17 ms·

Can you just move into an abandoned house?

122 points by RyanShook 3y ago

mock-possum 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
cj 3y ago
Also known as Adverse Possession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession
- downvotetruth 3y ago
  Depends on the jurisdiction as in Louisiana (Civil Law) that's known as acquisitive prescription.
  - SllX 3y ago
    Louisiana is a bit of an odd-duck in the Law. Most laws in the United States are largely in the Anglo-American tradition (English, modified by American Constitutional values and subsequent jurisprudence). Its Civil law is more akin to Spanish/French law which is to say law in the Roman tradition.
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      My understanding is that water rights law in the Western (or at least southwestern) US is also largely influenced by Napoleonic / Spanish law, as distinguished from that generally east of the Rockies. (Don't take this as gospel, I'm ... not on firm ground here.)
      - SllX 3y ago
        To a much much lesser degree than Louisiana, there are some French and Spanish influences on California law, but it’s basically Anglo-American for the most part. I won’t speak to the rest of the West.
        dredmorbius 3y ago
        To be clear, I'm talking specifically about water rights. The Western rule is typically "prior appropriation", as opposed to "riparian rights" which dominate the Eastern states: Water is very scarce in the West and so must be allocated sparingly, based on the productivity of its use. The prior appropriation doctrine developed in the Western United States from Spanish (and later Mexican) civil law and differs from the riparian water rights that apply in the rest of the United States. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior-appropriation_water_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior-appropriation_water_righ...> Not relevant to TFA, just a note on law and its varying origins within US jurisdictions.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It varies from state to state in the US - some require that you possess it for 20+ years AND pay all associated taxes on the property. The second is hard to do if the owner is at all alive or available.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Here in Poland it is 20 years if in "good faith" - the person living there though they have rights for it (which is... weird in inself but I guess it can happen) but whole 30 if in "bad faith" (i.e. they knew but owner didn't do anything with the area).
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > the person living there though they have rights for it (which is... weird in inself but I guess it can happen) I imagine it happens more often than you'd expect - consider complicated inheritance laws, and so forth. Parent dies without a will, verbally agreed with sibling that you'd take it, you thought you owned the property but after decades sibling dies and sibling's son inherits all of parents property including part-ownership, and so comes after you for half of the property.
      - ilyt 3y ago
        Yeah or simply "parent had some property kids didn't knew they bought". Or it was some "a bunch of people owns some fraction of property and nobody cared enough to deal with it". One weird case I saw was some property where brother owned 5/6 and sister owned 1/6 of it. Turns out after father died mother,sister and brother each got 1/3, but mother put all of hers in will to be given to the brother
        ashirviskas 3y ago
        >One weird case I saw was some property where brother owned 5/6 and sister owned 1/6 of it. >Turns out after father died mother,sister and brother each got 1/3, but mother put all of hers in will to be given to the brother Wouldn't that make it 2/3 for the brother and 1/3 for the sister?
- clove 3y ago
  I recently covered a case in which a couple planned on engaging in adverse possession by first killing the homeowner. Chilling. https://youtu.be/kX3UB7NQCMs https://youtu.be/kX3UB7NQCMs
  - matt-attack 3y ago
    Neat story, thanks for sharing. Sounds like he would have got away with it if he was just a tad brighter.
- hirvi74 3y ago
  I looked up my state(TN) and it's 20 years of squatting and property taxes. The requirements are: 1. Must enter the land without the owner's permission (hence the term "adverse"); 2. Must actually be on the land, using and caring for it as if it were his or her own; 3. Must use the land and/or structure in an open manner (in other words, it may not be secretive or covert); and 4. Must use the land continuously for seven years, without sharing this possession with others (unless it's possession by tenants in common). My questions in regards to this law is how can one successfully do it without breaking other laws? It seems like one could easily be arrested for many other laws within the first 19 years like trespassing, theft, vandalism, etc.. Do it for a week and you are criminal; do it for twenty years and you are a homeowner? Surely, it can't work like that, right?
  - mdasen 3y ago
    > Do it for a week and you are criminal; do it for twenty years and you are a homeowner? I feel like adverse possession was meant to solve a real world issue, not some strange takeover of property. For example, let's say that we're neighbors. We both own our homes. There's been a fence between our properties for 150 years. Generations of owners have used the property with the fence demarcating the boundary. They've had cookouts, put up swing sets, mowed the lawn, whatever. Then you come along and are like, "I think my property actually extends 20 feet past the fence. You need to move your fence." Maybe you're "technically right" if you get a surveyor to come by based on the original plans. The point of adverse possession in this case is that generations of owners have seen that fence as the boundary. People have bought and sold the properties with the fence as the boundary. It makes more sense for society for the fence to remain the boundary. All of society has acknowledged that fence as the boundary for 150 years. You didn't buy your property thinking that the fence wasn't the boundary. The "without permission" bit isn't about doing something with evil intent necessarily. It's there to differentiate between a case where an owner knowingly gives you permission to use their property. If I come to you and say "hey, can I put a fence here? I know it's your property, but it makes more sense to put the fence here" and you agree to that, there's no ambiguity about the ownership. If I decide to put up a fence between our properties, but the fence is in reality on your property, you have a limited amount of time to challenge that. Why? Because at some point we have to deal with the reality on the ground. Maybe I made a mistake and the fence is 5 feet onto your property, but a hundred years later it makes more sense to go with the reality on the ground. If I built a home on what I thought was my property and then some surveyor comes by 50 years later and is like "huh, the house is actually 2 feet over the line onto this other property," a wise and just ruler wouldn't say, "then the house will be torn down!" A wise and just ruler would think "if the owner of the other property thought that they owned the land the house occupied in a conspicuous and open manner, they would have said something earlier." > My questions in regards to this law is how can one successfully do it without breaking other laws? I think the answer is that you can't. Adverse possession wasn't meant to be a free way to get property. It was meant to resolve property disputes that would be way more disruptive than just letting the status quo continue existing. It's meant to avoid "well technically..." crap. Everyone in the town knows that's your property. The abutting owner saw or should have seen your use of it over a long period of time. They probably thought it was your property too. Turns out that technically the site plan was a bit different than everyone in the town knew. It makes more sense to go off what everyone thinks is true than to try and re-state reality, bulldoze houses, etc. At some point, the reality in the world should take precedence over some piece of paper from along time ago. In a comical fashion, yes, do it for a week and you're a criminal; do it for 20 years and you're an owner. In a less comical fashion, put your fence in the wrong spot for a year and the other owner forces you to move it; if it's been generations and everyone thinks the fence is on your property, then the fence is on your property and some future owner doesn't get to "well technically I found this old document that says..."
