Free Republic

Squatters have taken over an abandoned Los Angeles mansion belonging to the son of the Philadelphia Phillies owner while neighbors view the high-end property as an eyesore and are scared for their safety. The home located at 7571 Mulholland Drive in the posh Hollywood Hills has been left vacant for over a decade, a few years after John Powers Middleton — the only son of businessman John S. Middleton — purchased the property, according to ABC 6. Squatters and taggers began breaking onto the empty premises over two years as taggers began leaving blasting their artwork all over the house.

A Kentucky homeowner says he has been forced out of his own home after letting some guests stay in his garage while they fixed their car. Daniel Toma says the guests ended up staying three months and a court order has now taken him out of his house. “I just want this nightmare to end. I’ve been homeless the last few days,” he said. Toma said he wished he never invited his friend, Amy Davis, and her boyfriend, Tyler Sencuk, to his house over the summer. According to Toma, he let them stay at his home until their car could...

A Kentucky homeowner was forced out of his house after his 'friends' moved into his garage while they fixed their broken-down car and then they refused to leave. 'I was just trying to be kind', said homeowner Daniel Toma after he allowed a friend, Amy Davis, and her boyfriend, Tyler Sencuk, into his home in Louisville, Kentucky. The pair were visiting him during the summer when their car broke down. He offered his garage as a place for them to stay while they worked on it. 'Working on the car for days in the driveway, I didn't want to throw...

A single mom in Durham, N.C. is finally getting her home back after squatters took it over. Two people booked Farzana Rahman's two-bed, two-bath property via Airbnb for seven months. They then refused to leave when their stay was up in May 2024, claiming they're "legal residents" of the home. Rahman ended up taking them to court to get her property back. But after they didn't show up to the hearing, the judge sided with Rahman and issued an eviction order. The Durham Sheriff's County Office served it to the guests on July 3, 2024. Rahman changed the locks and...

A popular hiking trail in Hawaii had to close this week after 24 hikers became sick from what is believed to be norovirus — an outbreak many blamed on illegal squatters defecating along the remote path. A portion of the Kalalau Trail on the Kalalau section of the Nāpali Coast State Wilderness Park on the island of Kauai was shuttered for seven days beginning Sept. 4, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources posted on Facebook this week. The DOH received reports of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea from hikers who had been on the 11-mile trail, which runs from...

Bright MLS is one of the nation's leading real estate listing services. Their chief economist Dr. Lisa Sturtevant recently told Fox News that "the upward pressure on home prices is making this the most unaffordable housing market in history. First-time and moderate-income home buyers, in particular, increasingly are being left out of the housing market." House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo) blames "the Biden Administration's reckless spending and suppression of domestic energy production for the rising cost of living that Americans now face. Billions of tax dollars were wasted on inefficient 'green energy' boondoggles that failed to...

From George Orwell’s 1984 comes one of the author’s most memorable lines: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”Well, while the fictional party of Oceania illustrated a society in which the people were to dismiss reality in authoritarian submission, Colorado governor Jared Polis prefers to gaslight us, describing the “evidence of [our] eyes and ears” as a mere figment of our “imagination.” We don’t need to “reject” anything because it’s all just in our crazy heads!Yesterday I wrote a blog on a surreal and terrifying situation in...

You worked hard your whole life. You saved for a down payment and bought your dream home. The neighborhood is great, and you never have to worry about crime. The only thing your local police department has to do is hand out the occasional parking ticket. You did everything right — and you thought you were safe from the scourge of squatters who can only take over in “bad neighborhoods.” You were wrong. The Daily Caller’s new documentary, “American Squatter,” exposes the dirtiest secret in the housing market: squatters are king. And they can take over anywhere — even in...

States that have permissive policies on squatting—a growing phenomenon in the United States—need to make the practice a criminal offense, the writers of a new report from Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) say.Squatting is occupying an unoccupied or abandoned area of land or a building without having legal permission to use it. Although squatters don’t pay rent and sometimes damage the properties they take over, evicting them can be difficult and costly.Most states are reluctant to allow criminal prosecution of squatters as trespassers and prefer treating incidents as landlord and tenant disputes. Police who wish to avoid potentially violent confrontations often...

The ‘migrant influencer’ encouraging others to invade the US and squat the homes of citizens skipped out on authorities shortly after arriving in the country and is now on the run from immigration officials, The Post can reveal. Venezuelan national Leonel Moreno crossed the southern border illegally in April 2022 at Eagle Pass, Texas, and was enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, which allows federal authorities to track migrants either using ankle monitors or other technology. However, Moreno didn’t follow the rules and is now listed as an “absconder” from the program, according to internal ICE documents seen by...

