti-globalist protestors from a building near Bond Street. It was a major operation with a multi-storey building, dozens of squatters, many police, a helicopter overhead... etc.
I guess someone who is “protected” owned the building.
Considering the contempt he shows for others, this disgusting individual is surely a liberal/regressive.
I couldn’t care less what happens to “his” “property”.
Go steal someone else’s pub, Gordo.
All Europeans are. They don’t argue about economics, because they are all socialists. Political arguement revolves around going Republic or retaining the monarchy.
His sensibilities seems to be aligned with the working tradesman.
Similarly, a few years ago, Florida adopted legislation that made clear that there was no duty to retreat from a threat if you are otherwise in the right, with a preliminary hearing available to a defendant to establish the defense and defeat a prosecution at an early stage. This so-called "stand your ground law" was controversial at the time but has stood the test of time. Many states have similar provisions by statute or judicial decision.
An episode of Breaking Bad even touches on the issue. An illegal gun vendor explains to Walter White that since New Mexico is a stand your ground jurisdiction, if he had only defensive gun use in mind, he would be better off buying a gun legally instead of an illegal gun with the serial number removed.
In application to squatters, "stand your ground" means that a homeowner or their agent could evict squatters and shoot to kill if threatened with immediate harm. Most people may not have the stones to do that sort of thing, but enough do to make squatting a dicey proposition where "stand your ground" prevails and guns are widely legal.
Government has the option of fining property owners for code violations, there is no need to throw other people’s property rights out the window just because you want property to be used in some fashion of your choosing.
When large numbers of property owners leave property vacant, there is probably some government policy that causes them to do so. Fix the problem not the symptom.
I’d rather have fiscal libertarians as my neighbors than some lib Karens or some Karen posing as a conservative.
Enough of such filth ruining the lives of good people.
Even if the owner does the minimum amount of work to keep it from looking blighted, it still is a loss to the community. If it were resold, then it would be reappraised and the taxes generated from it would be greater, and there would be housing or business that others could live in or profit from.
There was a recent case in Britain where a family had moved into an abandoned house, renovated it, and lived in it for over 12 years before the owner realized what was happening. That owner lost the house to the family.
When he returned to Moscow from three years at the front, Dr. Zhivago was confronted by the local Bolshevik party committee who had taken over his family’s house. To defuse the situation, he said Welcome to which they replied, “It is not for YOU to “welcome” US, Zhivago. There was room for 13 families in this house”.
LOL!
That “professional squatters” exist should tell you that there is something wrong.
Or you can just not give squatters any particular rights.
Most of the squatters are not fixing up the houses. They are not maintaining them and/or re completely trashing them and many times other criminal activity is taking place. Then it it becomes more of a blight and problem for the community.
Unfortunately, that is not enough. The courts and law enforcement must also be given a clear and peremptory directive to remove squatters at the request of the owners.
They don’t have a problem removing other intruders. It is the squatters laws that have invited this new kind of lawfare.
Or, here’s an even more sinister thought.
Perhaps this flare up in squatters and squatters coverage is intended to get the squatting laws struck, before the masses “own nothing” and don’t have a place to put themselves without intruding on the property of absentee landowners.
I agree. It’s sad that local governments are treating these short term squatting cases as civil cases rather than criminal. It’s just out and out trespassing and theft. The squatters should be forcibly removed and tried for their crimes.
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