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Comment by diogenescynic | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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!

> I’m not sure why you are being downvoted.

Well, they're equating all squatters with meth manufacturers.

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...

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.

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.

All squatting is scummy behavior.

Only your own point of view is valid, I see.

Tautologically so

> 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.

> Try again.

Why so rude?

You unfairly called me hyperbolic.

Try re-reading it. I didn't say anything about meth manufacturing, although it wouldn't surprise me.

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.

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."

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.

I find this hard to believe. If they are drug users, for better or worse, you can have them arrested for possessing/making drugs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A different conversation, but if you want to talk about "oughts" vs the reality, squatters ought to be removed by the police.

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.

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.

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.

Throwing money at the problem is naive unless it's well thought-out.

Throwing money at the problem is exactly what rich people do with their problems and it seems to work out fine for them.

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.

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