https://news.yahoo.com/stealing-channel-2-goes-undercover-164049984.html
At first glance, it looks just like another real estate pro hustling to rent homes on social media.
First, squatters of this type are taking advantage of laws intended to protect renters from predatory landlords. Wherever you stand on people appropriating unused property, these laws need to stay in place even if they’re made more specific.
Second, news outlets like this will always quote a “guns and drugs” case and not the mom with three kids seeking employment or homeless vet cases.
Third, with security cams and doorbells being so cheap, there’s no reason why this should be an issue, especially for a large real estate rental company. That alone puts me in “cry me a river” mode. Notice again that the article lists interviews with individual homeowners but is actually profiling the impact on a rental company.
IMO owning an unoccupied house thats off-market, or prohibitively-priced is probably a gambling chip.
IF there are ANY families in the same county that are homeless, it should begin being taxed as a gambling-chip. Sell-it very soon or it may used for a free shelter for however it remains unoccupied by the owner.
I have no issues with raising property taxes on non-owner occupied housing, and having them even higher on unoccupied housing.
Hell, the basic idea behind squatter's laws is that the squatter is actually doing something with the land instead of a derilect landlord.
If a bank isn't immediately selling the foreclosed home, they should lose it.
All good points—did you mean “tiny violin mode”, or have I been misunderstanding that song for a long time?
No, they mean the same thing, at least in my familiarity with the phrases. “Cry me a river” means that I don’t care to hear about their complaints, even if their tears were enough to fill a river, because I think they’re not legitimate.
You encapsulated this perfectly, thank you. As a side note, speculative ownership of housing is a violent crime and should be punished as such, at least while there are any homeless people anywhere.
>squatters of this type are taking advantage of laws intended to protect renters from predatory landlords.
what makes you think that's the intention?
Being from California (and earlier from New York), that’s very much the intention. Both states (and municipal laws in places like LA, SF, and NYC) make the landlords have to jump through a lot of hoops before an eviction can take place, and the tenants can file for protection.
I know that things vary from state to state, but I’ve only been a renter in NY, NJ, and CA. I’ve also successfully sued a landlord for over $100k in damages and expenses.
squatters rights precede the founding of the United States and have nothing to do with renters rights. You're just wrong about why these laws exist.
You’re talking like a Sovereign Citizen.
I’m talking about the very specific laws that prevent people from being evicted if they’ve been residing on a property for N months without following a very deliberate and drawn out legal procedure so that landlords cannot evict a family from their home of many years because of some missed rent payments or because they want to upgrade the place so they can charge more to a new tenant. Those are the laws that keep the sheriffs from just kicking down doors, at least in some states.
I’m not taking a moral position on squatting. My friends and I squatted in an abandoned house while I was in high school, although most of us didn’t live there full time. If I noticed someone squatting tomorrow, especially in a corporate owned home, I would not have seen it. But the laws that I’m talking about were designed to protect tenants from having their lives unfairly disrupted, and I’m arguing that even if people are against squatters, we still need to protect tenants’ rights.
I would have thought that was abundantly clear.
Precede
Bet.. but the issue is the government who currently controls the land and enforces the laws.
You don't go breaking Constantinople's laws because they were once different in Istanbul.
Yes it is, I mixed up the names. Go figure a guy tries to reference a song from 70 years ago about a governmental shift from 570 years ago got the details wrong lol.
So sorry to wrack your noggin. I'll put it in a simpler way;
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
You've been handed context so you don't have to hurt your silly little wrists typing. does the comment make sense now?
no. the governments that currently control the several states actually all have squatters rights (adverse possession) laws still on the books. the person to whom i was replying was conflating squatters rights with renters rights.
your comment seems to imply that somehow the squatters rights were eliminated at some point, but they never were.
When I was homeless and super desperate for a roof over my head I'd pull up some real estate app and filter by foreclosures. They were always empty and I never got bothered by anyone. Do gotta be super sneaky in case there's neighbors or something but there was almost always a window unlocked or something.
Note: This doesn't work in Toronto where the police are aggressively pro NIMBY and just pieces of inhuman filth anyway.
Source: Experience.
Old homeless secret I guess. When you're in a decently suburban area there's always at least one close by.
Holmes told Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray that he used his life savings to buy a DeKalb County home out of foreclosure eight months ago as a rental property.
