https://apnews.com/article/michigan-store-rooftop-sign-homeless-0185c0d7e4cd7a2f8581e8b8e0eb01b7
Police in Michigan say a startling discovery was made on the roof of a Michigan grocery store: A woman was living inside the store sign for roughly a year.
A spokesperson for SpartanNash, the parent company of Family Fare, said store employees responded “with the utmost compassion and professionalism.”
“Ensuring there is ample safe, affordable housing continues to be a widespread issue nationwide that our community needs to partner in solving,” Adrienne Chance said, declining further comment.
Warren said the woman was cooperative and quickly agreed to leave. No charges were pursued.
“We provided her with some information about services in the area,” the officer said. “She apologized and continued on her way. Where she went from there, I don’t know.”
I feel like there's very few opportunities these days to say this, but the cops and business owners in this situation actually seem to have behaved in a very humane and decent way here, so that's a nice surprise
Yeah, it's messed up that nearly everyone from the US would read that headline and make the same assumption without batting an eye because we've been conditioned to expect nothing else from police. It sure would be nice if we lived in a country where policing was actually a civil service and not a damn street gang.
It sure would be nice if we lived in a country where policing was actually a civil service and not a damn street gang.
The cases you hear in the media are the ones that provoke outrage.
On a day to day basis the police have hundreds of interactions with the public that aren't remarkable or noteworthy.
cops and business owners in this situation actually seem to have behaved in a very humane and decent way
Well it's nice that they didn't beat her to death. But they still kicked her out and didn't actually provide any more help. "Services in the area" probably will be less adequate than what she'd had before they booted her.
I don't expect them to actually take care of her, but they don't get a gold star for declining to bludgeon, strangle, or imprison her. She's on her own.
I mean, I would add on not sticking her with a criminal charge as an important thing they didn't do here, because the whole story of "oh you missed a court date because we sent the notice to an address you haven't lived at in years, so now we're fining you on top of the original criminal charge that brought you in here, [soon] wow, you've got a lot of missed court dates and unpaid fines, you look like a career criminal who needs the book thrown at them" happens a lot,
And there's a very real chance that the contractors looked the other way and then this woman's residence got discovered they could have lost their licenses or otherwise gotten in trouble
Like, I think what you're pointing out is a really important perspective and we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that a woman with a home was made homeless here, but I think a lot of relatively powerless people here tried to be as humane as an inhumane system would let them be, and I think that's important too. I think the way this world gets less shitty is when more people start making these little steps towards revolutionary kindness and then those little steps start getting bigger and bigger.
Again, it's not praiseworthy that they merely declined to abuse her. I'm not scorning them, but they get zero credit for declining to abuse her (beyond the abuse of kicking her out with no help).
there's a very real chance that the contractors looked the other way
Without evidence, there's no point in this speculation unless you're hired by their PR to praise them (which seems unlikely).
the way this world gets less shitty is when more people start making these little steps towards revolutionary kindness and then those little steps start getting bigger and bigger
Sorry, but this is absolute nonsense. It's meaningless. She is homeless.
a woman with a home was made homeless
This is the only story. Let's not waste time praising the heroic saints who kicked her out.
mate it's ok and good to acknowledge a small measure of good that may exist in a very terrible situation.
humans are not meant to focus on only the doom, gloom, and cynicism of it all 100% of the time.
nature. our brains get fucked up when stuck in the doom and gloom for too long.
pedantry is an ugly quality btw.
a small measure of good
There was no measure of good whatsoever. Her situation was made objectively worse, and we're presuming to praise those responsible merely for not making it even more worse. I'm not the one who created any doom or gloom. I didn't kick her out. And it's not cynical to sympathize with the homeless woman instead of with the people who kicked her out. Mate.
So you're saying it would have been better for her if she was charged with crimes? She would be stuck with fines and probably jail time. You do realize SHE was breaking multiple laws by being there right? So yeah, it is a small measure of good because they looked the other way rather than filing charges.
They didn't look the other way. They kicked her out. And I don't blame them. But neither do I praise them or call them good.
And she's also a homeless woman. Women need private spaces when they are homeless, they can't just be on the street as safely as men are. They space was probably VERY safe for her compared to a shelter.
This is where it’s at in the US: people feel a warm sense of happiness when a marginalized person isnt beaten to death or shot by authorities.
I agree it sucks, but they can't reasonably let her continue living there after they found out. There's so many legal and ethical issues with that. They are not qualified to provide housing. We need to provide better alternatives.
Legal problems? Yes. Ethical problems? Fuck no.
