The controlled demolition of New York continues. Yesterday, this Daily Mail headline was making the rounds:

The well-reported story was just the latest example of the metastasizing of liberal property policy. First, crazed libs seized control of large areas of city downtowns, like in Portland, where the SCAD or SCUM or whatever it was called took root. Then they legalized shoplifting, hollowing out all of downtown.

Now, like cancer spreading through the body to every remote organ, the criminals are spreading into the suburbs, seizing control of people’s unoccupied houses, aided by goofy blue-state “tenant protection” laws that give squatters without leases more rights than the property owners.

Obviously, property owners are hurt the worst. But houses filled with squatters also depress property values and make the neighbors want to move even farther out, leaving more empty houses for criminals and illegal aliens to squat in.

But that won’t happen in Florida, which last week passed an anti-squatter bill:

House Bill 621, which passed overwhelmingly and now awaits Governor DeSantis’s signature, authorizes property owners to request the sheriff’s office immediately remove squatters from their home, just by filing an affidavit.

Legitimate tenants are protected by a provision assigning triple damages to any owner who lies about the existence of a lease in their affidavit. (Full disclosure: I helped to draft this bill.)

Before this bill, it could take up to a year to evict some jackanapes squatting in a Florida home. We needed a different, faster process than eviction, and that’s exactly what HB 621 provides. Maybe other states can use Florida’s law as a template.