[HN Gopher] Squatters in Spain who demand a "ransom" before they...
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Squatters in Spain who demand a "ransom" before they will leave a
property
Author : gumby
Score : 137 points
Date : 2021-08-26 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| g3h4 wrote:
| How about some hard men removing the Chief Pedophile from the
| White House.
|
| He has now murdered dozens of Us civilians with multiple
| explosions at the airport.
|
| FUCK BIDEN and FUCK YOU if you voted for him.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > Another of Javier's scams is to change the locks of empty
| apartments, then sell the keys for 1,000 or 1,200 euros to
| impoverished people who struggle to pay a market rent - a group
| that has grown in size since the start of the pandemic.
|
| These are not squatters but criminals scamming people trying to
| find housing. And bad policies that allow for too many empty
| apartments that nobody notices that have been occupied meanwhile
| rent and housing prices are high.
| jimmyed wrote:
| Heh. Spain being Spain.
| toiletaccount wrote:
| this reminds me of a show i saw (iirc "nightmare tenants and slum
| landlords") where people found a house, rented it, and then found
| out the landlord had no connection at all to the property. the
| real owners were quite upset when they returned from vacation to
| find their newly remodeled home occupied by strangers and ended
| up living in one of their mother's attic for years with an infant
| trying to get the squatters to leave. unbelievable. in america
| you walk into your house with a 12 gauge (like you always do) and
| blast the cocksuckers you believe to be threatening your life.
| end of the goddamn story.
| abvdasker wrote:
| Hard to find much sympathy for the wealthy landowners who use
| violence to clear poor people out of their vacation homes. This
| is an obvious systemic breakdown where the solution will be
| either tougher laws against squatting or better public/affordable
| housing depending on your political ideology.
| sparrish wrote:
| When legal systems fail, folks will turn to 'hard men' to get
| justice. Thus it has always been, thus it shall be.
|
| To avoid this a society should aim for just laws, swift execution
| of those laws by law enforcement, and speedy trials by courts. If
| any of those three are failing, other avenues of justice will be
| sought by those who can afford it and that impacts the poor who
| can't 'afford' justice.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| As I see it, people have a right to receive justice. The deal
| we have with governments is simple: the government handles
| justice, and in return, we don't handle it ourselves. This is a
| good deal, it leads to better outcomes because courts are more
| capable and less hot headed than victims. Vigilante justice is
| inferior to the sort of justice a government can provide.
|
| But when a government abdicates their side of the deal, what
| choice to people have? Does such a government really expect
| people to forego receiving justice at all when their government
| repeatedly and consistently refuses to provide it? When
| governments abdicate their duty to provide justice, vigilante
| justice becomes morally justifiable. This is not a good state
| of affairs, and is why a government must prioritize being an
| effective provider of justice. When a government abdicates
| their side of the bargain, the aftermath is blood on their
| hands.
| curryst wrote:
| > The deal we have with governments is simple: the government
| handles justice, and in return, we don't handle it ourselves.
|
| The deal is slightly longer: the government gets the right to
| handle justice, you forgo your right to pursue your personal
| justice, and you gain the right to not have other peoples'
| arbitrary sense of justice enforced upon you. And yes, the
| government bears responsibility for enforcement of personal
| justice.
|
| If the government abdicates its role, I agree you have the
| right to enforce your own personal justice. You have not,
| however, gotten everyone else to sign away their right to not
| be the target of your vigilante justice.
|
| Put another way, the subject of the "justice" may not feel
| that the government has abdicated their role and may be
| content with the way things are going. They have not agreed
| that the rules have changed, else I strongly suspect they
| would react differently. If vigilante justice is permissible,
| responding to vigilante justice with force is also
| permissible (as is their right to claim what they perceive as
| "justice").
|
| I also find it a bit spurious to say that the government has
| abdicated their permission, but the laws are still in effect.
| If you and the other person have absolved your relationship
| with the government, the laws no longer apply, and your
| justification for forcibly removing someone becomes
| dramatically weaker. You say it's your property and they
| should leave, they say that was enabled by an unjust
| socioeconomic system and that reclaiming it was the more just
| thing to do, and we end up in a very subjective incarnation
| of justice.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| > _If the government abdicates its role, I agree you have
| the right to enforce your own personal justice._ [...] _I
| also find it a bit spurious to say that the government has
| abdicated their permission, but the laws are still in
| effect_
|
| You've conceded that in absence of a government, people
| have the right to enforce their own personal justice. If
| the right to pursue justice still exists in absence of a
| government, then some sort of law must also exist in
| absence of a government (from what else would you derive a
| right to seek personal justice?) The laws to which I appeal
| now do not come from governments, books, or gods; I believe
| they are encoded in our genes after eons as living as a
| social species. Social instincts which evolved to
| facilitate cooperation in groups are the root of all basic
| laws written down by governments. When somebody is wronged,
| in violation of these universal laws, they feel it in their
| bones.
|
| If you don't believe any of that, believe this: when people
| feel wronged they _will_ seek justice. Either a government
| can provide them with a safe framework to receive justice,
| or people will seek it themselves. You 'll never succeed in
| scolding people away from desiring justice. When seeking
| vigilante justice is routine, that is categorically a
| failure of government to provide justice.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| >from what else would you derive a right to seek personal
| justice?
|
| Natural rights.
|
| >The laws to which I appeal now do not come from
| governments, books, or gods; I believe they are encoded
| in our genes after eons as living as a social species.
|
| >If you don't believe any of that, believe this: when
| people feel wronged they will seek justice. Either a
| government can provide them with a safe framework to
| receive justice, or people will seek it themselves.
| You'll never succeed in scolding people away from
| desiring justice. When seeking vigilante justice is
| routine, that is categorically a failure of government to
| provide justice.
|
| You're trying to justify violating the sanctity of life
| in response to a violation of the sanctity of property.
| These are clearly not on the same level, and so you feel
| the need to defend this utterly unnatural stance. What
| you want is permission to carry out vigilante justice
| without the threat of reprisal, but that's not how this
| works. If you do something as protest that can later be
| rectified, that is something different; but if you throw
| off the mediating force of the law to unilaterally take
| what can't be given back, you have opened yourself to
| like or greater doom. Nothing can protect you, not even
| your self-righteousness. Justice doesn't exist in a state
| of nature, only dead-reckoning and vengeance.
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| > You're trying to justify violating the sanctity of life
| in response to a violation of the sanctity of property.
|
| Eviction by force is not the same as murdering someone
| for squatting. You're conflating the two.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Indeed. This was the force behind the Me Too movement. Legal
| channels failed, and therefore were circumvented in favor of
| going straight to the media, with all the issues that
| entails.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That one is slightly different because proving it is much
| harder.
|
| In the squatting case, it is just government (and all
| taxpayers) dumping the problem of homeless people onto a
| set of unfortunate property owners. It is simply much
| cheaper for the government (and hence taxpayers) to not
| address the root causes.
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| I mean, it is just different "hard men" that show up to kick
| out the poor when you have fast and efficient eviction
| proceedings.
|
| It's the same violence, and the same outcome; one just uses
| neat uniforms.
|
| I also like the rule of law but let's not pretend that these
| two situations are really that much different.
| aaomidi wrote:
| And since one of them isn't backed by the state, the people
| can neutralize them without risking their entire lives.
|
| There are a lot more people who don't own capital than there
| are people who do.
| manigandham wrote:
| There's a major difference in fairness and safety when going
| through the law. In fact, that's the entire point.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Is there really though?
| manigandham wrote:
| Are you seriously asking? Have you experienced life in a
| corrupt/lawless area?
| aaomidi wrote:
| I mean, yeah, like how the cops feel comfortable to do
| whatever they want to people like me without repressions.
| My worst experiences living in this country has been with
| cops, not with "lawless people".
|
| So yeah, I do believe state sanctioned violence is worse
| for the majority of people.
|
| Oh and if I try to defend myself from an attacking cop I
| go to prison for decades.
| manigandham wrote:
| What do mean by "people like me"? What country are you
| referring to?
|
| If you're in the USA, then it's the one of the safest
| areas in the world. Do you realize the reason you don't
| deal with lawless people is because of the police?
| There's a lot of accountability and procedure in policing
| here. For every bad news story there are millions of
| daily encounters with some of the worst offenders that
| you're fortunate to never deal with.
|
| > _" So yeah, I do believe state sanctioned violence is
| worse for the majority of people."_
|
| This is beyond ridiculous, especially in the comments of
| an article describing people being beaten and thrown out
| of their homes with extrajudicial violence. Is your
| suggestion that they're better off this way without any
| protection or oversight and instead left on their own? Do
| you really think billions of people around the world
| agree with you?
|
| > _" Oh and if I try to defend myself from an attacking
| cop I go to prison for decades."_
|
| An _attacking_ cop means you 've started a fight with the
| police, so the advice is to not do that. But are you
| implying that you'll do better against some attacking
| gang instead?
|
| It's seems like you have not experienced any serious
| danger because you'll change your opinion very quickly in
| the face of unchecked criminal activity. It's easy to
| make sweeping statements from your safe and comfortable
| home but it's highly unlikely you would enjoy, let alone
| survive, in places with less rule of law.
| aaomidi wrote:
| > What do mean by "people like me"?
|
| You can make a guess at that and assume what you want.
|
| > There's a lot of accountability and procedure in
| policing here. For every bad news story there are
| millions of daily encounters amongst some of the worst
| people that you're fortunate to never encounter.
|
| No, there isn't. Cops can do literally anything they want
| to you with minimal/no repercussions. If I defend myself
| against an aggressive cop I'm getting a felony and going
| to prison for decades.
|
| > This is beyond ridiculous, especially in the comments
| of an article describing people being beaten and thrown
| out of their homes with extrajudicial violence. Is your
| suggestion that they're better off this way without any
| protection or governmental oversight and instead left on
| their own? Do you really think billions of people around
| the world agree with you?
|
| Actually - argubly yes. I do believe in no state
| sanctioned violence. Someone removing me from a place I'm
| living would think twice if they knew I was armed/had
| weapons. I could rely on the protection of my network and
| my community, rather than the protection of some cop that
| lives two hours away from the area they're supposedly
| serving and protecting.
