Wherein it takes 6 months is is virtually always the case that it is because the court is too overburdened to handle the affair in a timely fashion. This is lik

Wherein it takes 6 months is is virtually always the case that it is because the court is too overburdened to handle the affair in a timely fashion. This is likely the case because the system must allocate resources that it should likely prefer handle criminal matters of vastly greater import which is already criminally slow. The result getting a fraction of a singular county judges time and joining a months long queue. This slowness of process is in fact a self reinforcing loop. Wherein it's possible to join a 6 month queue it makes sense for poor folks to do so. They might be able to get caught up or find adequate housing elsewhere. It can also even makes sense that that point to stop paying. If you fall $1000 behind and it is expected to take $3000 to move. If you should find it unlikely to be able to make up the $1000 in 30 days time and eviction should become inevitable but 6 months down the line. At that point what is the logical thing? Should you continue to pay monthly as before but never catching up and find yourself living in a cardboard box in 6 months OR should you stop paying now and use the money to move in a few months. The best resolution possible is to incentivize landlords to accept payment plans to bring tenants up to date whilst allowing resolution in 30-90 days wherein this isn't possible or reasonable. For instance when the tenant is damaging the property or otherwise violating the lease and can't be brought into compliance. This aligns incentives. By agreeing to a payment plan the tenant is incentivized to make the landlord whole and the landlord is incentivized not to thrust the tenants family into the street lest he lose the expectation of repayment of the funds. Because it isn't entirely objectionable from either side unlike losing 6 months of rent or homelessness we needn't fight a pointless legal battle over it. If it be the inevitable result of legal action the landlord will simply present it to the tenant as an option rather than pay a lawyer a substantial sum to find themselves on the same road. The alternative imposes a very high cost on society in terms of human suffering and in fact monetarily because it spends a tidy sum per homeless person. Lastly a squatter is someone who breaks into a property and sets up shop. Someone who lawfully enters into an agreement to live somewhere and ultimately fails to live up to their side of the obligation isn't a squatter and even in the red states hasn't committed a crime. They are a lawful resident until the eviction is fully processed and even should they outstay the judges order they will be removed by the police not processed into prison.