6510 3y ago
Long long ago a group of 20ish people (I vaguely knew) occupied an abandoned office. They agreed to spend 500 per person per month to improve the place as they all could easily afford it. Then came the struggle actually spending the money. No one wanted to spend time on it so every other month they just quickly agreed to one or two things at a time and spend as much on it as possible just to burn the money. After 6 years, 720 000 later the place looked completely insane.
- behringer 3y ago
  We need way more details on this.
  - Xen9 3y ago
    Agree, want to know this story.
- CivBase 3y ago
  Sounds like this would make for a fascinating read. I don't suppose any of them recorded their progress as they went and published it somewhere?
  - samstave 3y ago
    "The gang fixes I-95" Would be a cool reality series. EDIT: Charlie huffs all the paint, so they can only paint a portion of the I-95
- blowski 3y ago
  In the early 00s, I lived for a few months in a squat in Clapham (South London), run by an author and Polish cyclist. It was a huge house by London standards - better than many shared houses - and having looked after it very well since moving in during the 90s, the neighbours were aware and happy with the situation. They were paranoid the owner, living in Australia since the 1950s, would find out just before the deadline and they'd lose it. But the rights did pass on, and they sold the house for about £1.5M.
Animats 3y ago
Varies enormously with the jurisdiction. There are places in the US so desperate for new residents they will offer you an abandoned house if you fix it up and pay property taxes. Buffalo, NY and Detroit have done this.
- samstave 3y ago
  Years ago, when detroit was in desparate throws, I thought that it was ripe for a new 'silicon valley' and they should have pushed a huge start-up market. They didnt, but they should have. I still think detroit is a solid market - but you have to get some serious incentives... Look at fn twitter - they got SF to give them millions in tax breaks, only to find that all the other services (and tremote work) were untennable on market street (the Emporium now the westfield mall) has turned back into the failed district it was in the 90s (hint; public transport and parking greed fucked that up) Now look - the city of SF depends on Salesforce and twitter to bring thousands of people into the city - but it has no affordable place to house or park them. I think twitter owes the city a giant amount of money - and benioff can go fuck himself (speaking as someone who built out many of his offices) The point being that places such as Detroit need to up there game and build a tech scene - but I am afraid its too late. - EDIT: @DANG - im tired of this fn "posting too fast" -- it stiffles intereaction. I dont participate in Reddit any longer, but seriously - ive talked to you about this many times.... I want to engage with HNers, and your speed-brake thwarts that... knock it off. :-)
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I was at a fairly sizable tech event in Detroit last fall. The convention center and area down by the river were nice enough but people didn't feel very safe in general and there were apparently some incidents--and we're not even talking particularly bad parts of town. A tech company would probably have a lot more luck with something like an Ann Arbor location. I think Detroit proper would be a really tough sell to get most people to move there.
  - prepend 3y ago
    The problem is that Detroit sucks and it’s really cold. I don’t think startups would want to locate there. Also, they are poorly managed and that’s part of their decline. They aren’t trying any good ideas like encouraging startup incubators and whatnot.
more_corn 3y ago
The key is “open and notorious”. You possess and improve the property openly for a long time and if the owner is asleep at the wheel the court just sort of cedes the place to you. I think the time limit I. Many states is 7-10 years so the owner needs to be really out of it. And if it goes wrong you lose the money spent on improvements, and could face charges. A better way might be to watch the auctions of property seized by the city for unpaid taxes. Pay a little bit, improve and don’t live in fear.
- 0x53 3y ago
  So in many jurisdictions the city doesn’t actually take the properties. Instead they auction off a lien to a private company/individual and then that individual can foreclose if the tax isn’t paid. So this strategy might not work.
  - hollerith 3y ago
    So you buy from the private company after they foreclose.
    - brewdad 3y ago
      At that point the title is clean, so I would expect the property to sell much closer to the market rate minus any repairs needed to make it livable. Not really a deal to be had.
- jgerrish 3y ago
  Being trapped in an ambiguous situation where "improve" can mean many things can lead to unhealthy stress. If I have a real job and a real house, I have easier access to laws and what my responsibilities are. If I am in a situation like an "abandoned house", I'm vulnerable to vague jurisdictional issues around "improvement". Maybe San Francisco / Bay Area considers fire safety enough, but Chicago wants sidewalk snow clearing. Those are the simple things. Some jurisdictions will want "self-improvement" classes. Keep practicing that space flute... And then Utah wants other things. Yes, HOAs are similar, I get that. Anyways, I've got to keep a fucking yellow legal pad with all these issues. And I know I'm not an expert. Then I'm not just vulnerable to the whims of the city, I'm vulnerable to exploiters telling me there are these additional requirements. I dread these next patronizing Last of Us style real world shows. When I should look at them joyfully. And yeah, people are housed now, I can't argue with that. But we are replacing a public social contract with something darker. I guess we get a new series of sitcoms about "HOA" style neighborly miscommunication. Hahaha. Oh Mr. Bundy, you can't have a toilet on your front lawn! Oh Mr. ALF, you can't eat cats! Oh Mr. Cohen, you can't say that on television! Hahaha, what a cultural misunderstanding.
yosito 3y ago
I've only heard stories of successful squatting to take over a property coming from Europe and North America. I would be curious to hear how squatting is handled both legally and culturally in other parts of the world. What about South America, Africa and Asia? I imagine in some places if you're in someone else's property they'll just kill you. And in others, they may barely have a concept of private property at all.
- bevacqua 3y ago
  happens abundantly in Argentina
  - 867-5309 3y ago
    the squatting or the killing or the concept?
  - yosito 3y ago
    Argentina is very similar to Europe, culturally, so that doesn't surprise me.
    - InCityDreams 3y ago
      Specifically Germany?
      - BbzzbB 3y ago
        Obviously Spain, less obviously so Italy, and obviously not Germany despite Péron. There is a fair amount of German descendants, but their ancestors predate WW1, let alone WW2's high profile nazis that were let in (I'm assuming this is the basis of your comment, apologies if not).
      - sethammons 3y ago
        To the downvoters: why? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Argentines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Argentines
BryanA 3y ago
Adverse Possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession
- groestl 3y ago
  Civil law systems have something similar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usucaption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usucaption
tedunangst 3y ago
Every once in a while the story goes around about the guy living in a mall. https://boingboing.net/2022/07/04/the-incredible-story-of-a-man-who-secretly-furnished-a-hidden-room-in-a-mall-and-lived-there-for-4-years.html/amp https://boingboing.net/2022/07/04/the-incredible-story-of-a-... He got probation. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna21100501 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna21100501
crmd 3y ago
The legal system should encourage people moving into unoccupied houses. The hoarding of real estate is bad for society.
- UberFly 3y ago