|
| > An attacking cop means you've started a fight with the
| police, so the advice is to not do that. But are you
| implying that you'll do better against some attacking
| gang instead?
|
| So let me get this straight, cops don't harass people in
| your opinion? I really wish that I didn't have the
| experience with cops that I've had - maybe I could stay
| ignorant like you about police violence.
|
| > It's seems like you have not experienced any serious
| danger because you'll change your opinion very quickly in
| the face of unchecked criminal activity. It's easy to
| make sweeping statements from your safe and comfortable
| home but it's highly unlikely you would enjoy, let alone
| survive, in places with less rule of law.
|
| Again you know nothing about me, where I've been, or how
| I've lived.
| manigandham wrote:
| > _" cops don't harass people in your opinion?"_ _" Cops
| can do literally anything they want to you with
| minimal/no repercussions."_ _" If I defend myself against
| an aggressive cop I'm getting a felony and going to
| prison for decades."_
|
| That's not my opinion, and harass is not the same as
| attack. Unprovoked/unreasoned encounters are incredibly
| rare as to not be an issue for the vast majority. Have
| you even looked at the case law and statistics of police
| encounters? Also felony does not mean prison for decades,
| and defending yourself in court does not lead to a felony
| in the first place. Unless you mean defending yourself
| through violence, but then again that's against the law.
|
| > _" Someone removing me from a place I'm living would
| think twice if they knew I was armed/had weapons."_
|
| Really? Do you intend to tell all those people in
| mentioned in the article to just shoot back next time?
| How do you imagine that's going to go for them?
|
| The police is not just a single person but part of an
| entire apparatus that has far more reach and resources
| than you which is where their ability to combat crime
| comes from. You're not really a match for motivated
| criminals, but even if you were, this is clearly not the
| preferred solution for the majority of the population.
|
| > _" You can make a guess at that and assume what you
| want.... you know nothing about me, where I've been, or
| how I've lived."_
|
| Why use such vague statements then? But since you said
| so, I'll go ahead and assume (with extremely high
| confidence) that you have no experience with violence and
| lawless environments. I have history with both sides of
| the law and know career criminals with less hostile
| police interaction than you seem to have. In fact, police
| are the least of their concerns, similar to anyone who
| lives in dangerous places, but then again you would know
| that if you were familiar with such areas.
|
| Police violence is definitely an issue, but this thread
| is a comparison to not having any state protection at
| all, and just about everyone in the latter situation
| would happily switch places with you. But I'm pretty sure
| you know that, and would never take up such an offer.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I agree completely. I think workers should organize and seek
| extralegal justice from bosses responsible for wage theft.
| Since this is a crime that's almost never prosecuted.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Words to remember today with the asymmetric application of the
| law. Eventually vigilante justice becomes the justice for those
| facing injustice.
| reccanti wrote:
| I'd argue that the injustice in this situation is the lack of
| housing that's causing people to squat in the first place.
|
| These people want to sound like their just "hard men taking
| justice into their own hands" but they're really just a bunch
| of low-level goons being hired to enforce the existing power
| structure (property and capital owners at the top and everyone
| else at the bottom)
| [deleted]
| olliej wrote:
| it costs something like 10-20k cash to remove tenants from an
| apartment in SF, on top of whatever else the city requires you to
| provide, even if the tenants have not been paying rent.
|
| You can Alice act the house but that drastically reduces the
| market value of the house (e.g by more than the pile of cash you
| would otherwise be paying the tenants)
| option_greek wrote:
| How long before squatters are encouraged by eviction companies to
| squat. Its crazy how much the owners are paying without any
| permanent solution.
| Stevvo wrote:
| Any permanent solution would require ending homelessness.
| That's actually a pretty easy goal, but not one our society is
| willing to pursue.
| curryst wrote:
| If you're willing to discard any objections to the contrary,
| it's also easy to fix on the other side too. Require rental
| contracts to be filed with the city like deeds are, and
| immediately remove anyone reported as trespassing in a place
| where they don't have a lease on file with the city.
|
| I think you're also ignoring that we're not out of housing.
| We're out of housing in the places many people want to live.
| If you go to Detroit, you can get a house for a song. Alaska
| will literally pay you for living there.
|
| There's a difference between having a place to live, and
| living somewhere you want to live. The former is easy to
| solve, the latter is hard to solve because demand is often
| driven by exclusivity.
| majormajor wrote:
| If you're homeless in Seattle how are you going to buy a
| house (or rent an apartment, even) in Detroit?
|
| You might argue that they should've made better decisions
| earlier - "my housing is precarious, time to move with my
| last few bucks before I'm totally out of money" - but then
| what is your proposed policy for dealing with bad
| decisions? Do you plan on doing things to try to prevent
| it? Or try to criminalize bad decisions?
| thebooktocome wrote:
| If rental contracts could be registered with the state and
| enforced that effectively, they could also be enforced
| against landlords who fail to uphold their obligations as
| enumerated the contract.
|
| I don't know a single regular on r/landlords who wants that
| to happen. Just today there was a landlord trying to force
| a tenant to pay for a window broken by an unaffiliated
| third party (collateral damage from a neighbor's domestic
| dispute) when the lease very clearly said the landlord was
| responsible.
| franga2000 wrote:
| You make it sound like people don't want to leave in these
| places just because they don't like the climate or
| something. They don't want to live there because they can't
| live there. Like yes, they could _survive_ there, but most
| people couldn 't get a decently paying job so even if you
| get a house for 1$, you're still brokr, just not homeless.
|
| If we want to have people to stop moving to big cities and
| live wherever they can afford, we need to have the
| infrastructure to allow people like that to work and
| socialise. I'd love to buy one of those 1$ houses (although
| these don't seem to exist as such in Central Europe) and
| move to some dying industrial town, but if that meant I'd
| have to work for minimum wage in that one local pub or gas
| station, and if there were no other people under 50 in a
| 100km radius, I don't think I'd last long there. I'd rather
| take my chances in the city.
| mopsi wrote:
| > _Like yes, they could survive there, but most people
| couldn 't get a decently paying job so even if you get a
| house for 1$, you're still brokr, just not homeless._
|
| Nobody owes you a beautiful life.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If there is lots of housing in places where there used to
| be good jobs then there isn't a lot of housing because for
| practical purposes. It's the same as replying to the issue
| of poverty with there are N good jobs unfilled when N is
| some small fraction of the number of people in poverty.
|
| It's trivially true that some can and in fact will climb
| out of poverty by accepting those N jobs and simultaneously
| true that most can't climb out of poverty via those jobs
| alone because multiple people can't accept the same
| position.
|
| Most of the people who are on the edge of not being able to
| afford <insert city here> can't all move away into the
| suburbs let alone Detroit because they can't earn enough
| money for all the things that aren't cheaper and it would
| cease to be cheaper as soon as collectively chose to do so.
| It is only cheap because its undesirable.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| The solution is for the police to uphold property rights and
| forcibly remove trespassers.
| option_greek wrote:
| I would say its two pronged. One is definitely helping the
| homeless but another has to be upholding law and order.
| Otherwise people like that guy the article mentions as
| minting 10k euros per squat is going continue whether he has
| a roof or not. Its a classic broken window syndrome. If a
| small crime is tolerated for any reason, it encourages bigger
| crimes or organized crime (like the stories about stores not
| calling cops in Cali due to lack of response).
| ausbah wrote:
| seems like a of the all to familiar trend of a lack of affordable
| housing in major cities + crime at the margins in the form of
| squatting empty lots?
|
| either way, seems like there needs to be some sort of tax if
| there properties that are just sitting empty while the
| homelessness keeps rising
| [deleted]
| rdtsc wrote:
| > And there continue to be rumours about the relationship between
| eviction companies and criminal squatter gangs. [...] "They might
| even be linked," says Michael Regan. "I've heard very strange
| stories - it is quite murky."
|
| Brilliant. Squat then cousin calls the owner and says, we can get
| rid of them, just pay us and then we'll pay them too. Rinse,
| repeat.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| This is the reason why it's ridiculously hard to just get a flat
| rented in Spain. Ever since covid it has gotten much worse. You
| will not believe the checks landlords and the agencies require,
| the bank needs to play along as well.
| popileviz wrote:
| Alternative title: Hired thugs abusing the hell out of homeless
| people living in empty lots
| p_j_w wrote:
| It's not any easier to be sympathetic to the point when the
| first victim in the article is someone who owns a vacation home
| that largely sits idle in a city with a housing shortage and
| problems of homelessness. Not that it's not a problem, but
| damned if that's not as tone deaf as anything I've read in the
| past month or two.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Truth is lots of them are violent and have connections with
| the, ahem, underground. Not-well-mannered boxers, bouncers,
| neo-nazis...
| beaconstudios wrote:
| seems like a combination of /some/ people being rendered
| homeless by high rents, and /some/ criminals making a living
| off extorting landlords. I have every sympathy for the former,
| and none for the latter. Seems like they have a similar issue
| to SF - lack of building new homes leading to insane house and
| rent prices.
| burlesona wrote:
| There's really only one way out of this mess, and that is for
| cities of the world to get serious about housing supply.
|
| First, in most cities, it is far too difficult to bring new
| housing units to market due to slow-moving non-deterministic
| regulation. Replacing that with efficient and deterministic
| regulation is the most important thing, so that over time the
| market can supply enough housing to bring prices down.
|
| Second, in strained housing markets (most major cities), property
| taxes need to go up significantly to reduce the utility of
| housing as an investment, and there especially needs to be a
| substantial tax penalty on vacant and semi-vacant (second, third
| homes etc.). There's no reason a housing strained city shouldn't
| use that mechanism to raise funds from the wealthy and discourage
| vacancy.
|
| Finally, cities that are sufficiently strained should impose
| significant hotel and vacation rental taxes. That's harder to
| implement ordinarily because it's not actually that easy for the
| government to tell the difference between a normal rental, short-
| term rental, and vacation rental. Also, short-term rentals are
| actually a healthy part of a local economy. But assuming that
| they started by making it much easier to build new supply and
| reduce the housing shortage, in the short term the city should be
| profiting wildly from tourists rather than letting tourists
| displace local residents. That tips the economic balance by
| lowering the demand for tourism to levels that don't distort the
| local housing market.
