"We are putting an end to the squatters scam in Florida," DeSantis declared. "What passes muster in New York and California is not passing muster here," he said. "You are not going to be able to commandeer somebody's private property and expect to get away with it. We are, in the state of Florida, ending the squatter scam once and for all."
Let's be clear: the term "Squatters Rights" is a total joke. It's been thrown around in comedy shows and misreported by the media, but it's a myth. No state in America allows people to just seize and occupy a vacant property. What some refer to as "squatters rights" are actually adverse possession laws, and they're for abandoned properties, not ones that are temporarily vacant.
Venezuelan TikTok influencer Leonel Moreno, an illegal alien known for his viral videos advocating squatting, was recently arrested by ICE. Moreno had gained notoriety for claiming to bilk the US taxpayers while he flashed hundred dollar bills. "You're hurt because I make more than you without much work while you work like slaves, understand?" he said. "That's the difference between you and me. I'm always going to make lots of money without much work, and you're always going to be exploited and miserable and insignificant. Just 834 Venezuelans were deported, as per data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), even though border encounters exceeded 335,000. Moreno’s last tiktok before he was arrested showed him crying, with snot dripping down his nose as he begs for mercy. I’m sure with Biden he’ll get it, but at least he won’t be plying his grift in Florida.
The situation has exploded since the pandemic, with a suspected fourfold increase in squatter-occupied homes. And what's causing this surge? Modern technology, which was supposed to make life easier, is now a squatter's best friend. Self-showings in real estate are a prime example. Prospective tenants can waltz right into properties using access codes and then decide they're not leaving. And then there’s the ease of creating fake lease documents online. Squatters are exploiting these to the hilt, showing them to police, who are then unable to take immediate action. This leaves landlords in a lurch, having to slog through a legal nightmare that can drag on for half a year or more.
Take Tim Arko's case near Atlanta. He spent seven agonizing months and a lawsuit to evict squatters from a property he managed, losing $1,800 a month in rent and facing serious property damage. And when he tried to protect his property, he was the one detained by the police! Why? Because he was carrying a firearm for his own protection.
But here's where the strength of the market and American ingenuity shines. "Squatter Hunters," started by Flash Shelton, is tackling this problem head-on. Shelton and his team take matters into their own hands, occupying properties to keep squatters out. They’re available for private consultations, or direct action. It's about time some private citizens stood up and did something, considering how our system is failing property owners.
The modern crisis we’ve found ourselves in started with those pandemic-era eviction moratoriums, completely freezing evictions for months, even years. Take Los Angeles, for example, landlords couldn’t pursue non-payment evictions until January of this year. Now, courts are swamped, trying to clear the backlog while new cases pile up. Hundreds of thousands of backed up cases are sitting waiting to be adjudicated in NYC alone. During the pandemic, the government-imposed eviction freezes set the stage for this problem. Landlords were left to deal with non-paying and sometimes even abusive tenants, with no legal recourse to remove them.
Adding to this debacle are those right-to-counsel laws giving tenants free legal representation, intentionally clogging the system even further. Most evictions are clear-cut non-payment cases, yet tenant lawyers are playing games, prolonging cases to squeeze landlords. They're essentially blackmailing property owners into paying tenants to vacate.
And then there's the infuriating situation where landlords, who took government funds during the pandemic to cover unpaid rents, are being forced to drop eviction cases. Often, these same tenants return to their old ways of not paying, leaving landlords to restart the whole eviction process from scratch.
Though the moratoriums have ended, the madness continues. Many states and cities have baked these disruptive policies into law. Look at Los Angeles: landlords can't evict non-paying tenants who've applied for housing assistance or even those who've violated lease terms by getting pets. These aren’t outright "squatters' rights," but they might as well be. They're part of an ever-expanding set of "tenant protections" that are stripping landlords of their actual legitimate and lawful rights – who to rent to, how much to charge, and whether they can even remove their property from the rental market. In short, it’s only a matter of time before we start hearing news of violent encounters between landlords and squatters if more states don’t follow DeSantis’ example.