  You think this wouldn't cause a million different problems for individuals and the legal system? There are countless reasons why a house might be sitting empty for a period of time.
  - TheHappyOddish 3y ago
    This has been a thing in Australia and UK for some time and it seems to work fine.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    What are the reasons for your house to be empty for years unless you have another place to live, aka hoard property?
    - bobs_salsa 3y ago
      The only good reason I can think of at the moment are prison or medical reasons which leave you in a hospital for an extended period of time. In those cases those peoples rights of ownership to their homes should be upheld. Otherwise, I agree that we should go hard against property hoarding.
    - refurb 3y ago
      My grandfather fell broke his hip and moved in with us for a year. It was touch and go whether he could recover and move back home. Thankfully he did. Is he a “hoarder”?
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        That's a good enough reason. Since he had to move in with you this means he lives alone though? do you consider it safe for him to live alone in the old age? (For his own sake not just for the sake of healthy housing market)
duxup 3y ago
In Minnesota it takes 15 years and you have to pay the property taxes for 5 years. I want to say there were rules about keeping up the property (repairs) as well.
Ylpertnodi 3y ago
Where I live there are countless rustic properties, the vast majority of which will remain empty due to generations of infighting between relatives. Similarly, plots of land are carved up over the years until a single field may have 20+ owners. I know of one such case: they were offered a huge, insane amount of money for the land. But each one of the owners wanted more for their piece than the others, and tried to do private deals, and some refused to sell even though their piece was a mis-shapen series of lines on a government map that gained them zero benefits (farmers can't farm the land either), so nobody gets anything and the place is just rotting. Along with the houses surrounding. That have multiple owners.
- opportune 3y ago
  Where is this? Southern Europe? It makes me very sad seeing so many stone buildings left uninhabited and overgrown with plants when I visit Spain and Italy. I always thought it was just the cost to upgrade them to modern living standards that was prohibitive, but from personal experience [0] with similar situations in the US, I can see partial ownership being an even bigger problem. [0] One set of my grandparents split their house equally among their 3 children. Because it has immense sentimental value to those children, they have not sold it and currently “rent” it at no cost to one of the children. Depending on the order in which those 3 children pass, the state of the house could easily become deadlocked for decades as I know one of my aunts would refuse to sell it even if the other aunt (who lives in it) passes. Thank god none of my cousins would want to live in it so we probably would eventually be able to sell it. It’s not even close to a mansion or anything… just a regular 1960s middle class house in an area where land is pretty cheap. If I had a shitton of cousins and the property was very valuable land I could totally envision it getting permanently deadlocked.
  - pacbard 3y ago
    While inheritance laws in Southern Europe are weird, I don't think that partial ownership of buildings is the issue here. The real issue is that old buildings are not useful anymore: 1. Buildings that are not longer needed. For example, you can walk in woods and see old, run down, metati [1] in Italy. While chestnuts still keep a sentimental value, mountain people do not rely on them for sustenance anymore. Therefore, the drying sheds and mills have been abandoned. 2. Buildings that are not just functional anymore. Our barn had 20 stalls. It was functional as of the 1800s, but it's no longer a viable building to host a herd of milk producing cows. It has small stalls, lack of windows, difficult sanitation. People just build new barns and abandon the old ones. The problem is that the barn is build of rock, so it won't decay so easily. 3. Buildings that are no longer comfortable. Similar to point 2, old stone houses are not that comfortable. Having 3-foot wide stone walls for each internal room seems like charming until you realize that you can't use wall space. A house with a regular footprint (maybe 100 sq. feet) is much smaller once you consider all the space that stone walls take up. Plus, old houses don't have plumbing, electricity, etc, are damp and cold in the winter (but somewhat pleasant in the summer). People just prefer to live in a modern place rather than fix up an old one (which might be marked as historical and will need much more money to fix up). [1]: https://www.tuscany-exclusive.net/metato/ https://www.tuscany-exclusive.net/metato/
asimpletune 3y ago
In the USA, our legal system comes partly from the old Anglo-Saxon system, and partly from the French-Norman system, along with a few other parts of this. A lot of interesting and useful things come from this history. Specifically, regarding this case... The word fiefdom literally means "foot ground" in Anglo Saxon. That means your land (domain) is where you put your foot on the ground. Even if you claim ownership to some land, those claims can be in dispute if someone else's foot is on the ground, so to speak. To me it's always been so fascinating thinking about law, and the philosophy of law, in these very basic, raw terms. Like, from where does the law derive its power? To the anglo-saxons, the answer is from the ground, and that's why that aspect of the system is so obsessed with possession. Other cultures, like the Vikings, refined the ideas around tort law, like who should get paid how much if they're injured due to a fight. The Norman system brought about the idea of "writs". The idea that messages to and from the court (not a coincidence that it's the same word in English as what's used for royalty, whereas in a language like Italian it would something more like tribunal) need to use specific writs, almost like interfaces and API calls. This basically put an end to most instances of "self help". In other words, in most cases, you can not take the law into your own hands. You must abide by the system of writs. Even the word attorney comes from "at" and "tourney". Basically the guy you can pay who will go to the tournament, and fight instead of you before the court. Our whole legal system is informed by ancient concepts, and a lot of these ideas are not half bad. We would really do well to be reminded of that. If 3 years can go by without a bank even knowing about someone occupying a house they claim to own, someone living there in direct opposition to that claim, then from an Anglo-Saxon perspective they can't seriously claim to own it. To me that makes sense as well.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  Generally very interesting, but I looked up the bit about 'attorney' and Etymonline, at least, doesn't agree: https://www.etymonline.com/word/attorney https://www.etymonline.com/word/attorney. Thoughts?
  - asimpletune 3y ago
    You know honestly I can’t be sure 100%, but that is what I was always taught in my “English as a language of law” class. I hesitate a little bc there’s always the possibility that I misremembered. That said, my memory is that it came from before the French, during the trial by combat days, where the wealthy could appoint someone to go on their behalf. Another datapoint for this is that a legal title that still exists today is esquire. However a “squire” is also the assistant to the knight who fights in the tournament. It’s totally possible that I’m mistaken about parts of this, especially the pre or post French use of the word, but I also think that a lot this knowledge is fairly esoteric and not captures well, even in today’s age, outside of experts. Not to cast shade on etymology.com at all. Just that it is a possibility. I see a lot of Ancient Greek/Roman stuff that comes up that’s either wrong or just naive, so. Idk. Glad that you think it’s interesting though! I have a book club if anyone’s interested https://r33d.org https://r33d.org We just started reading history of the Peloponnesian war by Thucydides :)
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
scotty79 3y ago