|
| Over time that should be able to bring housing supply and demand
| to an equilibrium that is affordable to the locals, and at that
| point taxes could be adjusted over time (likely reduced) to
| maintain the equilibrium.
|
| Sadly, most people who work in City government have a really poor
| understanding of economics. They lean utopian socialist and are
| really offended by things like low income housing which tend to
| be ugly, and so they strangely and unintentionally ally with the
| hyper wealthy to try and exclude anything that offends their
| aesthetic (ie the poor), then fail at providing state housing
| that has the aesthetics they prefer because it's economically
| infeasible to provide luxury housing for all. I wish this would
| change, but I fear that things will have to get much worse before
| this deeply entrenched dysfunction can be rooted out.
| elric wrote:
| You're absolutely right that (many? all?) cities need to get
| way more serious about housing supply. It's a difficult topic,
| and it seems to be a divisive one as well.
|
| Any property that is empty (and not actively being renovated
| etc) should be taxed to death. There is really no room for
| empty, abandoned buildings in urban areas. It's a huge waste of
| space and resources, and it's disgraceful that homelessness and
| abandoned buildings can coexist within the same city.
|
| There's a disturbing amount of negativity towards squatters in
| this entire discussion, calling them "scum" and whatnot. I hope
| none of these posters ever have the misfortune of becoming
| homeless. A squat is a damn sight better than living under a
| bridge somewhere.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I don't think empty properties are a big thing. The market
| makes that extremely unlikely. Got a derelict house in
| Boston? That's worth $500,000 cash. 6 months later there's a
| new house there.
| majormajor wrote:
| IME it's much more common in industrial or commercial or
| office areas.
|
| You can often spot the empty and vacant ones because
| they're the ones that are easier for local homeless to
| sleep in front of.
|
| Whenever I see that I wonder why we spend so much time
| fretting about single family zoning instead of targeting
| these underutilized currently-non-residential areas.
| thehappypm wrote:
| that makes sense, but I also don't see how it's a huge
| problem. Commercial/industrial space can't be easily
| converted to housing.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| That's great if you need $500k cash. If you have a spare
| home, this probably doesn't apply to you. Why take $500k of
| cash you don't need now when you can take $700k or more in
| ten years?
| thehappypm wrote:
| If you're savvy enough financially that $500k is not
| interesting to you, just holding, paying taxes and
| insurance, and hoping for appreciation is a terrible
| investment strategy.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is a pretty good strategy if it is just one of many of
| your assets, one where you can continue rolling into a
| higher value asset and never paying capital gains tax
| (1031 exchange).
| thehappypm wrote:
| For this to work you need at least some income -- in fact
| this is the business model of many parking lots! Buy some
| land, make a bit of cash flow, and if it appreciates cash
| out and someone builds a condo.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Interestingly, out in the more rural counties _here_ (not
| Spain), we still have squatter problems.
|
| I posit that there exists in the human population a percentage
| of people who will always try to get something for nothing, no
| matter how fair the prices might be. You might be able to lower
| some theft and squatting by policy, but that will not
| _eliminate_ that rock-bottom percentage of people, and
| therefore you must construct policy as to how to deal with that
| group.
| burlesona wrote:
| This is a good point, and I agree with you. Ultimately that
| comes down to the top comment - the legal system has to take
| care of these cases quickly and effectively, or else people
| will just end up with corruption and vigilante justice
| instead.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| There has been quite a lot of advocacy for a public housing
| model a la Vienna and better legal framework here in Spain.
|
| For some reason it just get dismissed in the left, as too
| expensive, and always gets overshadowed by arguments about
| price control.
|
| I even tried to get into a local party with this, and failed.
|
| All this while they advocate for increasing spending in all
| kinds of BS and and programs we already know are basically
| useless.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| logronoide wrote:
| The most shocking YouTube channel found last months is this one
| from one of these companies. They tried to produce a Reality Show
| showing their day in day out routines, but the broadcast networks
| rejected the project (they have obvious links with far right
| movements). Crazy stuff:
|
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVAJkoGT9A4Fbm3Tmzb06DF3-...
| reccanti wrote:
| A company full of strongmen committing semi-legal violence
| against poor people has ties to the far-right movement? I'm
| shocked!
| pope_meat wrote:
| I'm shocked, shocked I say.
|
| Don't you know, being a landlord leech is very hard.
| Sometimes you have to spend a portion of your income to do
| maintenance even.*
|
| * If legally compelled
| Hokusai wrote:
| "this has led to the rise of private eviction companies, some
| of which use threats to achieve their goal."
|
| Some times landlords rent without contracts, to not pay taxes,
| and claim that the renters are squatting to evict them. A lot
| of shadow business going there.
| lazyjones wrote:
| Europe has many broken laws that serve only to erode society. If
| you lose your rights to your own property because someone breaks
| into it, what's the point of owning real estate? Similarly,
| illegal migrants from some countries can just enter Austria and
| Germany, knowing they'll not be deported even if courts find they
| don't deserve asylum - and they will enjoy the benefits of those
| countries' social security systems, paid by the taxpayers. It's
| like well-known exploits that aren't being fixed on purpose and
| taken advantage of until the system breaks down.
| tehjoker wrote:
| boo hoo, owning property is less important than people having
| places to live. You can have your treats after everyone is
| housed.
| smabie wrote:
| Where do houses come from then?
| cynusx wrote:
| There always seem to be some sympathy in Barcelona for those poor
| people who can't afford apartments, but there is plenty of really
| affordable apartments on a train-ride's distance and they are
| extending the metro every year into new areas.
|
| Okupa's in Barcelona are now run by professional organizations,
| taking over a property and then subrenting to mostly latin
| americans who couldn't care less.
|
| They also happily engage in stealing electricity from their
| neighbors and shortcutting the water meters raising the bills for
| everybody else (Utilities are really expensive in Barcelona).
|
| Add to that that the mayor of Barcelona comes from the Okupa
| movement herself and she couldn't care less about people's
| retirement assets as they would never vote for her.
|
| There are real-estate investors buying apartments from old ladies
| who lost their extra pension income due to okupa's for cheap and
| then sending private services to expel the okupa's.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| There aren't plenty of affordable housing when you have large
| swaths of the population with unstable and low income.
|
| The spanish legal and economic setup is just bad. In fact I'd
| bet that most social spending done by Spain is basically
| useless, in that it helps basically nothing on social mobiity
| or capitalization of anyone depeding on them.
|
| My region, which I consider sloppy/clumsy at organizing
| anything, typically does a better job than the central state or
| other regions.
|
| My sister who lives in Ibiza requeted this new "basic income"
| for the pandemic, it only got a couple of months, and then got
| tangled into some administrative BS, and fined afterwards. So
| she has no income, and the rest of us (basically me, a low
| income worker and my dad, a pensionist) have to provide for
| her.
| cynusx wrote:
| Going for a year of holiday on the spanish governments'
| expense (paro) is definitely a thing.
|
| It is extremely common for employees to ask to be fired so
| they can get unemployment benefits (paro) and travel for a
| year.
|
| But, after living there for 6 years I left because the reason
| these things are not taken care of is because the electorate
| sees them as perks. Spain has a huge cultural problem when it
| comes to work ethics and paying their fair share of taxes.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Greece probably has Spain beat by a large margin in this
| regard.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Why do you provide for your sister to live in Ibiza instead
| of somewhere cheaper? If she has no income then she doesn't
| need to be there.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| She inherited a house there, it's the cheapest place to
| live for her. Not to mention she has kids etc.
| thebradbain wrote:
| There's many reasons someone needs to live somewhere, often
| unrelated to the financial reason or lack thereof.
| woah wrote:
| Why are there so many vacant apartments that this is a viable
| scam?
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Real estate speculation
| gotoeleven wrote:
| The legal system is largely to protect criminals from "extra-
| legal" law enforcement by wronged parties. When the legal system
| can't function properly, for whatever reason, it is criminals who
| are ultimately in the most danger.
|
| In the US, if police are given stand-down orders during mostly
| peaceful lootings and riots then a lot of looters are going to
| get shot.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| If you don't shoot:
|
| https://www.rt.com/usa/490322-dallas-man-attacked-sword/
|
| If you do:
|
| https://www.rt.com/usa/507442-kyle-rittenhouse-aoc-white-sup...
|
| If you do nothing:
|
| https://www.rt.com/usa/490043-minnesota-riot-aftermath-video...
| bprieto wrote:
| I was in Bolivia a few years ago and I saw a big sign at a town
| that said "Thief found, thief hanged". The person guiding me
| said that the people there actually believed in that.
|
| Lynching is what happens when there is no police and justice
| system.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Be careful with that thinking. It has undertones of ignorance
| and a blind faith in violence. The law is there to uphold the
| social contract of peace. For every crime, 'just' punishment.
|
| Looters don't carry guns because they don't intend on murdering
| anyone. They are petty thieves. The moment we start to think
| everyone should have a gun, the unscrupulous - who would be a
| harmless petty thieves otherwise - can be transformed into the
| devils you imagined.
|
| Tread carefully.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| That's definitely a large component of the legal system but I
| disagree with your implication that it is a primary purpose and
| assertion that the criminals are most endangered when
| enforcement is scant.
| sokoloff wrote:
| On a per-capita basis, I'd expect criminals would be at more
| risk in a devolution towards lawlessness.
|
| On a population-wide basis, non-criminals have much more to
| lose.
| sumo89 wrote:
| It's not just that the courts are bogged down meaning people can
| take advantage of the slow eviction process. A lot of places have
| a growing housing crisis, Barcelona especially, meaning there's a
| lot of people struggling to afford rentand being forced to look
| at less legal means of living in the city.
|
| https://www.bigissue.com/latest/barcelona-fights-housing-cri...
|
| https://www.catalannews.com/society-science/item/how-does-ba...
|
| https://www.uab.cat/web/news-detail/the-housing-crisis-terri...
| gammalost wrote:
| A person shouldn't be allowed to own two different homes. It's
| absurd that some have summer homes abroad while people in the
| country are homeless
| respondo2134 wrote:
| you're welcome to your opinion, and can support & promote this
| position, but you had better be prepared for me to make
| arbitrary limits around things you covet as well: no one needs
| more than one child / car / computer, $XXX retirement savings,
| n years of education, etc.
|
| For the most part free societies don't dictate directly but
| shape with the carrot and the stick.
| gammalost wrote:
| If a lack of cars, computers etc became a problem then I
| would be against people hoarding it aswell
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| Communist, you will end up in mass grave.
| umvi wrote:
| "inequality shouldn't be allowed"
|
| Well yes, in a perfect world, unfortunately trying to eradicate
| inequality with laws alone historically has had disastrous
| outcomes.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| What if a couple gets divorced?