She was living rent free pulling resources from a company that likely fights against social programs for homelessness. That, to me, 1000% ethical.
It would only be unethical if the US has an adequate social safety net.
The ethical problems are that it's not designed to be lived in, so it's probably not safe. It's also an ethical problem to kick her out without a safety net, but there's plenty of reasons why I could think of that would make it not OK for her to be there.
We aren't talking about a toxic waste dump or a steel mill. This is a grocery store attic.
I'd agree that if they rented the space to her that would be unethical as they aren't providing essential utilities like water and sewage. However, this location was likely safer and more private for her than camping out on the street. Her situation was not improved by being evicted. She was harmed. That's why it's unethical to evict on discovery.
'That likely' so you've decided based on nothing except your preconceived opinions which are likely based in the first place on nothing more than 'it makes me feel good to believe this'
I never suggested they should let her stay there. But they don't get a gold star for kicking her out nicely either.
I think it's sad af, if she was a bird or raccoon they'd let her stay. We give people less dignity than a bird.
Would you like the officer to take a second mortgage out on his home and build her a room on his house? The system is broken, the cop did his best to not make it worse.
I'm not blaming the cop. But I'm also not praising him. Nobody here helped the woman. Let's just lament her homelessness without weirdly congratulating the people who kicked her out.
You know back during the Great Depression, we used to let widows buy their homes for pennies rather than let them be homeless. It's sad that these days, our sense of community is so fucked that people would pick profit over making sure everyone in their community has a house.
They behaved kindly because they were in the wrong - it's almost certain that if they'd used force and she'd resisted that it'd end up in front of a judge and she would be able to claim the area as a residence.
I would be extremely surprised if squatters rights apply to a commercial business premises.
Correct, and Squatter's Rights are meant to apply to properties abandoned by their owners, i.e. they're meant to prevent absentee landowners from just hoarding buildings wherever and never visiting or maintaining them. Or traditionally, if a property owner has died with no next of kin, or someone believed they inherited a property from a dead relative and this was not contested. Somebody simply hiding in a thoroughly used and very much frequented and maintained building in such a way that they've managed to escape notice for some amount of time doesn't allow them to magically put the deed in their name.
To make a successful claim this woman would have had to occupy the premises for 15 years, or do so for 10 years while also paying the property taxes on it. Further, their occupation has to be "open and notorious," i.e. it cannot be in secret (she failed that requirement right off the bat) and occupation must be exclusive, i.e. others don't have access to the property. That requirement was obviously failed as well.
Relevant statute:
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-600-5801
The unidentified woman, too. Sounds like a whole bunch of people being cordial to each other for once.
No, the humane and decent thing would have been to leave her the fuck alone. She's not hurting anyone.
Contractors curious about an extension cord on the roof of a Michigan grocery store made a startling discovery: A 34-year-old woman was living inside the business sign, with enough space for a computer, printer and coffee maker, police said.
“She was homeless,” Officer Brennon Warren of the Midland Police Department said Thursday
Sounds like she had a home you goddamn narcs
“There are much better options”
She had private shelter, no rent, probably HVAC. about the only thing missing was a bathroom, but there’s no mention of any waste she could ha e left.
Sounds like a pretty good deal. Wonder what “better” is.
Setting aside whether they want her living in their sign, if they know that she's there and let her stay, I'm pretty sure that they have liability if there are problems. She was living on the roof of a building, no obvious way up or down, and if they say "sure, go ahead and stay" and she is climbing off the roof one night and falls, that's on them. Not to mention that I am pretty confident that a store-roof-sign is gonna violate a long list of code requirements for legal housing, from insulation to having a bathroom.
And even if you're gung-ho on the concept of relaxing liability and code for property owners who don't charge or something like that because you want a lower bar for homeless shelters or something, I am almost certain that the kind of place that they're gonna aim to permit isn't gonna be people living on a roof in a sign.
EDIT: Also, while I don't know the specifics of this store, it's apparently in a shopping center (and the article referenced that she may have climbed up from other commercial buildings, so they're probably adjoining). I think that the way those work is that the stores don't normally own their individual properties, but that they lease from a property owner who owns the strip mall or shopping center, and it's not like the store can just go start treating the property as residential even if it wants to, even aside from zoning restrictions from the municipality.
Lemme check Google Maps.
Yeah, it's the "Northwest Plaza" shopping center. Looks like they share a building with a pet food store and a UPS store and such, and there are other buildings in the shopping center.
Yeah, and at Street View level, you can see that there are more businesses in the same building. Like, a buffet restaurant, a pharmacy, etc.