It's a hard problem. I think the best way to deal with abandoned houses would be for the municipality to forcibly auction them (once they are left empty for some time) and keep the funds acquired by the sale (minus the costs) invested into bonds or something and ready to reimburse owner if he shows up.
- code_duck 3y ago
  That does happen when property taxes are delinquent - typically the county seizes the property and sells it to pay back taxes.
neilv 3y ago
On a tangent, I love this other post on the page, for the charming style and content of some earlier time: https://www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-visited-an-abandoned-home/answer/Peter-Hart-158 https://www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-visited-an-abandoned-hom... It's not Grandpa Simpson and the tying of an onion to your belt -- more like an information-dense tour, hitting many highlights, and what are they going to say next. I wonder whether (assuming it was typed by the author, rather than dictated), had they been inserting paragraph breaks, would that have changed their rhythm of associations.
- matt-attack 3y ago
  Great read. Wish I could had read the whole thing, Quora cuts it off.
neilv 3y ago
Is there a way to read the Quora comments without SSO/login to Quora?
Imnimo 3y ago
What happens if two people both try to squat in the same abandoned house?
- hirvi74 3y ago
  It legally becomes a Thunderdome.
crtified 3y ago
The topic of claiming a seeming abandoned property, often referred to as Adverse Possession, is specifically detailed by the laws of many countries. The specifics of those laws can vary a lot between countries. For example in some countries "a few" years of satisfying certain conditions is enough, and in others, it may be 20 years or more. Different countries have different box-ticking lists, before your claim becomes valid. Tangentially speaking - regarding the subdivision, or 'carving up' of property - it's notable that younger countries/cultures, such as Australia and New Zealand, have relatively tight controls upon how land can and can't be split up. With a long term view to preventing messy, piecemeal land arrangements, particularly in urban and productive rural areas. (naturally such arrangements are their own pros/cons can-of-worms, but that's another topic...)
ilaksh 3y ago
The biggest problem is that instead of taking over abandoned houses, some people are finding the nicest unoccupied houses and squatting in them. In other words, houses that just haven't sold yet. Could be for only a few months. Then they use these laws and police indifference to effectively steal tens of thousands in rent. I imagine that these people think of it as a type of social justice or an efficient market. It's out of control criminality really. But part of the reason we get to this point is actually extreme inequality and extremely ineffective markets or rules. I think that when we have so many people unable to afford homes, there should be some type of system for highly discounted utilization of unoccupied ones, especially after a certain number of months. That's completely different from a free-for-all though.
- IntelMiner 3y ago
  "Stealing rent" is an...interesting position. If not just because it seems to imply that housing is not a human right
  - ilaksh 3y ago
    If you read my comment carefully all the way through then you would have seen it was clear that I think housing is a human right. That doesn't mean that we should abandon laws and process.
  - Plasmoid 3y ago
    What an odd response. Are there any other things that are ok to take because you feel it's a human right? Dine and dash isn't a crime because food is a human right?
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    This (relatively new) idea that by marking some things as "human rights", things that have a substantial cost to create, that they can then be stolen without regard to any rules tends to not end well for anyone in society. I honestly hate the idea of proclaiming things like food, health care, housing, education, etc. as "human rights", because they are very, very different from what has been historically thought of as human rights (things like freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of association, etc.). Primarily, of course, is that these newer "rights" are really goods and services that you would like everyone to have access to. And that may be fine (I personally tend to agree), but I would still argue that they are not anything at all like the rights people should have just for existing. I can certainly believe there should be "guaranteed social services", but these aren't "human rights". The main difference, of course, is that somebody has to expend their own personal time and energy to acquire these goods. Houses don't just sprout up out of nowhere, and they certainly don't maintain themselves. It's fine to argue that society should do much more to provide housing options to all citizens, but that's very different from saying "I should be able to move into any house where people aren't currently living because I can break the lock."
ropable 3y ago
Planet Money did a recent episode on this topic, covering how the adverse possession law worked in a particular case in Delaware: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173682158/delaware-goats-property-land-squatters-adverse-possession https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173682158/delaware-goats-pro...
dataflow 3y ago
Relatedly, somehow this fascinating video just popped up on my YouTube - apparently there are "professional" squatters doing this repeatedly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_FxnLo53mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_FxnLo53mo
Farbklex 3y ago
I mostly read about squatters in Spanish holiday homes and in Germany when people just refuse to pay rent. Apparently it is a very long process to get those people evicted. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-58310532 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-58310532 There is also another scam where people agree to buy a home, the sign a contract, ask for your key to be able to unload some furniture early and that's it. Once they have the key, they can live there without paying. Getting them out of there then requires waiting for courts to do their work. I only found a video about it in German unfortunately: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/immobilienverkauf-aerger-mit-hauskauf-nomadin-spiegel-tv-a-9a5303d4-5ea7-417f-9c72-73bd5d0bcc22 https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/immobilienverka...
barbs 3y ago
One of my friends lived in a squat in Melbourne for a few years. They sort of ran it, meaning they would put the place on couchsurfing.com to attract more people. They had anywhere between about 4-20 people living in the house at any time, each staying anywhere from a few days to a few months. The place was a little bit run down, and had no electricity or running water, although they did have gas and were able to cook food. They used candles to light the place at night, and would retrieve water from a nearby public tap and shower at a nearby university. They'd also dumpster dive all their food. The place was actually pretty awesome and had a really great community feel, albeit run-down and mouse-infested. There was lots of artwork and poetry printed directly on the walls. They'd often have lots of people over and spontaneous parties were common, though they had to keep the noise down since the owner could theoretically come at any point and kick them all out, and in the end that's exactly what happened. The owner was actually pretty nice about it, and was impressed at what they'd done with the place, but kindly asked them to leave, which they obliged. The house is actually still there and my friend hasn't lived there for years so I'm not sure why the owner kicked them all out. On another note, Moxie (of Signal/Open Whisper Systems fame) has some pretty cool stories about his adventures in squatting - https://moxie.org/stories/together-two/ https://moxie.org/stories/together-two/
cykros 3y ago
Local laws vary WILDLY even sometimes within the same state, let alone country to country. C-Squat in NYC was notoriously annexed by the punks living there, and they are the legal owners, but far more often, you are looking at the likelihood of trespassing charges. Always worth looking at you local laws and ordinances before risking a B&E or at least a trespassing charge.