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| I was quite surprised by this article. I have been out of the UK
| for quite some time and didn't realize the BBC had become a
| mouthpiece for the Tory. When did this happen exactly?
| bsanr2 wrote:
| >It was a reference to his holiday home in the Catalan seaside
| town of Sitges, and came from a neighbour.
|
| My sympathy plummeted.
|
| I'm expected to see this roundly rejected by the commentariat
| here, but I believe a serious conversation about the levels of
| inequality that allow wealthy foreigners to own desired property
| in countries where people are going homeless is perfectly
| reasonable and even necessary, as is taking the side that says,
| "This is egregious."
|
| >Javier claims he and his cronies target expensive apartments
| owned by finance companies and banks.
|
| >"I break in on a Friday. The following Monday, I call the bank
| and say, 'Hey you guys, I'm in your flat, and I'm going to
| destroy it. I can send you pictures if you like.' And the people
| from the bank say, 'Whoa - we're sending someone to see you.' And
| then that person comes and negotiates the price."
|
| Expect this in the US shortly. Americans will not stand being
| forced to rent the houses their parents built and owned.
| spfzero wrote:
| I wonder if this is an opportunity for paid house-sitters? You
| could have them sign a binding contract to prevent sitter from
| turning into a squatter. The house sitter gets free rent, the
| homeowner gets peace-of-mind.
| tehjoker wrote:
| If it ain't your primary residence, I honestly could not care.
| masterof0 wrote:
| Because people have the right to live for free in another
| person's property.
| umvi wrote:
| Because of the federal eviction moratorium in the US (and
| squatting laws in other countries), yes, people have the
| right to live for free in another person's property.
| [deleted]
| saltedonion wrote:
| This entire thread just reads MADNESS in bold. The hell is this
| law supposed to accomplish?!?!
| hn-is-life wrote:
| This angered me to the point of shaking, including one of the top
| comments in the thread detailing the madness of the law in
| France. I hope I never have to experience this myself. But Spain
| and France are garbage countries if they allow people's right to
| property to be violated in such a disgusting way. I am truly
| shocked and wish these squatters only ill
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Squatters are absolute scum of the earth. If you ever have the
| misfortune of dealing with them, they will absolutely impact your
| financial and mental well-being. My grandpa died and we had to
| deal with meth head squatters who moved into his place (in
| California) and it was easily one of the worst abuses of the
| legal system I've ever dealt with. You can basically just break
| into a property and put a toothbrush down and tell the cops you
| had a verbal agreement with the previous owner and there's not
| much the police/sheriffs can do without a court order which takes
| months and a lawyer ($$$$$). Meanwhile, the meth heads are
| destroying the property. I definitely would have hired some "hard
| men" if I could have to deal with the squatters if I had the
| option.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| I find this hard to believe. If they are drug users, for better
| or worse, you can have them arrested for possessing/making
| drugs.
| slothtrop wrote:
| No. It's a joke. The police a) don't want to deal with the
| liability of an overdose on their watch, b) don't want to do
| the hour's worth of paperwork for arrests, because they just
| turn them right back on to the street. Junkies plainly _do
| not_ get arrested most of the time.
| rvense wrote:
| Nor should they be. Drug abuse is a health problem. Unless
| someone is an immediate threat to their surroundings, the
| police should not be involved.
| Veen wrote:
| Drug abuse is a health problem. Breaking into people's
| homes, damaging their property, and then extorting them
| is a criminal problem. You don't get a pass on
| lawbreaking because you have health problems.
| slothtrop wrote:
| A different conversation, but if you want to talk about
| "oughts" vs the reality, squatters ought to be removed by
| the police.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Druggie squatters and shiftless cops? It sounds like your
| area has a cultural issue that you might want to work with
| neighbors and community officials to rectify.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Some cities are trafficking hubs. Drugs are everywhere.
| Effective deterrents for would-be users might include
| better support networks and opportunities both for work
| and social/active engagement, in a limited sense. Most
| would occupy varied low-income areas and consequently
| there develops microcultures of poverty, which includes
| drug abuse, but they have easy access to the rest of the
| city - they meander to those areas they want to squat.
| Breaking up these places geographically helps (as opposed
| to having large "projects"), but here again it's not a
| silver bullet.
|
| There's little the community can do legally, voluntarily
| and with few funds, to fight off a drug epidemic. If it
| were so easy this would have been done many times over.
| The frequent violent altercations (including stabbings)
| leaves people afraid of users as well.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| The answer has always been investment, but of course what
| is far more important is eking out that last 20 points
| for Bradyn's SAT score.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| HAHA! You've clearly not been to California recently. You can
| shoot heroin or smoke meth on in front of the state capital
| building and no one's going to stop you.
| willcipriano wrote:
| People openly deal and use drugs on the sidewalk, in plain
| view of police, in the jurisdiction where the OP's
| grandparent lived. The police will do exactly nothing if you
| tell them someone is using drugs in a private residence.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. This is absolutely
| the case. Big-time property owners like Blackrock don't care so
| much; they have the time and money and thousands of other
| assets to use the legal system for eviction. Small-time
| landlords (think somebody who bought a few properties to retire
| on the income) incur heavy, lifestyle-altering losses.
|
| The BBC article focuses heavily on a family that was
| fraudulently leased an apartment, which is a very sympathetic
| case; the criminals are unnamed, faceless grifters. But it is
| far more common that squatters are fully aware of what they are
| doing, and exploiting the slow pace of the legal system in
| whichever jurisdiction to get away with it.
|
| And yes, this happens in the U.S. too.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Likely people think it's not possible. Until you experience
| it firsthand, you'd think what I was saying was an
| exaggeration but it's not at all. I wish I was making it up!
| orra wrote:
| > I'm not sure why you are being downvoted.
|
| Well, they're equating all squatters with meth manufacturers.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| No I didn't, I called these squatters meth heads--they were
| meth users. They ripped the copper out of the walls and
| sold it for scrap and defecated in the tub until it
| overflowed. These were subhumans.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| I don't see that anywhere in the post to which I replied;
| they were telling a story about something that happened to
| a family member. I think you are being hyperbolic.
|
| Look, it's rough out there, but if it continues to be hard
| for the small-time owners--squatters are just one facet
| here--the only landlords left will be megacorps with
| 43-page contracts[0]. This will cripple one of the best
| paths for people from humble origins to build wealth.
|
| If you are some form of anarchist and don't believe this is
| a good cause, well, we have nothing to discuss. But if you
| understand that there's no way property rights are going
| away in the West, and you think the common person should
| share in them, the zeitgeist should concern you.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/magazine/wall-
| street-land...
| bprieto wrote:
| Actually, that is a big part of the rent problem in
| Spain. Getting rid of squatters is hard enough, but
| getting rid of a tenant that stops paying takes even more
| time and effort. And you are still legally bind to pay
| for utilities, even though you are not getting any money.
| So people prefer to have an empty house than to rent it
| to a person they are not sure will be a reliable payer.
|
| And if they decide to rent, that includes demanding the
| tenant has a stable job, running debt checks on them and
| asking for several months rent in advance, which makes
| more difficult to rent for people with low wages.
| orra wrote:
| > I don't see that anywhere in the post to which I
| replied
|
| Try again.
|
| They said "Squatters are absolute scum of the earth", and
| proceeded to prove that with an anecdote specifically
| about meth [manufacturing] destroying a house.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Try re-reading it. I didn't say anything about meth
| manufacturing, although it wouldn't surprise me.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| > Try again.
|
| Why so rude?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It starts with a general statement that 'squatters are
| the scum of the earth' and then uses the specific
| examples of some individual meth-head squatters to
| support that claim. The casual reader is likely to take
| away an inference that all squatters are somewhat
| similarly bad.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I've known someone who had to deal with this. Junkies can be
| impossible to evict, doubly so right now. They're
| overconfident, however. The key is to get them to sign a
| drafted agreement (you can get this on camera) and move
| everything out yourself, then have someone stay the night.
| They'll try to break in looking for drugs the same night, just
| call the police.
| [deleted]
| geofft wrote:
| They wanted a roof over their heads - a fundamental human right
| (UDHR 25) - and you just wanted your grandfather's property so
| you could sell something you never worked for to support your
| "financial well-being," i.e., you were looking to profit from
| the death of your own family.
|
| I think you're the scum of the earth, and you should be
| grateful that the squatters and their supporters don't have
| access to "hard men" to deal with people like you.
| goldenkey wrote:
| May your grandfather rest in peace. Sorry for what you have had
| to deal with. Far too many states have laws that protect these
| criminals to the extent that it takes years to do anything, and
| by that time the property is entirely destroyed.
|
| I was very helpful to homeless people for a long time. Last
| year I let a homeless man shower and sleep on my floor. Even
| after a shower, the man's stench was not gone. It literally
| seeped into the wooden floor, could not be bleached away, and
| the floor had to be pulled up and redone, costing thousands of
| dollars. This was just one thing in a slew of many marks
| against the homeless that made me realize my efforts were not
| of any actual value. Almost all the homeless I befriended and
| talked to were just drug addicts who did not care to change
| their lifestyle. I vowed to never make the same mistakes and no
| longer waste my time helping them.
|
| One of the homeless I knew, got so high he fell asleep while
| smoking a cigarette and lit his alcohol soaked squat on fire.
| He ended up in the hospital burn unit, despite not having
| health insurance. I felt bad and guided his homeless friends to
| the hospital. In the burn unit, he was laying there with bugs
| jumping around in his hair. His homeless friends, despite being
| told to put on hospital garb, were pretty much contaminating
| the whole unit with the amount of bacteria and bugs they
| harbored. These people are literally, a plague, on society.