Was this illegal part of a Venezuelan or Cuban military intelligence operation? Why, again, was he let in? Joe Biden's open borders may be about more than just replacing the electorate. The New York Post found that one of the most malevolent of the border surgers, a Venezuelan illegal named Leonel Moreno, who famously urged other illegals to squat in Americans' homes and waved hundred-dollar bills around to boast of his public benefits on TikTok, is being investigated by the feds for his military intelligence work for the Marxist dictatorship back home. According to the Post: Joe Biden's open borders...

Who knew that the “despotic inroads on the rights of property” referenced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their grotesque work of political ideology (The Communist Manifesto) against property owners would mean devaluation of said property through government policy?The obvious implication was physical violence, as the authors describe “wresting” away capital and wealth, and taxation, as state-sponsored theft is a given for non-producing and envious failures like Marx, but as we’ve seen time and again, the left’s policies also rob from us by devaluing the properties in which we invest.Here’s the latest example, out of New Hampshire, via a...

Watch a useless streamer be put to use as he evicts a serial squatter by relentlessly annoying her and then getting her arrested for spitting on him and then clearing out all her stuff. Video starts 4 vids down.

A months-long Airbnb rental has become a nightmare for the North Carolina host, because the renters refuse to leave. A single parent in the Triangle is out money and now is having to fight to get her property back. "Now they're refusing to leave until there's an eviction order. I think they're just trying to gain time to stay there for free because they haven't paid," Farzana Rahman said. This all started when Rahman's most recent Airbnb guests made a long-term rental reservation through Airbnb. They checked in on October 25 with a check out date of May 24. When...

OAKLAND — A 47-year-old man was shot and killed while using a sledgehammer to break up concrete chunks and hurl them at cars and property, and now the suspect is behind bars facing a murder charges. The strange sequence of events started around 4 p.m. March 28, when Greer was seen using a sledgehammer to break up chunks of concrete outside the abandoned home, then began hurling them at the property and cars parked nearby, police said. At some point while Greer was doing this, Dorn allegedly exited the abandoned residence, got on a green bicycle, rode a short distance...

The rising problem of squatters illegally occupying people’s homes has become so obvious that even the mainstream media have recently been paying some attention to it, and lawmakers are beginning to take action.A survey by the National Rental Home Council found 1,200 homes in Atlanta alone have been taken over by squatters, News Channel 8 in Atlanta reports. Georgia enacted a law in late April to speed up evictions of squatters. “We will be watching this develop over the next year,” Atlanta’s Fox 5 TV channel stated.NBC Nightly News ran a national story on property owners’ difficulties in getting governments...

A teen squatter couple who beat a New York mother to death when she found them living in her inherited Manhattan apartment went on a spending spree with her stolen credit cards, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Nadia Vitels, 52, was found dead in a duffel bag hidden under a pile of coats in her 19th floor East 31st Street apartment by her stunned son on March 14, Fox News Digital previously reported. Her beloved dog was alone at the scene. Halley Tejada, 19, and Kensley Alston, 18, fled the scene toward Pennsylvania in Vitels' Lexus SUV. Before...

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has vetoed a bill aimed at strengthening the rights of homeowners looking to evict squatters from their property, despite the bill being passed in bipartisan fashion and as a wave of squatting cases continue to terrify homeowners across the country. The bill, SB 1129, would have permitted a homeowner to request law enforcement to immediately remove a squatter from their property, had the squatter invaded a home and unlawfully claimed a right to live there. Police, acting on an owner’s affidavit, would have had the permission to immediately go in and have someone evicted. But...

PHOENIX — Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs quashed another 10 measures Tuesday sent to her by the Republican-controlled Legislature, including: — Legislation that could have barred students from other states, attending college in Arizona, from voting in elections here; — Defining who can shower with whom in public schools; — Setting up new procedures to deal with squatters invading homes; — Requiring enhanced sentences for those convicted of multiple incidents of “organized retail theft.’’ But Hobbs found more areas of agreement with GOP lawmakers than disagreements on Tuesday, signing 12 measures. Still, the day’s vetoes brought the number of bills she...

Dr. Phil spoke with property owners about how squatters are using legal loopholes to occupy properties, but one real estate agent argued it can be justified because of a history of “colonization.” Wednesday’s episode of “Dr. Phil Primetime” featured one guest named Kristine, a real estate agent who “doesn’t think adverse possession is immoral,” but believes that “people with no housing dying from the elements is immoral.” According to the Legal Information Institute, adverse possession is where a “person in possession of land owned by someone else may acquire valid title to it, so long as certain requirements are met,...