122 points by RyanShook 3y ago

mock-possum 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

cj 3y ago

Also known as Adverse Possession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession

downvotetruth 3y ago
Depends on the jurisdiction as in Louisiana (Civil Law) that's known as acquisitive prescription.
- SllX 3y ago
  Louisiana is a bit of an odd-duck in the Law. Most laws in the United States are largely in the Anglo-American tradition (English, modified by American Constitutional values and subsequent jurisprudence). Its Civil law is more akin to Spanish/French law which is to say law in the Roman tradition.
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    My understanding is that water rights law in the Western (or at least southwestern) US is also largely influenced by Napoleonic / Spanish law, as distinguished from that generally east of the Rockies. (Don't take this as gospel, I'm ... not on firm ground here.)
    - SllX 3y ago
      To a much much lesser degree than Louisiana, there are some French and Spanish influences on California law, but it’s basically Anglo-American for the most part. I won’t speak to the rest of the West.
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        To be clear, I'm talking specifically about water rights. The Western rule is typically "prior appropriation", as opposed to "riparian rights" which dominate the Eastern states: Water is very scarce in the West and so must be allocated sparingly, based on the productivity of its use. The prior appropriation doctrine developed in the Western United States from Spanish (and later Mexican) civil law and differs from the riparian water rights that apply in the rest of the United States. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior-appropriation_water_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior-appropriation_water_righ...> Not relevant to TFA, just a note on law and its varying origins within US jurisdictions.
bombcar 3y ago
It varies from state to state in the US - some require that you possess it for 20+ years AND pay all associated taxes on the property. The second is hard to do if the owner is at all alive or available.
- ilyt 3y ago
  Here in Poland it is 20 years if in "good faith" - the person living there though they have rights for it (which is... weird in inself but I guess it can happen) but whole 30 if in "bad faith" (i.e. they knew but owner didn't do anything with the area).
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > the person living there though they have rights for it (which is... weird in inself but I guess it can happen) I imagine it happens more often than you'd expect - consider complicated inheritance laws, and so forth. Parent dies without a will, verbally agreed with sibling that you'd take it, you thought you owned the property but after decades sibling dies and sibling's son inherits all of parents property including part-ownership, and so comes after you for half of the property.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      Yeah or simply "parent had some property kids didn't knew they bought". Or it was some "a bunch of people owns some fraction of property and nobody cared enough to deal with it". One weird case I saw was some property where brother owned 5/6 and sister owned 1/6 of it. Turns out after father died mother,sister and brother each got 1/3, but mother put all of hers in will to be given to the brother
      - ashirviskas 3y ago
        >One weird case I saw was some property where brother owned 5/6 and sister owned 1/6 of it. >Turns out after father died mother,sister and brother each got 1/3, but mother put all of hers in will to be given to the brother Wouldn't that make it 2/3 for the brother and 1/3 for the sister?
clove 3y ago
I recently covered a case in which a couple planned on engaging in adverse possession by first killing the homeowner. Chilling. https://youtu.be/kX3UB7NQCMs https://youtu.be/kX3UB7NQCMs
- matt-attack 3y ago
  Neat story, thanks for sharing. Sounds like he would have got away with it if he was just a tad brighter.
hirvi74 3y ago
I looked up my state(TN) and it's 20 years of squatting and property taxes. The requirements are: 1. Must enter the land without the owner's permission (hence the term "adverse"); 2. Must actually be on the land, using and caring for it as if it were his or her own; 3. Must use the land and/or structure in an open manner (in other words, it may not be secretive or covert); and 4. Must use the land continuously for seven years, without sharing this possession with others (unless it's possession by tenants in common). My questions in regards to this law is how can one successfully do it without breaking other laws? It seems like one could easily be arrested for many other laws within the first 19 years like trespassing, theft, vandalism, etc.. Do it for a week and you are criminal; do it for twenty years and you are a homeowner? Surely, it can't work like that, right?
- mdasen 3y ago
  > Do it for a week and you are criminal; do it for twenty years and you are a homeowner? I feel like adverse possession was meant to solve a real world issue, not some strange takeover of property. For example, let's say that we're neighbors. We both own our homes. There's been a fence between our properties for 150 years. Generations of owners have used the property with the fence demarcating the boundary. They've had cookouts, put up swing sets, mowed the lawn, whatever. Then you come along and are like, "I think my property actually extends 20 feet past the fence. You need to move your fence." Maybe you're "technically right" if you get a surveyor to come by based on the original plans. The point of adverse possession in this case is that generations of owners have seen that fence as the boundary. People have bought and sold the properties with the fence as the boundary. It makes more sense for society for the fence to remain the boundary. All of society has acknowledged that fence as the boundary for 150 years. You didn't buy your property thinking that the fence wasn't the boundary. The "without permission" bit isn't about doing something with evil intent necessarily. It's there to differentiate between a case where an owner knowingly gives you permission to use their property. If I come to you and say "hey, can I put a fence here? I know it's your property, but it makes more sense to put the fence here" and you agree to that, there's no ambiguity about the ownership. If I decide to put up a fence between our properties, but the fence is in reality on your property, you have a limited amount of time to challenge that. Why? Because at some point we have to deal with the reality on the ground. Maybe I made a mistake and the fence is 5 feet onto your property, but a hundred years later it makes more sense to go with the reality on the ground. If I built a home on what I thought was my property and then some surveyor comes by 50 years later and is like "huh, the house is actually 2 feet over the line onto this other property," a wise and just ruler wouldn't say, "then the house will be torn down!" A wise and just ruler would think "if the owner of the other property thought that they owned the land the house occupied in a conspicuous and open manner, they would have said something earlier." > My questions in regards to this law is how can one successfully do it without breaking other laws? I think the answer is that you can't. Adverse possession wasn't meant to be a free way to get property. It was meant to resolve property disputes that would be way more disruptive than just letting the status quo continue existing. It's meant to avoid "well technically..." crap. Everyone in the town knows that's your property. The abutting owner saw or should have seen your use of it over a long period of time. They probably thought it was your property too. Turns out that technically the site plan was a bit different than everyone in the town knew. It makes more sense to go off what everyone thinks is true than to try and re-state reality, bulldoze houses, etc. At some point, the reality in the world should take precedence over some piece of paper from along time ago. In a comical fashion, yes, do it for a week and you're a criminal; do it for 20 years and you're an owner. In a less comical fashion, put your fence in the wrong spot for a year and the other owner forces you to move it; if it's been generations and everyone thinks the fence is on your property, then the fence is on your property and some future owner doesn't get to "well technically I found this old document that says..."