| Sure, we can feel bad and source their current situation back
| to past trauma, or whathaveyou, but let's be real -- there is
| no way to help these people in the way that those who have
| never dealt with them think. Pretty much all of them hate
| capitalism and pretty much just live off the rest of us. In a
| small community like a tribe, they would be kicked out
| immediately and their fate would ultimately be their own.
|
| When I heard that states were giving free hotel rooms to
| homeless folks, it made me cringe. Many of the hotel rooms are
| going to require the entire carpets, mattresses, and other
| items to be destroyed. The hygiene of a majority of the
| homeless is so atrocious that they do nothing more than spread
| disease while destroying their bodies through drinking and
| drugging.
|
| [1] https://abc7ny.com/7-on-your-side-investigates-
| investigation...
|
| [2] https://abc7news.com/walgreens-san-francisco-sf-robbery-
| haye...
|
| "California's Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014 and
| lowered criminal sentences for certain nonviolent crimes like
| shoplifting and check forgery, is being exploited by those who
| want to commit theft. The initiative set a threshold of $950
| for shoplifting to be considered a misdemeanor, which doesn't
| prompt law enforcement to make an arrest, rather than a felony,
| which could incur harsh penalties like jail time."
| mschuster91 wrote:
| People who have property that is staying _so_ empty and unused
| that they don 't even notice that squatters move in and then
| resort to (heavily implied) violence threats should have their
| properties confiscated. This sort of behavior is abhorrent and
| anti-social, this is still Europe and not some sort of third-
| world country. If the legal system is too slow for these people,
| they should lobby for better laws!
|
| Clearly, the free market has failed here - an obvious amount of
| massive empty properties should, according to theories of supply
| and demand, lead to low rents. I have zero sympathies for
| "landlords" who rather let their properties sit unused than
| accept market-acceptable rents.
| detaro wrote:
| Someone doesn't become a "landlord who rather let their
| properties sit unused than accept market-acceptable rents" by
| owning a holiday home they aren't renting out, and aren't
| planning to rent out. "Should people be allowed to have holiday
| homes for exclusive use" is not the same question.
| jstanley wrote:
| Isn't that exactly how you become that?
| detaro wrote:
| Usually "landlord" is used to mean somebody who owns the
| property to rent it out. So it doesn't apply to a private-
| use holiday home, the leading example in the article as I
| understand it (but does to later ones).
| morsch wrote:
| Leaving properties unused long term is in fact illegal in some
| situations and places in Germany:
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wohnraumzweckentfremdung
| pas wrote:
| Sometimes people want to sell their property, move somewhere
| else, etc. For example someone inherits a flat. They want to
| sell it. It's empty. Are they forced to lend it out or accept
| that it'll be squatted and then it'll take years to be able to
| sell it?
|
| Vacancy tax as a concept seems interesting, but it seems hard
| to collect on it without a total centralized property and
| occupancy database. Plus it seems easy to have a few
| friends/relatives fake move into each of your vacant
| properties. (Though the tax might still make sense, because big
| real estate management companies will likely not engage in
| these workarounds, and thus it might help to put more units on
| the market with better rates.)
|
| The market is not free. Otherwise people were building all over
| the place, making all kinds of contracts and so on. Mostly it's
| good that they don't, but a modern tragedy of cities is the
| drastically underprovision of new high density development and
| mass transit investments.
| rvense wrote:
| Homeless, go home!
| corpMaverick wrote:
| This happens to us. We bought a property and it took us a month
| to move in. A family squatter in. If you tried to get them out
| with a judge order and the police, they will call their
| association and would have 50 people on call to resist. It took
| us 5 years, get a special favor and we had to pay them about
| 10% of the price of the house for them to leave.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| wow lot of money for those bastards. Next time local gang and
| give them a nice reminder
| reccanti wrote:
| People on Hacker News love to complain about NIMBYism, but then
| downvote a comment that points out a glaring market problem.
|
| It really shows that YIMBYism was never about empowering new
| homeowners or tenants, it's just about removing regulations and
| giving more power to the large property owners who rent them
| out.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't mean to pick on you specifically, I know this is a
| common genre of comment, but you really can't draw
| conclusions about the motivations of people who say one thing
| because of downvote patterns in a HN thread about some other
| tangentially related thing. How do you know they're even the
| same people, much less why they downvoted?
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Oh, they do notice.
|
| In Spain people have difficult saving money, and when they
| finally can, they buy property, as the financial markets in
| Spain are undereveloped, the spanish indices perform really
| bad, and until very recently wasn't easy to put money in other
| markets.
|
| So most property in Spain is owned by regular folks.
|
| Squatters come in different types. We could divide them in
| three groups.
|
| 1. Politically motivated. Only a tiny fraction, typically
| anarchist types that go after abandoned properties and the
| like.
|
| 2. People who "buy from mafias". There are people who look for
| vacant properties, break in, and "sell" the propertie to
| someone, for prices around 500EUR. This typically ends up with
| poor people living in, as the spanish institutions fail
| spectacularly providing either a good legislation for the
| market or provide public housing.
|
| 3. Drug selling points / conflictive people. They break in in
| whatever opportunity they have. In some areas they use the
| properties to sell drugs.
|
| If a Squatter breaks in, the problem is not only for the owner
| of the property, but for everyone around. You have to take into
| account that in Spain most people live in flats, and squatters
| break into flats, because flats are more abundant than detached
| houses.
|
| So if you live in a flat and somene breaks in near you, it may
| not be much of a problem with the type two, but there's
| definitely a problem for the other ones, specially when there
| is a drug selling point.
|
| So everyone, not only the owner, pressures to get this
| situations solved.
|
| Also, an empty property may not be possible to rent. It may be
| in bad shape so you can't rent it legally, because you don't
| have the money to repair it, and you don't find a buyer (a
| situation that happened in my family until very recently, that
| lasted for many, many years), or the financial risks are too
| high for the benefits you might extract, specially if you
| already have a low or unstable income (not rare in Spain),
| making it safer to just leave it empty.
|
| So in summary, this is a self-inflicted wound for Spain. The
| regulation is awful, as the market is basically controlled by
| municipalities, making land scarce and expensive, leading to
| only few high profit developments, almost non existing public
| housing, and high costs of property ownership for large swaths
| of the population.
| corpMaverick wrote:
| I might be naive. But I think high property taxes help keep
| house prices down. Either you pay for a mortgage or you pay
| property taxes. The speculators may still buy property, but at
| least the taxes go to the community.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| It sounds like this problem exists even if it's your only home
| and you live there full time. Go out for the day, come home,
| and the kind of person they interview could have broken in,
| changed the locks, and there's nothing the law will do about it
| for years.
| geofft wrote:
| That sounds theoretically possible, but it doesn't happen in
| practice, does it? (Which means that something is missing
| from this model of how squatters work.)
|
| Most of us leave our homes for the day to go to work and come
| back (or did, before 2020, at least). I don't know of a
| single case of someone returning home to find a squatter.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Breaking and entering is one thing but this sort of thing
| happens with roommates and house guests all the time. First
| hit on Google reveals: https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/nyc-
| grifter-roomie-spend-first... you can find plenty more.
|
| There have been cases were someone who was invited to spend
| the night has lived for weeks to months at a property
| without permission.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I hear this was a problem in Gaddafi's Libya
| bsanr2 wrote:
| One of the okupa they interviewed says that they purposely
| target corporate-owned, vacant properties. Slippery slope,
| sure, but kicking people out of homes they live in doesn't
| seem to be the goal as of yet.
| tecleandor wrote:
| In this case, in Spain, squatters can be immediately taken
| out of the property.
|
| Spain distinguishes between:
|
| 'usurpacion': That's what usually is called 'okupacion' and
| refers to invading a building/house/flat which is NOT
| currently serving as a home for somebody.
|
| 'allanamiento': When you invade a place which IS a home.
| i.e.: while in your office, in vacation, shopping, or even
| when you're inside.
|
| The case you're talking would be the second one, and in that
| case, the police could act and vacant the invader
| immediately.
|
| Some info if anybody wanna translate: https://red-
| juridica.com/diferencia-allanamiento-okupacion/
| zo1 wrote:
| One has to ask _why_ don 't the landlords rent these properties
| out for a cheaper price so they can find someone that is able
| to pay.
| [deleted]
| toss1 wrote:
| Why? >>an obvious amount of massive empty properties should,
| according to theories of supply and demand, lead to low rents
|
| While this might seem true in theory, the reality is
| obviously different - multiple companies and individual
| landlords find it economically viable to keep them empty some
| or most of the time.
|
| There can be many reasons for this. Maintaining a high-value
| property is not cheap, but maintaining it (and the
| neighborhood/area) as a high-value property can command
| disproportionally higher rents, more than enough to offset
| low daily occupancy rates. E.g., renting it out for 10 days
| every two months at $10K/night is far more profitable (+25%)
| vs keeping it fully rented out at $1000/week - and there's
| less wear-and tear, and those are low rates.
|
| >>can find someone that is able to pay
|
| the point is that if you build and maintain a property of
| sufficient value (view, amenities, etc.), there are plenty of
| people willing to pay enough to make it worthwhile, and they
| have the bank accounts to eliminate risk of non-payment. And
| it is often less of a hassle than trying to keep a place 100%
| occupied at low rent.
|
| And, if you are willing to do it as an individual, you can
| have a far better vacation home by occasionally renting it
| out than you might otherwise have.
|
| tl;dr: High quality, high rent, low % occupancy by time can
| be a better business model in the right locations.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In the US, snowbirds often live in New England/New York/upper
| Midwest in the summer and in Florida for the winter. Not many
| people want to only rent for the 6 suckiest weather months
| the places are otherwise empty (meaning such tenants can be
| hard to find, not willing to pay enough to make it worth the
| hassle).
