8 ms·

How long before squatters are encouraged by eviction companies to squat. Its crazy how much the owners are paying without any permanent solution.

Stevvo 5y ago
Any permanent solution would require ending homelessness. That's actually a pretty easy goal, but not one our society is willing to pursue.
- option_greek 5y ago
  I would say its two pronged. One is definitely helping the homeless but another has to be upholding law and order. Otherwise people like that guy the article mentions as minting 10k euros per squat is going continue whether he has a roof or not. Its a classic broken window syndrome. If a small crime is tolerated for any reason, it encourages bigger crimes or organized crime (like the stories about stores not calling cops in Cali due to lack of response).
  - Stevvo 5y ago
    Helping the homeless also takes out the squat baron; if we bring the homeless inside there won't be vacancies for the baron to squat in.
- curryst 5y ago
  If you're willing to discard any objections to the contrary, it's also easy to fix on the other side too. Require rental contracts to be filed with the city like deeds are, and immediately remove anyone reported as trespassing in a place where they don't have a lease on file with the city. I think you're also ignoring that we're not out of housing. We're out of housing in the places many people want to live. If you go to Detroit, you can get a house for a song. Alaska will literally pay you for living there. There's a difference between having a place to live, and living somewhere you want to live. The former is easy to solve, the latter is hard to solve because demand is often driven by exclusivity.
  - thebooktocome 5y ago
    If rental contracts could be registered with the state and enforced that effectively, they could also be enforced against landlords who fail to uphold their obligations as enumerated the contract. I don't know a single regular on r/landlords who wants that to happen. Just today there was a landlord trying to force a tenant to pay for a window broken by an unaffiliated third party (collateral damage from a neighbor's domestic dispute) when the lease very clearly said the landlord was responsible.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    If there is lots of housing in places where there used to be good jobs then there isn't a lot of housing because for practical purposes. It's the same as replying to the issue of poverty with there are N good jobs unfilled when N is some small fraction of the number of people in poverty. It's trivially true that some can and in fact will climb out of poverty by accepting those N jobs and simultaneously true that most can't climb out of poverty via those jobs alone because multiple people can't accept the same position. Most of the people who are on the edge of not being able to afford <insert city here> can't all move away into the suburbs let alone Detroit because they can't earn enough money for all the things that aren't cheaper and it would cease to be cheaper as soon as collectively chose to do so. It is only cheap because its undesirable.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    If you're homeless in Seattle how are you going to buy a house (or rent an apartment, even) in Detroit? You might argue that they should've made better decisions earlier - "my housing is precarious, time to move with my last few bucks before I'm totally out of money" - but then what is your proposed policy for dealing with bad decisions? Do you plan on doing things to try to prevent it? Or try to criminalize bad decisions?
  - franga2000 5y ago
    You make it sound like people don't want to leave in these places just because they don't like the climate or something. They don't want to live there because they can't live there. Like yes, they could survive there, but most people couldn't get a decently paying job so even if you get a house for 1$, you're still brokr, just not homeless. If we want to have people to stop moving to big cities and live wherever they can afford, we need to have the infrastructure to allow people like that to work and socialise. I'd love to buy one of those 1$ houses (although these don't seem to exist as such in Central Europe) and move to some dying industrial town, but if that meant I'd have to work for minimum wage in that one local pub or gas station, and if there were no other people under 50 in a 100km radius, I don't think I'd last long there. I'd rather take my chances in the city.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  The solution is for the police to uphold property rights and forcibly remove trespassers.
- bagacrap 5y ago
  if it's easy why does LA throw a billion USD at it every year and have the worst homeless problem in the country? Where I live, the homelessness is seasonal -- they don't stick around for the winters. But when they are here, they subsist by stealing pretty much whatever they can get their hands on. When they relocate, they leave behind immense amounts of refuse. These are not individuals who are down on their luck but tramps who embrace the lifestyle. No functional adult would behave in such a destructive and careless manner. It is actually incredibly difficult to convince people they should participate in society.