Like, setting aside the whole question of whether society should subsidize more housing, this just isn't somewhere that it makes a lot of sense to put someone, even if that's the aim.
Sometimes, but building codes and regulations are more than just liability, remember safety regulations are almost always written in blood.
The threshold in Michigan is 15 years of conspicuous, uncontested, and exclusive occupancy. So, no.
There's a lot of bullshit in zoning to begin with. Why exactly can't we have mixed commercial and residential areas in suburbia? Slap some apartments on top of grocery stores, bakeries/restaurants, and shops; or is forbidden to have much of anything within walking distance of homes?
Mixed use zoning is considered the gold standard of city planning, and it's why housing in Tokyo is so cheap comparatively
or is forbidden to have much of anything within walking distance of homes?
I think we both know it is. No one knows why tho.
The director of a local homeless assistance group is quoted as saying:
“Obviously, we don’t want people resorting to illegal activity to find housing."
IANAL but here's a funny twist of the law. It's not generally illegal, per se, for the woman have done this until she was caught and legal action was taken and was successful. The mere act of it was not in itself illegal. Heck, in California you have to give squatters 3 days notice (the area where she stayed could be seen as "vacant").
Anyway, food for thought. Lest, you know, one require housing.
Trespassing is illegal, even if the law sometimes gives even law-breaking squatters extra rights in evictions.
Yes, trespassing is illegal. But you haven't trespassed until it's established that you have trespassed. Legally.
You obviously aren't legally guilty of it until you've been charged and convicted, but that doesn't mean you haven't actually done it in the meantime.
That’s not how trespass works. You have to be “noticed” that you are not welcome on the property. Once you are on notice you have trespassed if you haven’t left
No, at least common law trespass definitely does not require any noticing. Can you show me any statutory form that does? Obviously crimes are hard to prosecute without witnesses, but very few crimes require someone to notice at the time for it to be a crime.
Edit: I read that too fast.
"Common law" has no relevance to state law matters in the US (nor Federal, for that matter). Here is the relevant statute in this case:
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-750-552
The bar for trespass is met only if the perpetrator has been "forbidden" from accessing the property by the owner. This does not have to be in person, or verbal. A "keep out" or "no trespassing" sign would suffice, and this is why such things exist. In this case I would be immensely surprised if there weren't some kind of employees only, authorized personnel only, or keep out sign posted on whatever method of ingress was used to reach the inside of the sign.
The intent of this is clear, it's so nobody can get done for merely setting foot on a property in some situation where they didn't realize they'd left public right of way or a property where they had authorization to be. You have to tell the person to GTFO (either preemptively or upon discovery) and if they don't, then they can be arrested.
Ohh, my bad. Y'all mean like "given notice", not like "disturbing the owner". I read that too fast.
Common law is still valid in every state in the US (except maybe Louisiana), although obviously statutory law usually overrides it. You're right that there's no federal common law since Erie v. Tompkins though.
And I agree with your analysis of that statute. That is interesting too, since my state, Illinois, does not require explicitly being forbidden by the owner. It's much more in line with the common law idea of trespassing as simply being going somewhere without authority, express or implied.
but that doesn’t mean you haven’t actually done it
Yes, but you are only guilty of it, legally, if you are caught :)
A subtle but useful distinction in my book.
Wasn't "trespassing" what cops charged students with for sitting on their own campus?
They paid quite a bit of money to be there.
Meanwhile, pro-Israeli protesters from outside campus blare loud music during the middle of finals and the administration shrugs.
Other Israeli groups invaded campuses armed with baseball bats. No arrests of Israelis appear to have been made.
So it appears the universities are punishing students residents for the actions of counter protesters.
By invoking "trespassing"
They paid quite a bit of money to be there.
And that doesn't matter a damn once they've been asked to leave.
I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm saying it's how the law works
If it's bad we should change the law. Right now, legally, these people were trespassing. That's a fact.
A 34-year-old woman was living inside the business sign, with enough space for a computer, printer and coffee maker, police said.
The computer I get. The coffee maker...okay, for some people I get. I dunno if a printer is at the top of my priority list but, hey, I dunno, maybe she needed it for work.
But:
A Keurig coffee maker.
Man, if I were squatting in a store sign, I think that I would be using a Mr. Coffee and Folgers ground coffee, not a razor-and-blades-model coffee maker.
She probably pulled it out of a dumpster. And you can get or make inserts to use regular grounds instead of cups.
Reusable pods are cheap. I've been using them in my keurig for a few years now and they're great.
Food banks actually carry a ton of those pods, and hang onto them because no one really has a keurig who goes to food banks.