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > The company started work three years ago and now gets 150 calls
| a day, says director Jorge Fe - 75% about tenants who aren't
| paying their rent, and 25% about squatters.
|
| So these are basically thugs performing extralegal evictions 75%
| of the time.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Maybe they are enforcing legal evictions?
|
| As a landlord, having an eviction order is only the first step
| in physically removing someone that isnt paying.
|
| It's a bureaucratic nightmare.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| There's not enough information to know for sure, but passages
| like this make me think they're not checking for paperwork
| before they evict:
|
| > He could wait for the courts to make a decision - that
| could take up to two years. Or he could go private.
|
| > "People advised me to hire a company that specialises in
| negotiating with squatters to get them out."
| [deleted]
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| France has probably the most fucked up law when it comes to
| squatting.
|
| Someone gets by effraction in an apartment/house, stay there for
| 48 hours and they are good to stay forever.
|
| If this is your primary apartment, the local government (prefet)
| is supposed to issue an order to get the people out. They do not
| (because plenty of important reasons - important for them of
| course). Police usually try to negotiate with the squatters.
|
| If there is a small child with the squatters getting them out is
| not possible at all. Except if you find them a replacement
| apartment. And they accept it.
|
| If this is not your primary housing, then you are completely
| screwed. Thee is almost no way to get the people out. We have
| from time to time in the news information about people who are
| trying to get their house back for years.
|
| If you try to move them by force, they will sue you and you pay
| 40,000 EUR plus prison. They can be sued for up to 12,000EUR (and
| prison - this has never happened)
|
| I love my country, but the brain-dead idiots who passed these
| laws should be publicly pointed to, with their home address, so
| that they can kindly invite the squatters to come when hey are on
| vacation.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I don't understand how this can possibly work. If someone can
| break into your house, occupy it, and gain the right to stay,
| can't you just do the same? Then you have two occupants in the
| house. What the heck kind of law or arbitration gets to
| determine who is allowed to occupy the beds in the house and
| use the kitchen?
| knodi123 wrote:
| They can't stay if you catch them fast enough. If you want to
| pull the same scam to get it back, you need to convince them
| to be gone long enough for you to live there a couple days,
| unnoticed.
| cmmeur01 wrote:
| So when the cops show up how is it not a he said she said
| situation? If I "break in" to my house, they call the cops
| on me as a "burglar" how does the cop know how long either
| party has been present?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Also - you can't deny them entry if they leave, and you
| have to keep your house in livable condition (as if you're
| a charity landlord).
| avidiax wrote:
| Can't you just break in, post a selfie to twitter saying
| "the squatters have left :)", leave, then break in 48h
| later and keep the place?
|
| I really highly doubt that the original squatters
| continuously inhabited the place, as though they were
| clinging to a new Kia in a radio contest.
| suifbwish wrote:
| Sounds like a way around this is to rig up some kind of
| high/low pitch directional sound system that prevents them from
| sleeping and goes through ear protectors. All you have to do is
| put it in the wall and set it to make its noise after a random
| duration between 5-100 mins has passed. If you added some
| accelerometer detection, it could even stop when it detects
| someone making any considerable noise near it. If they try to
| rip it out you can have them arrested for vandalism of private
| property.
|
| What are they going to do? Complain about it?
| strait wrote:
| Interesting idea, but I suspect that jurisdictions soft on
| squatters are almost certainly soft on vandalism and theft of
| contents caused by said occupants. Once the owner reclaims
| their property, it's then an uphill battle to prove and
| pursue damages against people who are long gone.
|
| Before an owner takes any action, they had best know what
| type of squatters they are dealing with. Some would be likely
| to set fire to the place on the way out (or not leave;
| perishing amongst the smoke and flames) if they are subjected
| to enough anguish.
| Taniwha wrote:
| rip out the walls to remove it ....
| orwin wrote:
| > Someone gets by effraction in an apartment/house, stay there
| for 48 hours and they are good to stay forever.
|
| That's not true. No mention of 48h anywhere. Only place i found
| it is here: https://www.service-
| public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F35254
|
| "Le prefet rend sa decision dans un delai de 48 heures, a
| partir de la reception de la demande." which roughly translate
| to "The prefect renders his decision within 48 hours of
| receiving the request."
|
| We have a family house that was squatted on the coast during
| last winter. We asked the squatters to leave (while redacting a
| letter to the prefect) and they too believed the "48 hour"
| stuff. The police did not however, and made them leave quite
| quickly (less than a week).
| jwilber wrote:
| Regardless, as an American reading this thread,it's strange
| how common an occurrence in France squatting seems to be.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Isn't it common in the California?
| SystemOut wrote:
| At 30 days they gain rights as a tenant. There was a case
| years ago of someone with an AirBnB I believe where they
| stayed longer than 30 days and then refused to leave
| claiming they had established the place as their
| residence.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| > That's not true. No mention of 48h anywhere.
|
| Please see https://immobilier.lefigaro.fr/article/ce-que-
| vous-devez-sav... and
| https://immobilier.lefigaro.fr/article/logement-squatte-
| pour...
|
| The 48 hours are a generally applied rule for the squatters
| to be differentiated from, say, burglars. Because otherwise
| someone forcibly coming into your house while you are there
| could not be arrested at all.
|
| The ones you mention is for the preefet to statute about the
| expulsion.
|
| > We have a family house that was squatted on the coast
| during last winter
|
| I honestly pity you. I know of two families whose house was
| squatted and it took months for them to get back their house
| (in a terrible state); They never got anything from the
| quatters (nor from the insurance in one case).
| mlcrypto wrote:
| That's why I have no desire to travel to Europe. It's
| completely run down and has the slimiest scams I've ever heard
| of. Not good to be a property owner these days. Bullish for
| Bitcoin
| bserge wrote:
| The whole of Europe, yeah, sounds reasonable.
| spoonjim wrote:
| My grandfather had squatters like this, he basically used a
| gang that specializes in evictions. They burst into the home in
| the middle of the night, forcibly removed everyone and their
| belongings from the premises, and threatened the family with
| violence if they attempted any legal proceedings.
|
| Crazy life in the countries without rule of law.
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah, well, gotta do what you gotta do. When the laws are
| completely fucked, you take matters in your own hands.
| Citizens of ex-communist countries know a thing or two about
| it.
| ummonk wrote:
| > I love my country, but the brain-dead idiots who passed these
| laws should be publicly pointed to, with their home address, so
| that they can kindly invite the squatters to come when hey are
| on vacation.
|
| I mean unironically the people affected by it should do this.
| bserge wrote:
| If the laws are idiotic, you can always employ people who work
| outside it.
|
| A team of Romanian/Bulgarian/Polish big guys will take care of
| your squatter problem for less than 1000 Euros. There's likely
| people of other nationalities doing this, I wouldn't know, I
| only dealt with these three and they operate everywhere.
|
| And no deaths or major injuries, of course, that's just bad
| business.
|
| Sadly there's no easy app for connection.
| skewedmap wrote:
| I think comment should sit on hackernews' wikipedia page for
| a while.
|
| @dang is this a new low or a new high for hn? how is this
| person not banned yet?
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| Oddly I have a simplistic view that this is how the Feudal
| system began. Meaning the populous realized their current
| government wasn't protecting their property and safety, so
| they got together and hired some people to do that for them.
| Over time those men took power for themselves. This theme is
| played out time and time again in history, if a government
| can't protect the property of its people it will eventually
| be replaced. Sadly this may take many decades to occur but
| the trend is there historically.
| ErneX wrote:
| There's a company famous in Spain dedicated to that, they
| appear on TV news constantly.
| why_Mr_Anderson wrote:
| We used to call them 'Russian lawyers'
| contrarianmop wrote:
| @dang any specific guidelines being violated here, or is this
| acceptable?
| jnosCo wrote:
| I think this has the same problem as all non-legal security.
| I can see entrepreneurial big guys deciding this a good
| business, and just paying some people a nominal amount to
| squat, while offering their services to the property owners
| to "remove them". Eventually, they don't even need the
| squatters in the loop, just "Nice place you got here. It'd be
| a shame if someone squatted in it."
| munk-a wrote:
| Or forcing out legitimate residents and becoming the
| squatters themselves. Privatized legal enforcement comes
| with a whole lot of problems.
| kazinator wrote:
| The problem is that the big guys will very soon figure out:
| hey, squatters good, make business for us! And before you
| know it, the thugs themselves are doing the squatting. And
| before you know that, the biggest thugs are doing that
| because they beat the weaker thugs in the squatting turf war:
| there are no bigger thugs you can call.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| You're not thinking far enough. Squatting property will
| only pay the bills. Stripping literally everything of value
| out of the property before using the husk as a pop-up drug
| lab is the way you make real money
| tptacek wrote:
| There's really no problem you can't solve, with the law or
| otherwise, by paying people to commit violence on your
| behalf.
| contravariant wrote:
| There are a couple, in particular I imagine violence won't
| be much help when the law has one of its psychotic episodes
| and refuses to reflect reality in a sensible way.
|
| So stuff like people being declared dead incorrectly,
| identity fraud. I'm also reminded of an incident in the
| Netherlands that lead to the fall of the current (still
| acting; it's complicated) government, where the tax agency
| was somehow convinced people had fraudulently received
| particular subsidies and decide to get the money back plus
| interest, which it turns out tax agencies are _very_ good
| at.
|
| Good luck finding anyone to beat up there. You can scare
| people but you can't intimidate red tape.
| bserge wrote:
| Well, unless you're going against someone much bigger than
| you.
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| Hit first, hit fast, hit hard.
| rokhayakebe wrote:
| _A team of Romanian /Bulgarian/Polish big guys will take care
| of your squatter problem for less than 1000 Euros._..., then
| they can squat in your house.
| tptacek wrote:
| But that's bad for business, see.
| bserge wrote:
| They could.
|
| Once you decide to go outside the law, you take
| responsibility, do your research and prepare as best as you
| can.
|
| See, these people don't exactly want to be criminal gangs,
| they just want a quick Euro for little risk.
|
| So, your house and you want to kick out squatters - yeah,
| sure. Someone else's house and you want them to break in -
| no way, we're not insane.
|
| _Most of the time_.
|
| If you deal with some crazy cunts, they can burn your house
| down.
|
| Generally why the legal way is preferable. But if you're
| desperate, you can look at alternatives.
| lovich wrote:
| Not gonna lie buddy but that's pretty fucked up of you.
|
| Where does this not lead to people paying more money to go
| beat you down if you try and evict them?