Aaaaaaand there goes all my sympathy...
But he just wanted to find someone else to make all the payments for him and eventually provide a passive income. These damn squatters are just trying to get something for free.
(Corporate wants you to find the differences in these photos...)
Also that.
The dumb thing is that it almost works very well. Stuff people deem important gets built, and if you need to buy something there's always somebody selling it. It's just that there's no cap on how much stuff you can have, and through a quirk of mathematics at some point getting more stuff becomes self-perpetuating.
It breaks down significantly when the cost of entry becomes prohibitively expensive.
You think you can build a better toothbrush? Go for it.
You hate your ISP and want to start a new one? Good fucking luck.
Yeah, that's sure true. In the very long term it can change, but you have to wait for another titan to do it.
I don't know much about American laws, and I strongly believe that basic housing should not be for-profit.
With those caveats, if a house is empty for such a long time that squatters can claim it (7-20 years according to Google), then I think it's not only okay to claim residence there, I think it's the morally correct thing to do.
Obviously, there are exceptions to anything, but generally speaking, it sounds like society could use more of this.
The 7-20 years you're seeing is probably for adverse posession, which is a step above squatter's rights. If you can show that you've been maintaining the property for that entire time without the landowner stopping you from being there, in some cases you can gain ownership of the property through adverse possession.
Squatter's rights is more about the right to remain where you are as opposed to owning the place. Typically being given similar rights to a tenant.
You googled the wrong thing. You wanna squat, have your mail sent to an empty place, move in. Tell the cops you live there if they show up. Then you can't be touched. The real owner files and pays to have you served eviction papers saying you have to leave in 30 days. Then if still there, it has to go through Court system that the homeowner once again has to file for and can take several more months.
It's an abuse of Tennant protection laws.
i HIGHLY doubt the houses being referenced in the article have been vacant for 7-20 years.
On the other hand, I can't imagine they've only been "vacant" for 6 months or something.
Again, I'm far from an expert on American law - much less on a state-by-state basis, but I have to think you'd need to live there for quite some time for it to count for squatters rights.
In these situations 6 months is exactly what I'd imagine. Where I live I can't imagine any house staying vacant for 6 months. It costs more to rent a house here than it does to buy one. My mortgage payment is $1400/month, but I could rent my house for over $3k a month. it's ridiculous.
You know who probably won’t have a problem with squatters? People who buy houses to live in them.
Hard to feel bad for a fucking landlord. Get a real job loser.
Little more sympathy to the lady that got squatted on while she was on active duty though.
Unspecified in the article. Just said she returned from active duty to find someone living in her home. But any job that keeps you away from home for long periods of time could suffer the same. Even if you have people checking on your place, what are they going to do differently other than know sooner?
Hard to feel bad for a fucking landlord. Get a real job loser.
“I don’t have empathy for others who are better off than I am. Work hourly as a W2 like the rest of us instead of using systems, tax codes, and laws in place by the government to generate a better life for yourself while growing society.”
Ah yes, all I have to do is pretend landlords are “growing society” instead of buying up properties with the sole intention of making money off of people who cant for a myriad of reasons out of their control. One of those reason being real estate “investors”.
And what about the squatters? They are doing what you said, using the local systems and laws(squatters rights) to generate a better life for themselves. So it’s fair game right?
Sure, I’ll give you that. The squatters are also taking advantage of the system for gain. But then I ask, imagine your home, or your workplace. Do you possibly work in construction? In an office? Perhaps in a leased retail space? How would you feel if a squatter took residence in your employee break room? Could you honestly say you would feel the same way?
I’m not going to feel bad for my employer having to go through the legal channels to remove a squatter in this hypothetical because it would have been their failure to provide a safe working environment that caused it to happen.
And I’m not here in support of squatters, simply to point out that this person is in a situation he created because he chose to become a landlord in a strained housing market with record high homelessness. The squatters are definitely still legally wrong. But in my opinion, buying homes with the sole intent of renting it out is morally reprehensible.
I see, well I guess it is a legitimate risk of that business. Landlords should understand that by operating there squatting is a possibility. It seems that you might still be distancing yourself from the point in this scenario by placing responsibility on your employer to deal with the problem, which in this case is the squatter, and avoiding picturing how it could truly interfere with your life at home or at work. Either way for anyone, no one should have to deal with this. Perhaps it is morally reprehensible to purchase a home with the sole purpose of renting. Perhaps it is also morally reprehensible to facilitate the squatting of homes owned by others for personal financial gain.