6510 3y ago

Long long ago a group of 20ish people (I vaguely knew) occupied an abandoned office. They agreed to spend 500 per person per month to improve the place as they all could easily afford it. Then came the struggle actually spending the money. No one wanted to spend time on it so every other month they just quickly agreed to one or two things at a time and spend as much on it as possible just to burn the money. After 6 years, 720 000 later the place looked completely insane.

behringer 3y ago
We need way more details on this.
- Xen9 3y ago
  Agree, want to know this story.
CivBase 3y ago
Sounds like this would make for a fascinating read. I don't suppose any of them recorded their progress as they went and published it somewhere?
- samstave 3y ago
  "The gang fixes I-95" Would be a cool reality series. EDIT: Charlie huffs all the paint, so they can only paint a portion of the I-95
blowski 3y ago
In the early 00s, I lived for a few months in a squat in Clapham (South London), run by an author and Polish cyclist. It was a huge house by London standards - better than many shared houses - and having looked after it very well since moving in during the 90s, the neighbours were aware and happy with the situation. They were paranoid the owner, living in Australia since the 1950s, would find out just before the deadline and they'd lose it. But the rights did pass on, and they sold the house for about £1.5M.

Animats 3y ago

Varies enormously with the jurisdiction. There are places in the US so desperate for new residents they will offer you an abandoned house if you fix it up and pay property taxes. Buffalo, NY and Detroit have done this.

samstave 3y ago
Years ago, when detroit was in desparate throws, I thought that it was ripe for a new 'silicon valley' and they should have pushed a huge start-up market. They didnt, but they should have. I still think detroit is a solid market - but you have to get some serious incentives... Look at fn twitter - they got SF to give them millions in tax breaks, only to find that all the other services (and tremote work) were untennable on market street (the Emporium now the westfield mall) has turned back into the failed district it was in the 90s (hint; public transport and parking greed fucked that up) Now look - the city of SF depends on Salesforce and twitter to bring thousands of people into the city - but it has no affordable place to house or park them. I think twitter owes the city a giant amount of money - and benioff can go fuck himself (speaking as someone who built out many of his offices) The point being that places such as Detroit need to up there game and build a tech scene - but I am afraid its too late. - EDIT: @DANG - im tired of this fn "posting too fast" -- it stiffles intereaction. I dont participate in Reddit any longer, but seriously - ive talked to you about this many times.... I want to engage with HNers, and your speed-brake thwarts that... knock it off. :-)
- ghaff 3y ago
  I was at a fairly sizable tech event in Detroit last fall. The convention center and area down by the river were nice enough but people didn't feel very safe in general and there were apparently some incidents--and we're not even talking particularly bad parts of town. A tech company would probably have a lot more luck with something like an Ann Arbor location. I think Detroit proper would be a really tough sell to get most people to move there.
- prepend 3y ago
  The problem is that Detroit sucks and it’s really cold. I don’t think startups would want to locate there. Also, they are poorly managed and that’s part of their decline. They aren’t trying any good ideas like encouraging startup incubators and whatnot.

more_corn 3y ago

The key is “open and notorious”. You possess and improve the property openly for a long time and if the owner is asleep at the wheel the court just sort of cedes the place to you. I think the time limit I. Many states is 7-10 years so the owner needs to be really out of it. And if it goes wrong you lose the money spent on improvements, and could face charges. A better way might be to watch the auctions of property seized by the city for unpaid taxes. Pay a little bit, improve and don’t live in fear.

0x53 3y ago
So in many jurisdictions the city doesn’t actually take the properties. Instead they auction off a lien to a private company/individual and then that individual can foreclose if the tax isn’t paid. So this strategy might not work.
- hollerith 3y ago
  So you buy from the private company after they foreclose.
  - brewdad 3y ago
    At that point the title is clean, so I would expect the property to sell much closer to the market rate minus any repairs needed to make it livable. Not really a deal to be had.
jgerrish 3y ago
Being trapped in an ambiguous situation where "improve" can mean many things can lead to unhealthy stress. If I have a real job and a real house, I have easier access to laws and what my responsibilities are. If I am in a situation like an "abandoned house", I'm vulnerable to vague jurisdictional issues around "improvement". Maybe San Francisco / Bay Area considers fire safety enough, but Chicago wants sidewalk snow clearing. Those are the simple things. Some jurisdictions will want "self-improvement" classes. Keep practicing that space flute... And then Utah wants other things. Yes, HOAs are similar, I get that. Anyways, I've got to keep a fucking yellow legal pad with all these issues. And I know I'm not an expert. Then I'm not just vulnerable to the whims of the city, I'm vulnerable to exploiters telling me there are these additional requirements. I dread these next patronizing Last of Us style real world shows. When I should look at them joyfully. And yeah, people are housed now, I can't argue with that. But we are replacing a public social contract with something darker. I guess we get a new series of sitcoms about "HOA" style neighborly miscommunication. Hahaha. Oh Mr. Bundy, you can't have a toilet on your front lawn! Oh Mr. ALF, you can't eat cats! Oh Mr. Cohen, you can't say that on television! Hahaha, what a cultural misunderstanding.

yosito 3y ago

I've only heard stories of successful squatting to take over a property coming from Europe and North America. I would be curious to hear how squatting is handled both legally and culturally in other parts of the world. What about South America, Africa and Asia? I imagine in some places if you're in someone else's property they'll just kill you. And in others, they may barely have a concept of private property at all.

bevacqua 3y ago
happens abundantly in Argentina
- 867-5309 3y ago
  the squatting or the killing or the concept?
- yosito 3y ago
  Argentina is very similar to Europe, culturally, so that doesn't surprise me.
  - InCityDreams 3y ago
    Specifically Germany?
    - BbzzbB 3y ago
      Obviously Spain, less obviously so Italy, and obviously not Germany despite Péron. There is a fair amount of German descendants, but their ancestors predate WW1, let alone WW2's high profile nazis that were let in (I'm assuming this is the basis of your comment, apologies if not).
    - sethammons 3y ago
      To the downvoters: why? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Argentines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Argentines

BryanA 3y ago

Adverse Possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession

groestl 3y ago
Civil law systems have something similar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usucaption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usucaption

tedunangst 3y ago

Every once in a while the story goes around about the guy living in a mall. https://boingboing.net/2022/07/04/the-incredible-story-of-a-man-who-secretly-furnished-a-hidden-room-in-a-mall-and-lived-there-for-4-years.html/amp https://boingboing.net/2022/07/04/the-incredible-story-of-a-... He got probation. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna21100501 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna21100501

crmd 3y ago

The legal system should encourage people moving into unoccupied houses. The hoarding of real estate is bad for society.