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| The citizen seized the the monopoly on violence to the
| state under the condition that justice is upheld. If that
| condition is violated, the contract between state and
| individual is broken.
| ISO-morphism wrote:
| > The citizen seized the monopoly on violence
|
| I think you meant to write "ceded". To seize is to grab
| hold of, to cede is to give away.
| 3GuardLineups wrote:
| Squatters are not likely to have the money for that
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Is there no risk of retaliation? They know who you are and
| where you live, and presumably, they do not have much to
| lose.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| For some values of 'fucked up'. Other societies may have
| different criteria for evaluating the relative priorities of
| housing and property rights.
| j1elo wrote:
| This reminded me of a funny (in a sense) video that got viral a
| while ago here in Spain, where someone had squatted on the
| apartment of some romanian dude. He was talking to the camera
| with a hammer on his hand: "spanish law says this or that, well
| we are going to solve this with romanian law, which says that
| you do not screw with me"...
|
| Blows the door lock away with the hammer and proceeds into the
| premise. I would love to know what happened afterwards, but I
| can imagine.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| The problem in France is that we have a completely surrealist
| approach to property.
|
| If you want to get back to _your_ house, police is going to
| stop you because you are entering by effraction when someone
| is _lawfully_ permitted to stay in a place that belongs to
| someone else.
|
| These squatters will sue you. They have the right to live
| somewhere, so _your_ place is as good as anything else.
|
| They have children, so they have more rights than you for
| _your_ house.
|
| They can destroy everything, and you should be happy to get
| back a ruin.
|
| Like I said, I truly love my country but this is one of the
| few things that drive me completely crazy and where I
| understand violence of people getting back their house (like
| the Romanian dude)
| Natsu wrote:
| What happens if one were to help these folks get into the
| house of a politician or three?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Can one break in when they are on vacation and squat it
| back for 48 hours to reclaim?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Not. The 48 hours rule is fake news
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I actually asked the question to police once (or enter by
| force and just stay there). They did not know.
| advrs wrote:
| I would imagine the intent of this "surrealist approach" is
| to disincentivize the commodification of housing (as a form
| of political pressure against consolidation of large real
| estate portfolios)
| munk-a wrote:
| It'd be really interesting to see some laws like that in
| Canada - if only by the letter - as a way to discourage
| buying empty homes for investment.
|
| From reading other points in the thread it seems like
| owning a home for investment in France is an extremely
| risky proposition.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| We rented a house from friends (well, really their father's
| estate who had died the year prior, it was put up in a school
| auction) outside Nice a few years back. They had a caretaker go
| by the house a few days before we were to arrive only to find
| evidence someone was living there. It was supposed to be
| vacant. The squatters were (very luckily) not there at the time
| and they called the police right away. The police said make
| sure they can't get back in or else you will be in court for 2
| years trying to get them out. They hired a company to sit guard
| 24/7 and locked up the house and sold it as quickly as they
| could. When they first told us we were like oh it's ok we will
| stay there if you got them out! I am glad they insisted that
| was a bad idea and found us a new house, the squatters tried to
| get back into the house a few times because it turns out they
| had hidden some drugs there. The good news is that my friend
| and his brother came over to sort out the mess and we were able
| to hang out for a few days! Great town except for all the
| squatting :)
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| This is from the same country that bans (and will criminally
| charge "fathers") for performing a paternity test. [0]
|
| Wait until they learn about Stand Your Ground laws... [1]
|
| [0] https://www.ibdna.com/paternity-testing-ban-upheld-in-
| france...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| This is incorrect. You can have a paternity test in France,
| in a lawful context.
|
| The regulations (in French) are here: https://www.service-
| public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F14042
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Is suspicion that your child is not yours a "lawful
| context"?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| One cannot perform of procure a paternity test. Only a
| judge can order it. This is exactly what I said.
|
| So the judge can simply say no and the (legal) father is
| now on the hook. And furthermore, the legal system will
| manufacture a criminal if the legal father decides to test
| his own DNA with the one of his alleged (for whom he is
| financially responsible) child.
| suifbwish wrote:
| What if a third party performs the test?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Doesn't matter, even outside of France, the results won't
| be able to be used. Worse, the person who got the test
| can get fined or even jailed for it.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Did anything remotely ever happened?
| ajay-b wrote:
| It amazes me that the law would allow someone to simply claim
| someone else's dwelling as their own. I understand on one side we
| must have tenant protections, but the definition of a tenant
| should be updated to one that is legally entitled to be within
| the dwelling by the say of the owner. Because in many American
| states, it is a perfect formula for extortion.
| mcherm wrote:
| As I understand it, that is basically how it works in the
| courts in many US states. The court takes several months to
| schedule and hold the hearings to determine whether or not the
| person is, in fact, legally entitled to be in the dwelling. If
| not, then the landlord can file different orders to get the
| sheriff or other law enforcement to perform the eviction. By
| the time all the steps have occurred it's been many months...
| sometimes 1-2 years. Which is why the advice I see given to
| landlords is to offer "cash for keys" to get the people out
| without a court case.
|
| It has been worse recently because of moratoriums on evictions
| (due to covid). In many cases, that meant that the people
| occupying the dwelling had no incentive to pay anything at all,
| and no process existed to remove them.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I cannot imagine in the US it bring more than a simple police
| call to remove randos from your property. This is very
| different from evictions where someone had been legally
| living there.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Clearly there is potential on both ends for abuse. To me this
| story highlights that there are a surprising number of
| unoccupied/rarely occupied apartments and homes. To me it's
| surprising that it wouldn't be in the interests of the owners
| to be renting them instead of leaving them empty (obviously
| that's a bit different when we're talking about a cottage on
| the beach or in the mountains, but why leave a flat in town
| empty?) My instinct is there must be a combination of perverse
| incentives that makes having paying tenants actually less
| appealing than letting dust gather. In a better world the flats
| wouldn't be empty to be squatted in by crooks or desperate
| people?
| cortesoft wrote:
| > but why leave a flat in town empty?
|
| In places with rapidly rising housing prices and strict rent
| control, it would be better for a speculator to hold the
| property empty rather than rent it. If you rent it, you lock
| in the rental price, even if prices go up a lot. If you keep
| it empty, you can wait until it appreciates the amount you
| want, and then rent or sell it.
| jdasdf wrote:
| It's not surprising at all when you understand that these
| laws and regulations are so stringent that they cause massive
| costs to landlord who want to rent, so much so that it is
| almost financial suicide to try and do it.
|
| My parents own some apartments and offices, and having seen
| the issues they have had with them, despite having for the
| most part good faith tenants, i know for a fact that when
| they pass and i inherit their assets i will liquidate them
| all and never get involved in any form of real estate in
| Portugal.
|
| I do this not because I don't want to, but because the ever
| changing laws, confiscatory taxes and public ill-will on
| landlords makes it a stupid proposition.
|
| Good intentions generally have terrible results.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _these laws and regulations are so stringent that they
| cause massive costs to landlord who want to rent_
|
| I would argue that the laws and regulations are sort've
| working as intended in that they deter renters.
| Unfortunately it also isn't working as intended in that
| it's _not_ encouraging primary residency. So you end up
| with the worst of both worlds: neither renters nor
| homeowners.
|
| Personally, I am strongly of the opinion that renting for
| more than a temporary amount of time should be very
| strongly discouraged; that people should own their place of
| residence; and the correlation that there should be very
| few landlords over renters. But I can see how that can be
| bad for some types of economies...
| hawk_ wrote:
| it's the same tenants protection laws that keeps these
| apartments empty. someone can move in, pay rent for a month
| or two and then stop. good luck getting them to leave.
| majormajor wrote:
| If they pay month for a month that seems better than them
| paying rent for no months using the squatting path?
|
| Letting good property sit empty when there's affordability
| crises because it's an "investment" and you're just waiting
| for the ability to charge more, say, is tragic.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I agree it's tragic, but there's more than the
| speculator's side to this:
|
| I'm currently in the market for a home (SFBAY), one that
| could also house my aging parents in the future, so that
| they're not forced to move away to a LCOL location if
| they don't want to. Because of this, I'm looking at
| purchasing a duplex or a home with an in-law unit.
|
| Due to extremely powerful tenant protection laws in the
| city I'm looking to buy in, I am not considering
| purchasing units that are tenant occupied, and am willing
| to pay a _significant premium_ for a vacant unit vs an
| occupied one.
|
| This isn't a comment on tenant protection laws
| themselves, but a note that both sides value a vacant
| unit over an occupied one in highly regulated markets.
| bigbob2 wrote:
| You're claiming that tenant protection laws are the reason
| apartments are kept empty? That seems like a pretty tall
| claim. Why would someone even continue to own a space that
| they feel they can't rent out because they disagree with
| the laws? Speculation on future prices is the only reason I
| can think of. Introduce a tax penalty for units/buildings
| vacant longer than X months. There would be more incentive
| for property owners to lease out units if it was costly not
| to do so. Eroding protections for the most vulnerable class
| of people doesn't seem like the best way to reduce upwards
| market pressure on something that basically everyone needs
| to survive.
| franga2000 wrote:
| That's breach of contract and you can sue them. Have it say
| something like "The obligation is terminated only after the
| tenant has moved out and returned the keys". If they stay,
| you can sue them for not paying rent since they're still a
| tenant. If they return the keys, immediately change the
| lock and enable the alarm. If they break in, you can sue
| them for damaging your property and they also get
| criminally charged with B&E.
| Matheus28 wrote:
| There's a thing called being judgement proof. These
| people don't have the money to give you even if you win a
| judgement.
| respondo2134 wrote:
| not sure if you're talking hypothetically or from
| experience, but (depending on jurisdiction) trying to
| "sue a tennant" is really, really hard. In Canada most of
| the laws protect the tennant, making trying to evict
| someone next to impossible. It can take months to years,
| and they will most likely do thousands of dollars of
| damage to your property.
| rurp wrote:
| I don't understand why it would be easier to sue and
| remove a delinquint tenant than a squatter.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The real reason for squatter's rights is to prevent rug-pull
| scenarios, where someone resides in a place for some period of
| time under good faith but themselves get scammed or otherwise
| exploited in the process.
|
| This then runs into obvious problems when the police use it as
| an excuse to just not bother with short-term situations that
| obviously don't fall under actual squatter's rights precedents.