Maybe we can both agree that the system is failing in it’s total if there is need for squatting for this purpose. I invite you to consider the possibility though that there is a valid reason for rental homes in many situations and areas that are beneficial for the right people. Yes, there are scummy landlords and yes, the landlord intends to make a profit, but this is not always at the sole detriment society.
They aren't growing shit. They are leeching off of people who actually work qnd majority of them do as little to improve these as they possibly can.
Explain to me who then takes responsibility to repair derelict properties into livable condition? The city? Local government? Would you take this on? What would you expect as compensation to take this on?
Well the landlords certainly don't. I don't give a shit about people taking advantage of others to generate a passive income for themselves without giving anything back in return while rents increase and just pocket in and continue screwing others over. Also companies buying up everything to artificially increase house costs can burn to the ground with the CEOs and executives inside.
Well, it sounds like you and I both agree that large companies like Black Rock, Zillow, and whoever else is involved in the alleged price fixing with that rent recommendation software thing are screwing society and yes, can burn to the ground.
I don’t know enough to comment on rents going up outside of them, but generally, things like this come down to both inflationary pressures and a consequence of free markets. Some states have enacted regulations capping the amount that rents can increase, others have not. I may be wrong, but it seems that your perspective on the situation is simplifying the issue to mean that landlords are squandering resources (homes/units) and extorting people without providing anything. There is still a positive result to society in providing places for people to live. A profit is needed in these cases, though, as it maintains incentive for maintaining homes and investing in the creation and rehabilitation of additional living spaces.
The primary issue right now from my best knowledge is that there simply isn’t enough supply of homes and living spaces available, leading to increased demand, and willingness to pay a higher price. If you ever take an economics class, you will learn the simple truth that the value of something is only up to what people are willing to pay. If demand is lowered, people, as a whole are less likely to pay for the price being asked, and the seller will need to continue lowering, and lowering their price to find what the buyer will willingly pay. This is part of the reason that we have the consequence of high interest rates at the moment as well.
So if the A/C dies in the summer making the home unlivable, you say you would be on the hook to repair it? It’s on the landlord or property owner.
If you go back to my comment I am bringing in the idea of a derelict property. There is no tenant in a derelict property, aside from possibly a squatter.
And how about if nobody can even live there in the first place because it’s so bad? Then who pays?
Where does the landlord get the money? Do landlords often rent property at a loss? Is being a landlord a charity, where someone takes their own money and uses it to subsidize a stranger's housing costs?
Of course not. Landlords set the rent such that rent - costs > 0. The money to repair a rental home ultimately comes from the renter. The landlord may pay up-front, as in your example with a derelict property, but that's with the intention of making back what they pay and more in the form of rent. Like all businesses, the cost of doing business plus all the profit the market will bear gets passed on to the consumer.
Yes, you are certainly right about that. The landlord or rehab investor making a profit was never part of my argument. Operating rentals or investing in real estate is a business like any other, and thus needs to turn a profit in order to continue operations. In order to address the point you are making, I see what you’re saying about the flow through and how that gets used to repair properties. However, you may agree that we would both look at a $10,000 capital expenditure on a new AC unit differently if we were renting a home, which is generally for shorter terms (perhaps 2 years in Austin, TX on work assignment) than resident ownership for life.
If you are not someone who needs a rental home, or a rental apartment, then don’t use one. These types of businesses exist, however because they serve a need in society, hence their ubiquity. I invite you to consider the possibility that there is a valid reason for rental homes in many situations and areas that are beneficial for the right people. Yes, there are scummy landlords and yes, the landlord intends to make a profit, but this is not always at the sole detriment society.
The people who own them? What do landlords have to do with derelict properties anyway? Once repaired they could be sold or rented, but landlords are not the ones fixing up old houses…
So then who coordinates the work to get old houses fixed up? Who organizes and provides the funding, sources contractors, makes design decisions about how to best rehabilitate a home for modern use, and holds the whole project accountable for its completion?
