Last week, Fox ran a story headlined, “Squatter crisis hits Atlanta as property owners see homes morph into drug and prostitution dens.”
This newest crisis has been quietly exploding around the country, as amoral illegals and their fellow travelers continue testing the U.S. legal system’s weaknesses. The best way to explain this one is this short but terrifyingly realistic spoof video, published yesterday, although you could be forgiven for being fooled into thinking it is horrifyingly real. It is real. You could title the video, “How I Stole a House in Portland.”
CLIP: How I Stole a House in Portland video (1:27).
As a lawyer, I can say everything in that video was accurate, and even more likely to happen in places like Portland where they have ridiculous “squatter’s rights” laws.
The good news is that, outside Portland (and the Blue States), legislators are already reacting.
News 4 Jacksonville ran a story last week headlined, “Florida bill to address squatting approved by Senate committee but not without opposition.” (As it happens, I helped some with drafting this bill.)
The bill would allow police to remove squatters even though they claim to have leases (with treble damages against landlords that lie).
Although hysterically opposed by shrieking leftwing activist groups, the squatter’s bill passed a Florida Senate committee last week 7-1.
Back in Georgia, the squatter situation in Atlanta is so bad that Local News WBTV-2 found a $500 Instagram “service” that said it would get you the keys and a fake lease for any rental house in Atlanta. They reported the illegal service last week in a story headlined, “‘This is stealing’ Channel 2 goes undercover as Instagram account lets you squat in metro homes.”
But, like Florida, Georgia already has a bill working its way through this year’s legislative session that would give cops tools to use against squatters, and would make falsifying a lease a separate criminal charge.
Blue States actually have laws going the other way: protecting the rights of people squatting in other folks’ houses. Fixing ‘squatters rights’ laws is going to take a lot longer and be much more difficult in those Blue States. In other words, the self-inflicted punishment of the Blue States is only getting started.