| bgorman wrote:
| It seems like there is an emerging western world trend of people
| being unable to afford their home, landlords being unable to
| enforce their property rights, and housing activists opposing new
| construction and rent increases.
|
| Generally all these issues seem to be made worse by restrictions
| on new housing development, land use restrictions and a large
| indigent population who cannot afford housing with their current
| wage earning ability.
|
| For now it seems like the government's preferred solution is to
| not address the root causes and let landlords slowly incur losses
| and wealthier renters pay through the nose. I believe governments
| should be doing the exact opposite, they should have landlord and
| development friendly laws. The alternative seems to be mass
| homelessness and general societal decay. No one will invest in
| real estate if property rights cannot be enforced. However,
| indigent voters are a large vote bank. In California, 60% of
| adults paid no income tax in 2020.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Real estate shouldn't be an investment. Just let people own the
| homes they live in. Everything else should be well-regulated
| perhaps even by government monopoly (e.g. first hand contracts
| in Sweden, or council houses in the UK).
|
| The entire reason we have such issues is because housing has
| become such a popular investment.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > No one will invest in real estate if property rights cannot
| be enforced.
|
| Good! "Real-estate as investment" is one factor responsible for
| the above-inflation rise of property values. It's part of why
| housing is unaffordable in so many areas. Non primary
| residences should be taxed out the nose.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Nonsense. You reduce house prices by increasing supply via
| construction of apartments, and potentially having a land
| value tax. You don't do it by undermining property rights.
| This just makes everyone's reality a living hell and doesn't
| solve anything. What a truly sinister worldview you've
| adopted.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| While I find your proposal agreeable I feel bound to point
| out that it's not really happening, and meanwhile
| abusive/exploitative property investment practices are
| going on day by day. I think in many jurisdictions too much
| importance is attached to property rights and that is
| exploited by wealthy individuals and corporate actors to
| the great detriment of their neighbors and the health of
| the economy.
| arodgers_la wrote:
| Do you have a source for that number? It sounds wrong. Most
| people have income tax withheld on their paychecks. That is
| paying income tax.
| duxup wrote:
| What is the law in Spain for squatting?
|
| In the US for most states squatting doesn't really 'pay' as
| legally you have to occupy the location for a relatively long
| period of time, maintain it, sometimes even pay taxes regularly
| before you have any real rights at all.
| thehappypm wrote:
| In the US to get actual squatter's rights you need to be
| somewhere for years and basically not get noticed or requested
| to leave at all. The idea is pretty interesting: if a piece of
| property is being completely unused to the point where its
| legal owner does not even know someone is living there, it's
| better for society for the squatter to live there and keep an
| eye on it, and it doesn't even really negatively impact the
| legal owner because how can they possibly care about a place
| they never visit?
| seoaeu wrote:
| Yeah, adverse possession laws which kick in after
| years/decades of using some property make a lot of sense. You
| can even think of them as a sort of statute of limitations on
| property disputes
| Digory wrote:
| You can gum up an eviction in the States for several months on
| very flimsy grounds. "We had an agreement" is sometimes enough
| to get the police to go away, requiring a lawsuit.
|
| The real experts find a target and record fake deeds, almost
| guaranteeing a year or two.
|
| Add in the federal "moratorium," and landlords or sellers in
| this market will often pay for them to leave.
| respondo2134 wrote:
| By the US definition this isn't squatting, it's more B&E
| followed by extortion.
| john_yaya wrote:
| I think the goal of the squatters isn't to own the property,
| it's to just get a roof over their heads and extort the owners
| in the process. They've carefully chosen a legal zone where
| they have a lot of room to maneuver.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Most of the squatters aren't trying to extort, they're just
| trying to get somewhere to live for free or for cheap. Yeah,
| some are freeloaders, but lots of them have lost their jobs
| and/or are suffering the combination of the crisis and the
| spectacular surge of pricing on real estate this last years.
|
| Even with this problems, squatting incidence have been
| falling on the last 5/10 years.
| llampx wrote:
| > Most of the squatters aren't trying to extort, they're
| just trying to get somewhere to live for free or for cheap.
| Yeah, some are freeloaders, but lots of them have lost
| their jobs and/or are suffering the combination of the
| crisis and the spectacular surge of pricing on real estate
| this last years.
|
| So much speculation. Do you have any proof for these
| claims?
| slothtrop wrote:
| They squat because houses are nicer and more spacious to
| live in, not for lack of any place to stay. On top of
| extortion.
| tecleandor wrote:
| I didn't say it's for lack of space, I said it's for a
| lack of money. In fact, more than 10% of the homes in
| Spain are vacant.
|
| I think you may be talking about your experience in a
| different country or about a very concrete personal
| experience, and not in general.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Could Spain not increase taxes on vacant/vacation/second
| home properties to fund efforts to reduce homelessness
| and provide affordable housing?
|
| Some of these folks own two, three, and four homes that
| are sitting empty.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| They did. Also, municipalities tax by property ownership.
|
| They don't do it more because they know most vacant
| property is owned by regular folks.
|
| It's just a supply demand problem here. People in Spain
| just refuses to believe it because there are some
| narratives circulating, specially in the left, about how
| the housing bubble ruined spain so constructing is
| speculation and bad capitalism yadda yadda.
|
| They don't want to hear about public housing neither
| because "it's expensive" while they advocate for more
| public spending in other useless stuff. They want price
| control and such.
|
| The whole situation is just so stupid.
| llampx wrote:
| Sounds exactly like the left in Berlin
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Do you have some citations you could share? I would love
| to educate myself on the situation in depth.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Uff man, I don't know if there's any resource that
| summarizes any of this, or at least I don't know any.
|
| Do you read spanish? I may find something for you, but
| probably not soon.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I do. No rush. Thank you.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Fair enough
| seoaeu wrote:
| Interesting hearing the situation in Spain! In the US,
| you sometimes see arguments centered around there being
| lots of vacant housing, but they usually neglect to
| mention that a significant majority of those units are
| actually either (a) so rundown they're actually
| uninhabitable, (b) empty for a month or two between when
| the old tenants leave and the new tenants move in, or (c)
| in middle-of-nowhere cities/towns that don't have any
| jobs.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > What is the law in Spain for squatting?
|
| Totally different as represented here. The "48h or is mine" for
| example is a rumor that journalists love to repeat, very good
| FUD element, but is false. The laws don't say that. Journalists
| know it of course, but they spread the rumor from time to time,
| because outrage attracts eyeballs.
|
| This is a very local problem, maybe in tourist flaws, and empty
| houses or factories owned by banks, not so much to private
| homes, neither main or secondary. You can find outrageous cases
| in private homes involving vulnerable poor people that rent
| some room to the wrong people, or local politicians or judges
| that choose not to act, but is not the general rule. If you see
| some TV channels or tabloids it seems that is happening
| everywhere and that the police don't do anything of course, but
| it depends a lot on the place.
| tecleandor wrote:
| You don't get any legal rights over the property even after
| long periods of time (as in some countries or US states that
| give you rights kind of similar to a tenant if you stay long
| enough).
|
| Here you can only wait to get evicted, and that'll happen
| sooner or later. But as right now the courts are understaffed
| and overworked, it's more later than sooner. Probably between a
| couple months to two years.
|
| Also, during the pandemics, evictions were suspended to avoid
| situations of people loosing their jobs, and then their homes
| and having no surviving options in the middle of a lockdown,
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You don't get any legal rights over the property even after
| long periods of time (as in some countries or US states that
| give you rights kind of similar to a tenant if you stay long
| enough).
|
| Adverse possession actually gives _title to the property_ ,
| not "rights kind of similar to a tenant".
| tecleandor wrote:
| Ah sorry, I was thinking of the "tenant-after-30-days-in-a-
| hotel-room" laws and some other examples in Europe that are
| different.
|
| Thanks for the correction.
| jknz wrote:
| If you leave the property unattended and squatters move in,
| after 48h of them being on the property, you cannot have law
| enforcement kick them out and have to use the courts for months
| of proceedings.
| mreezie wrote:
| I clearly don't understand all the dynamics here - but this
| seems completely ludicrous. So I go away for a weekend,
| someone breaks into my home, and when I come back I am
| homeless? Where is the delineation between "someone breaking
| into my home" and "squatting"?
| [deleted]
| jknz wrote:
| To avoid confrontation in the 48h window, a good squatter
| strategy is to target summer or weekend houses that have
| typically other weekend houses next to it so that
| neighbours aren't there and won't alert the owner.
|
| Then squatters move in in two steps. First they do a small
| break in and leave, observing whether someone notices and
| fixes the first break in. If the first break in goes
| unnoticed, it is probably safe to move in, change the locks
| and squat there permanently as nobody will confront them in
| the 48h window.
| ectopod wrote:
| It's difficult.
|
| Sometimes in England a landlord will be attempting to
| illegally evict a lawful (non-squatting) tenant, so the
| tenant calls the police for help and is surprised when the
| police assist in the illegal eviction! Obviously this is
| not supposed to happen. The police should not be evicting
| people just because some random told them he owned a
| property and it was being squatted.
|
| On the other hand, the legal situation for evicting
| squatters in your home isn't so bad here. You have 28 days
| after you find out you are being squatted, and the eviction
| only takes 24 hours.
|
| Unless you register all tenancies with the state (which
| seems like massive overreach) how can the police quickly
| determine the lawful possessor?
| jdasdf wrote:
| >Unless you register all tenancies with the state (which
| seems like massive overreach) how can the police quickly
| determine the lawful possessor?
|
| You already effectively have to do that, landlords are
| supposed to pay taxes on the rent, and people are
| required to register where they live.
| rurp wrote:
| Property ownership is public information, in the US at
| least. I bet many/most of these situations could be
| solved by simply verifying that the evictor is the
| property owner
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Bringing a toothbrush and knowing your rights. If make it
| look like you're living there and say you have a verbal
| agreement, cops will let the courts handle it.
| temp50010 wrote:
| This refers specifically to adverse possession and differs by
| state. If memory serves New York is 10 years, Texas is measured
| in months, both require real improvements to the property and a
| formal legal process.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| In the US it might end as soon as the squatters are found
| trespassing illegally on someone's property, especially if the
| homeowner notices a forced entry (could be reasonably
| interpreted as an intention of harming the occupants) [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law
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