Across the nation and most of the rest of the world both resident owners and landlord owners will fix up properties. Unlivable properties however are primarily taken on by investors and rehab-to-rent landlords. Yes, they are making a profit out of it (most of the time), but society then receives an additional livable unit in good condition, or possibly more if it is a multifamily complex.
edit below
Not one yet, I just understand how landlording and real estate investing works. Sure there are scum landlords out there, but what good do we bring the situation by demonizing an entire group, complaining online and cutting ourself off from the greater understanding of how things work and interplay in a complex society?
This could apply to any news or situation. Have you ever considered that maybe there is more to understand than what you currently know? Have you considered the strength of the force that the way information is presented upon you can have on your perspective, attitudes, and beliefs about a situation? News articles have a tendency to use this in an effort to weaponize your emotions against something or someone, or to distract you from other causes.
In this case, perhaps it has succeeded in manipulating your emotions to blindly attack me without fully and coherently understanding the situation.
Edit: take these arbitrary downvotes for example. They communicate what is called a “social proof” to you that I am wrong, subverting your own free thinking and making potentially yourself as well as others stop and simply shortcut to agree the same.
while growing society
How is increasing the price of housing (by pulling houses off the market and renting them out to make a profit) "growing society"?
Take the money from small projects like single family rentals and use them to fund larger projects by using leverage. That’s the only way cities and apartment buildings, or commercial spaces like shopping malls are able to be funded and built. Same as you taking money from a small thing (e.g working and saving a down payment) and using leverage to finance a new car. A profit is needed in these cases as it maintains incentive for maintaining homes and investing in the creation and rehabilitation of additional living spaces.
The primary issue right now from my best knowledge is that there simply isn’t enough supply of homes and living spaces available, leading to increased demand, and willingness to pay a higher price. Investors partially solve this issue by funding new developments and high density dwellings like apartment complexes. If you ever take an economics class, you will learn the simple truth that the value of something is only up to what people are willing to pay. If demand is lowered, people, as a whole are less likely to pay for the price being asked, and the seller will need to continue lowering, and lowering their price to find what the buyer will willingly pay. This is part of the reason that we have the consequence of high interest rates at the moment as well.
If rentals were useless they would not exist in a given market, but they serve a need.
Yes, we are well aware that exploitation of the working class is the starting point for a lot of our power structures.
It's my opinion that housing is so basic a need that no house should be allowed to use for a gambling chip.
The 'housing market' needs to be broken in favor of individual ownership. (For many, speculation has driven ownership out of reach.)
Only individuals may purchase individual homes, and must agree to occupy them as their primary and only residences until they sell and vacate them. (Live-in landlords included, e.g. boarders.)
As part of the deal, they must first find another individual buyer (under the same terms) for their present home.
(Futher stipluations needed, but none that permit violation of the above principle. )
I don't think speculation is a big factor, actually. Rentals don't earn money without renters and they don't appreciate nearly fast enough to make up for the lack of income.
In my country at least there's just measurably less houses than there needs to be.
they don’t appreciate nearly fast enough to make up for the lack of income.
depends on where you are. i bought a new house 3 years ago and within a year the value of my house had increased nearly 100k.
That's one hot market.
Most of the time they don't do that, though, and there's a good chance if you had rented it out the wear and tear would not have reduced that value very much, so there's still not a lot of "opportunity cost".
to be fair it's leveled out since. it's still up that much, but didn't continue the meteoric rise.
So no vacation homes at all?
And what constitutes an individual? A family unit? Or can you own two houses when you're married, one per adult?
My view is that you can own more than one home but with progressive property taxes and no corporation should be able to own a house, or even a property. I'm in two minds about properties they inhabit.
No residential property I assume? I guess apartments would need some new form of owning entity. In Sweden we have "bostadsrättsförening" which is basically an organization where your personal say is proportional to how much you own (i.e. how large your apartment compared to the total). Of course it has its drawbacks, especially if there is no resident that actually understands how to handle economy and plan maintenance that has to be a joint effort. Or if you have someone that embezzles.
An apartment-building owner WHO LIVES IN the building year-around might be in accord. (My own GG-ma ran a boarding-home for income after her husband died.)
Sure but from my understanding the problem in the US (and most places) isn't that there isn't room. The sum of empty houses/apartments is greater than the amount of homeless. It's more distribution and logistics.
So we drop demand by outlawing many forms of ownership but with lower prices from that drop its reasonable to expect an increase in demand for the most popular places / places with a good salary and strong job market.
