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There are different varieties of squatters. Drug addicted transients are not equivalent to small business owners with roots in the local community who happen to
by MichaelSalib 16y ago
There are different varieties of squatters. Drug addicted transients are not equivalent to small business owners with roots in the local community who happen to have an emotional attachment to that particular house. Given the choice of squatters, I'd prefer to have squatters with a non-zero income.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoI'm taking issue with your language. It's not "their house", it's the bank's house. They are squatters themselves, so they don't keep squatters out. If you said "people who squat in homes they used to own may perform maintenance and keep out a worse breed of squatters than themselves", I would have had no objection.
- tullius 16y agoI don't know what the probability of "drug addicted transients" moving into a foreclosed suburban house is, but I do know that people aren't going to be strongly incentivized to keep up maintenance on a house they will be vacating soon.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoJudging by http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2008/03/the-next-slum/6653/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2008/03/the-next-s... I'd say the probability is nonzero. And I'm pretty sure the owners described in the article will perform some critical maintenance like making sure vermin don't infest the house and fixing leaks because no one, not even a renter, wants to live in a place water rains down on them in their living room or where they have to dodge raccoons. Again, there are degrees of maintenance. They won't be incentivized to put in a new deck or repaint the whole house, but a lot of the value destruction associated with foreclosure has to do with simpler things: animals taking residence, water damage, thieves stealing the wiring/plumbing and ruining the walls in the process, etc.