For some inexplicable reason, squatters’ rights laws are commonplace throughout these United States. In many states, a person or persons can enter and inhabit another person’s vacant property, set up house, and after—in most cases—a mere 30 days claim some form of bizarre “right” to inhabit the home in which they did not pay a day’s rent nor a single mortgage payment: a home they do not own, did not buy, and have no right to occupy.
A former live-in Queens handyman has refused to leave the $2 million home where he once worked for several years, leaving the rightful property owners out in the cold — and it’s totally legal.
In Georgia, a property owner who left to care for his sick wife returned to learn that interlopers had moved in and changed the locks on his home, and he’s not allowed to kick them out.
The reason is a curious legal loophole that gives would-be trespassers the right to stay put if they only stay in a property long enough to claim legal residency — otherwise known as “squatter’s rights.”
Squatter’s rights, also known as “adverse possession” under the law, allow an individual to occupy a property and remain there without the owner’s permission.
A Georgia man claims he returned home from caring for his sick wife to find that squatters had changed the locks on his home and moved in — and now local laws are blocking him from evicting the alleged freeloaders.
“Basically, these people came in Friday, broke into my house and had a U-Haul move all their stuff in. It’s frustrating. It’s very frustrating. I can’t even sleep,” DeKalb man Paul Callins told WSB-TV.
Callins had sunk thousands of dollars into the home and renovated it with his own hands after he inherited it from his late father, but since squatters moved in, he’s found himself facing nothing but obstacles to evicting the alleged intruders.
. . . . Rather than forcibly evicting the squatters, Georgia law requires homeowners file an “Affidavit of Intruder,” which then needs to work its way through the court system before police can act, Callins explained.
Situations like Callins’ have become all too common in Georgia.
About 1,200 homes across DeKalb County are occupied by squatters, according to the National Rental Home Council trade group.
In New York, a homeowner was ordered to continue paying all utilities for the criminals who occupied her home.
New York homeowner is in a complicated battle with squatters who have taken over her property. She was arrested for trying to get them out.
Adele Andaloro, who put her $1.2 million Flushing, Queens, residence that she inherited from her family for sale, realized that someone randomly changed the locks, WABC reported. It was squatters that had been occupying the home where she grew up since February. In the city, squatters are considered tenants after living there for 30 days.
. . . . Police warned Andaloro that changing the locks could result in her arrest, but she called the locksmith anyway and said she wasn’t leaving her home.
. . . . Andaloro was arrested for unlawful eviction. In addition to changing locks on tenants, it’s also against the law for a homeowner to remove tenant possessions or shut off the utilities, per the New York Post.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/03/florida-gov-ron-desantis-stands-with-floridian-property-owners-over-squatters/