This then naturally moves the spot with available homes further from the major areas. People with low/no means are they then expected to move there to not be homeless? Even if there's no career prospects or even jobs?
If we cap relocation how is that handled? Are you not allowed to move into and buy a new home in say San Francisco, LA or NY?
And how much relocation are we mandating for the homeless?
If we remove the free market there is an extreme demand for very thoughtful, planned out rules which need to be airtight because people exploit everything and every loophole will be found.
And if we don't eliminate the free market, just limit who can own, then how do we avoid the aforementioned problems of accelerating urbanization? Such that we don't equalize at the exact same prices just private owned instead of corporate owned.
Needs discussion. I'm more concerned for kids -never being able- to buy a home. "Owner-built", no problem.
"needs discussion" because you didn't really think anything through, you just shout slogans on "how it would work" without any bearing on reality or the current housing situation.
What kind of a weird stance is: If you don't have all the answers the moment we talk about something your point is invalid.
"I don't know, we will need to discuss" is a valid answer to follow up questions.
You are strawmanning right now. I didn't say "you don't have an answer to one question". I said "you don't have any answers, and the answers you have wouldn't work in the real world". "We will need to discuss" in this comment was exactly that - no idea what to do, no idea on any ramifications, just "we got to do something!" with zero knowledge on the subject.
oh yay an easy one
it’s actually not that hard
I felt bad for the dude until I got to the part that it was a rental property.
Not all landlords are scum but enough of them are that everyone in the business is tainted.
Living indoors should be a human right. Charging for shelter should be illegal, same for food and water...
Gray sent this story to Instagram after it aired and they removed the account for violating the app’s terms of service.
Well, thank goodness making a second account is so hard ...
Kinda. Didn't make a lot of sense to me so I stopped when I saw how long it was going to be.
It's a terribly written article. It appears to be a transcript of a news segment. It's almost impossible to follow what the 'scam' is or why Instagram is involved.
Kind of a problem when someone comes back from active duty and has someone dealing drugs and guns out of their house though.
They aren't playing by the rules so why should we? Buy houses with their family money and sit on them then campaign for stricter zoning laws to keep out competition.
I fucking hate squatters. They are just as bad as these giant companies swooping up all the properties. They are garbage humans mostly
I'd say that a vacant home - any place (lots of them) where the homeless are dying in the streets of hypothermia - is owned by a garbage human.
To play devil's advocate, why not force churches to be shelters, rather than privately owned homes? Most places have dozens and dozens of churches with more than enough room for every homeless person in that community.
I don't really think churches should be obligated to fix a problem that the government created and can fix. Religion sucks but they still have a right to not be drafted without compensation.
If they paid taxes, maybe, but imo they are being compensated already for something they aren’t even doing.
I don't know why this tax thing is such a big deal for people. Sure the RCC, the Mormons, and some of the prosperity preacher have money but the vast majority of religious institutions can't keep the lights on. Which is why they have to do partnerships to do basic stuff like insurance.
I am much more pissed off at corporations having an entire dedicated staff just to get tax breaks and credits than I am at some congregation of 15 old people not paying taxes. Hell one of the churches I was at before I deconverted had an annual budget of 9k. Would it even be worth going after that little bit?
Who says I own a house?
If I did, I would indeed feel obligated to help people out if I can. Heck, even allowing tents in my yard would probably help.
You don't need to own your home to split it with a homeless. Don't be so careless, share your living space
Dude, I'd join them. The actual owner of this place would be displeased to say the least.
If it was someone that came with advance warning and a good backstory, I could maybe arrange it. I've done it before.
But enough about me, I'm weird. Most people are reluctant to do anything like that, and if you had picked on someone else this would be a gotcha. The thing is, it doesn't all have to fall on one person. We could just pay a bit more in taxes and expand out shelters until there's no reason not to use them. Nobody would have to live with a stranger. We'd need more mental health services as well, and in some cases more inpatient beds, because some of the people on the streets have serious issues.
I'm curious what you would have said in response if I just went "I don't want to". Obviously you're not suggesting sharing with the less fortunate is bad, and while you might successfully argue that I'm bad, I'm not sure how painting an internet stranger such a way would help anything.
Not mutually exclusive. If these companies didn't exist, the homes wouldn't be getting built. Someone has to pay for the materials, the labor, inspection, etc.
A hyperbolic dying homeless isn't contributing anything.