UberFly 3y ago
You think this wouldn't cause a million different problems for individuals and the legal system? There are countless reasons why a house might be sitting empty for a period of time.
- TheHappyOddish 3y ago
  This has been a thing in Australia and UK for some time and it seems to work fine.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  What are the reasons for your house to be empty for years unless you have another place to live, aka hoard property?
  - bobs_salsa 3y ago
    The only good reason I can think of at the moment are prison or medical reasons which leave you in a hospital for an extended period of time. In those cases those peoples rights of ownership to their homes should be upheld. Otherwise, I agree that we should go hard against property hoarding.
  - refurb 3y ago
    My grandfather fell broke his hip and moved in with us for a year. It was touch and go whether he could recover and move back home. Thankfully he did. Is he a “hoarder”?
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      That's a good enough reason. Since he had to move in with you this means he lives alone though? do you consider it safe for him to live alone in the old age? (For his own sake not just for the sake of healthy housing market)

duxup 3y ago

In Minnesota it takes 15 years and you have to pay the property taxes for 5 years. I want to say there were rules about keeping up the property (repairs) as well.

Ylpertnodi 3y ago

Where I live there are countless rustic properties, the vast majority of which will remain empty due to generations of infighting between relatives. Similarly, plots of land are carved up over the years until a single field may have 20+ owners. I know of one such case: they were offered a huge, insane amount of money for the land. But each one of the owners wanted more for their piece than the others, and tried to do private deals, and some refused to sell even though their piece was a mis-shapen series of lines on a government map that gained them zero benefits (farmers can't farm the land either), so nobody gets anything and the place is just rotting. Along with the houses surrounding. That have multiple owners.

opportune 3y ago
Where is this? Southern Europe? It makes me very sad seeing so many stone buildings left uninhabited and overgrown with plants when I visit Spain and Italy. I always thought it was just the cost to upgrade them to modern living standards that was prohibitive, but from personal experience [0] with similar situations in the US, I can see partial ownership being an even bigger problem. [0] One set of my grandparents split their house equally among their 3 children. Because it has immense sentimental value to those children, they have not sold it and currently “rent” it at no cost to one of the children. Depending on the order in which those 3 children pass, the state of the house could easily become deadlocked for decades as I know one of my aunts would refuse to sell it even if the other aunt (who lives in it) passes. Thank god none of my cousins would want to live in it so we probably would eventually be able to sell it. It’s not even close to a mansion or anything… just a regular 1960s middle class house in an area where land is pretty cheap. If I had a shitton of cousins and the property was very valuable land I could totally envision it getting permanently deadlocked.
- pacbard 3y ago
  While inheritance laws in Southern Europe are weird, I don't think that partial ownership of buildings is the issue here. The real issue is that old buildings are not useful anymore: 1. Buildings that are not longer needed. For example, you can walk in woods and see old, run down, metati [1] in Italy. While chestnuts still keep a sentimental value, mountain people do not rely on them for sustenance anymore. Therefore, the drying sheds and mills have been abandoned. 2. Buildings that are not just functional anymore. Our barn had 20 stalls. It was functional as of the 1800s, but it's no longer a viable building to host a herd of milk producing cows. It has small stalls, lack of windows, difficult sanitation. People just build new barns and abandon the old ones. The problem is that the barn is build of rock, so it won't decay so easily. 3. Buildings that are no longer comfortable. Similar to point 2, old stone houses are not that comfortable. Having 3-foot wide stone walls for each internal room seems like charming until you realize that you can't use wall space. A house with a regular footprint (maybe 100 sq. feet) is much smaller once you consider all the space that stone walls take up. Plus, old houses don't have plumbing, electricity, etc, are damp and cold in the winter (but somewhat pleasant in the summer). People just prefer to live in a modern place rather than fix up an old one (which might be marked as historical and will need much more money to fix up). [1]: https://www.tuscany-exclusive.net/metato/ https://www.tuscany-exclusive.net/metato/

asimpletune 3y ago

In the USA, our legal system comes partly from the old Anglo-Saxon system, and partly from the French-Norman system, along with a few other parts of this. A lot of interesting and useful things come from this history. Specifically, regarding this case... The word fiefdom literally means "foot ground" in Anglo Saxon. That means your land (domain) is where you put your foot on the ground. Even if you claim ownership to some land, those claims can be in dispute if someone else's foot is on the ground, so to speak. To me it's always been so fascinating thinking about law, and the philosophy of law, in these very basic, raw terms. Like, from where does the law derive its power? To the anglo-saxons, the answer is from the ground, and that's why that aspect of the system is so obsessed with possession. Other cultures, like the Vikings, refined the ideas around tort law, like who should get paid how much if they're injured due to a fight. The Norman system brought about the idea of "writs". The idea that messages to and from the court (not a coincidence that it's the same word in English as what's used for royalty, whereas in a language like Italian it would something more like tribunal) need to use specific writs, almost like interfaces and API calls. This basically put an end to most instances of "self help". In other words, in most cases, you can not take the law into your own hands. You must abide by the system of writs. Even the word attorney comes from "at" and "tourney". Basically the guy you can pay who will go to the tournament, and fight instead of you before the court. Our whole legal system is informed by ancient concepts, and a lot of these ideas are not half bad. We would really do well to be reminded of that. If 3 years can go by without a bank even knowing about someone occupying a house they claim to own, someone living there in direct opposition to that claim, then from an Anglo-Saxon perspective they can't seriously claim to own it. To me that makes sense as well.

ajkjk 3y ago
Generally very interesting, but I looked up the bit about 'attorney' and Etymonline, at least, doesn't agree: https://www.etymonline.com/word/attorney https://www.etymonline.com/word/attorney. Thoughts?
- asimpletune 3y ago
  You know honestly I can’t be sure 100%, but that is what I was always taught in my “English as a language of law” class. I hesitate a little bc there’s always the possibility that I misremembered. That said, my memory is that it came from before the French, during the trial by combat days, where the wealthy could appoint someone to go on their behalf. Another datapoint for this is that a legal title that still exists today is esquire. However a “squire” is also the assistant to the knight who fights in the tournament. It’s totally possible that I’m mistaken about parts of this, especially the pre or post French use of the word, but I also think that a lot this knowledge is fairly esoteric and not captures well, even in today’s age, outside of experts. Not to cast shade on etymology.com at all. Just that it is a possibility. I see a lot of Ancient Greek/Roman stuff that comes up that’s either wrong or just naive, so. Idk. Glad that you think it’s interesting though! I have a book club if anyone’s interested https://r33d.org https://r33d.org We just started reading history of the Peloponnesian war by Thucydides :)