Stevvo 5y ago

Any permanent solution would require ending homelessness. That's actually a pretty easy goal, but not one our society is willing to pursue.

option_greek 5y ago
I would say its two pronged. One is definitely helping the homeless but another has to be upholding law and order. Otherwise people like that guy the article mentions as minting 10k euros per squat is going continue whether he has a roof or not. Its a classic broken window syndrome. If a small crime is tolerated for any reason, it encourages bigger crimes or organized crime (like the stories about stores not calling cops in Cali due to lack of response).
- Stevvo 5y ago
  Helping the homeless also takes out the squat baron; if we bring the homeless inside there won't be vacancies for the baron to squat in.
curryst 5y ago
If you're willing to discard any objections to the contrary, it's also easy to fix on the other side too. Require rental contracts to be filed with the city like deeds are, and immediately remove anyone reported as trespassing in a place where they don't have a lease on file with the city. I think you're also ignoring that we're not out of housing. We're out of housing in the places many people want to live. If you go to Detroit, you can get a house for a song. Alaska will literally pay you for living there. There's a difference between having a place to live, and living somewhere you want to live. The former is easy to solve, the latter is hard to solve because demand is often driven by exclusivity.
- thebooktocome 5y ago
  If rental contracts could be registered with the state and enforced that effectively, they could also be enforced against landlords who fail to uphold their obligations as enumerated the contract. I don't know a single regular on r/landlords who wants that to happen. Just today there was a landlord trying to force a tenant to pay for a window broken by an unaffiliated third party (collateral damage from a neighbor's domestic dispute) when the lease very clearly said the landlord was responsible.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  If there is lots of housing in places where there used to be good jobs then there isn't a lot of housing because for practical purposes. It's the same as replying to the issue of poverty with there are N good jobs unfilled when N is some small fraction of the number of people in poverty. It's trivially true that some can and in fact will climb out of poverty by accepting those N jobs and simultaneously true that most can't climb out of poverty via those jobs alone because multiple people can't accept the same position. Most of the people who are on the edge of not being able to afford <insert city here> can't all move away into the suburbs let alone Detroit because they can't earn enough money for all the things that aren't cheaper and it would cease to be cheaper as soon as collectively chose to do so. It is only cheap because its undesirable.
- majormajor 5y ago
  If you're homeless in Seattle how are you going to buy a house (or rent an apartment, even) in Detroit? You might argue that they should've made better decisions earlier - "my housing is precarious, time to move with my last few bucks before I'm totally out of money" - but then what is your proposed policy for dealing with bad decisions? Do you plan on doing things to try to prevent it? Or try to criminalize bad decisions?
- franga2000 5y ago
  You make it sound like people don't want to leave in these places just because they don't like the climate or something. They don't want to live there because they can't live there. Like yes, they could survive there, but most people couldn't get a decently paying job so even if you get a house for 1$, you're still brokr, just not homeless. If we want to have people to stop moving to big cities and live wherever they can afford, we need to have the infrastructure to allow people like that to work and socialise. I'd love to buy one of those 1$ houses (although these don't seem to exist as such in Central Europe) and move to some dying industrial town, but if that meant I'd have to work for minimum wage in that one local pub or gas station, and if there were no other people under 50 in a 100km radius, I don't think I'd last long there. I'd rather take my chances in the city.
fighterpilot 5y ago
The solution is for the police to uphold property rights and forcibly remove trespassers.
bagacrap 5y ago
if it's easy why does LA throw a billion USD at it every year and have the worst homeless problem in the country? Where I live, the homelessness is seasonal -- they don't stick around for the winters. But when they are here, they subsist by stealing pretty much whatever they can get their hands on. When they relocate, they leave behind immense amounts of refuse. These are not individuals who are down on their luck but tramps who embrace the lifestyle. No functional adult would behave in such a destructive and careless manner. It is actually incredibly difficult to convince people they should participate in society.