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

scotty79 3y ago

It's a hard problem. I think the best way to deal with abandoned houses would be for the municipality to forcibly auction them (once they are left empty for some time) and keep the funds acquired by the sale (minus the costs) invested into bonds or something and ready to reimburse owner if he shows up.

code_duck 3y ago
That does happen when property taxes are delinquent - typically the county seizes the property and sells it to pay back taxes.

neilv 3y ago

On a tangent, I love this other post on the page, for the charming style and content of some earlier time: https://www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-visited-an-abandoned-home/answer/Peter-Hart-158 https://www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-visited-an-abandoned-hom... It's not Grandpa Simpson and the tying of an onion to your belt -- more like an information-dense tour, hitting many highlights, and what are they going to say next. I wonder whether (assuming it was typed by the author, rather than dictated), had they been inserting paragraph breaks, would that have changed their rhythm of associations.

matt-attack 3y ago
Great read. Wish I could had read the whole thing, Quora cuts it off.

neilv 3y ago

Is there a way to read the Quora comments without SSO/login to Quora?

Imnimo 3y ago

What happens if two people both try to squat in the same abandoned house?

hirvi74 3y ago
It legally becomes a Thunderdome.

crtified 3y ago

The topic of claiming a seeming abandoned property, often referred to as Adverse Possession, is specifically detailed by the laws of many countries. The specifics of those laws can vary a lot between countries. For example in some countries "a few" years of satisfying certain conditions is enough, and in others, it may be 20 years or more. Different countries have different box-ticking lists, before your claim becomes valid. Tangentially speaking - regarding the subdivision, or 'carving up' of property - it's notable that younger countries/cultures, such as Australia and New Zealand, have relatively tight controls upon how land can and can't be split up. With a long term view to preventing messy, piecemeal land arrangements, particularly in urban and productive rural areas. (naturally such arrangements are their own pros/cons can-of-worms, but that's another topic...)

ilaksh 3y ago

The biggest problem is that instead of taking over abandoned houses, some people are finding the nicest unoccupied houses and squatting in them. In other words, houses that just haven't sold yet. Could be for only a few months. Then they use these laws and police indifference to effectively steal tens of thousands in rent. I imagine that these people think of it as a type of social justice or an efficient market. It's out of control criminality really. But part of the reason we get to this point is actually extreme inequality and extremely ineffective markets or rules. I think that when we have so many people unable to afford homes, there should be some type of system for highly discounted utilization of unoccupied ones, especially after a certain number of months. That's completely different from a free-for-all though.

IntelMiner 3y ago
"Stealing rent" is an...interesting position. If not just because it seems to imply that housing is not a human right
- ilaksh 3y ago
  If you read my comment carefully all the way through then you would have seen it was clear that I think housing is a human right. That doesn't mean that we should abandon laws and process.
- Plasmoid 3y ago
  What an odd response. Are there any other things that are ok to take because you feel it's a human right? Dine and dash isn't a crime because food is a human right?
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  This (relatively new) idea that by marking some things as "human rights", things that have a substantial cost to create, that they can then be stolen without regard to any rules tends to not end well for anyone in society. I honestly hate the idea of proclaiming things like food, health care, housing, education, etc. as "human rights", because they are very, very different from what has been historically thought of as human rights (things like freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of association, etc.). Primarily, of course, is that these newer "rights" are really goods and services that you would like everyone to have access to. And that may be fine (I personally tend to agree), but I would still argue that they are not anything at all like the rights people should have just for existing. I can certainly believe there should be "guaranteed social services", but these aren't "human rights". The main difference, of course, is that somebody has to expend their own personal time and energy to acquire these goods. Houses don't just sprout up out of nowhere, and they certainly don't maintain themselves. It's fine to argue that society should do much more to provide housing options to all citizens, but that's very different from saying "I should be able to move into any house where people aren't currently living because I can break the lock."

ropable 3y ago

Planet Money did a recent episode on this topic, covering how the adverse possession law worked in a particular case in Delaware: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173682158/delaware-goats-property-land-squatters-adverse-possession https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173682158/delaware-goats-pro...

dataflow 3y ago

Relatedly, somehow this fascinating video just popped up on my YouTube - apparently there are "professional" squatters doing this repeatedly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_FxnLo53mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_FxnLo53mo

Farbklex 3y ago

I mostly read about squatters in Spanish holiday homes and in Germany when people just refuse to pay rent. Apparently it is a very long process to get those people evicted. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-58310532 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-58310532 There is also another scam where people agree to buy a home, the sign a contract, ask for your key to be able to unload some furniture early and that's it. Once they have the key, they can live there without paying. Getting them out of there then requires waiting for courts to do their work. I only found a video about it in German unfortunately: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/immobilienverkauf-aerger-mit-hauskauf-nomadin-spiegel-tv-a-9a5303d4-5ea7-417f-9c72-73bd5d0bcc22 https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/immobilienverka...

barbs 3y ago

One of my friends lived in a squat in Melbourne for a few years. They sort of ran it, meaning they would put the place on couchsurfing.com to attract more people. They had anywhere between about 4-20 people living in the house at any time, each staying anywhere from a few days to a few months. The place was a little bit run down, and had no electricity or running water, although they did have gas and were able to cook food. They used candles to light the place at night, and would retrieve water from a nearby public tap and shower at a nearby university. They'd also dumpster dive all their food. The place was actually pretty awesome and had a really great community feel, albeit run-down and mouse-infested. There was lots of artwork and poetry printed directly on the walls. They'd often have lots of people over and spontaneous parties were common, though they had to keep the noise down since the owner could theoretically come at any point and kick them all out, and in the end that's exactly what happened. The owner was actually pretty nice about it, and was impressed at what they'd done with the place, but kindly asked them to leave, which they obliged. The house is actually still there and my friend hasn't lived there for years so I'm not sure why the owner kicked them all out. On another note, Moxie (of Signal/Open Whisper Systems fame) has some pretty cool stories about his adventures in squatting - https://moxie.org/stories/together-two/ https://moxie.org/stories/together-two/

cykros 3y ago

Local laws vary WILDLY even sometimes within the same state, let alone country to country. C-Squat in NYC was notoriously annexed by the punks living there, and they are the legal owners, but far more often, you are looking at the likelihood of trespassing charges. Always worth looking at you local laws and ordinances before risking a B&E or at least a trespassing charge.