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Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand why people like this are considered “squatters” and not trespassers. They should be removed by force if unwilling to go peacefully.

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> "The occupation of a person’s non-residential property without their permission is not a crime in England, though police can take action if crimes are subsequently committed, including damaging the property or stealing from it."

> "...if you want to get us out you will have to issue a claim for possession in the county court or in the high court."

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/13/squatters-yo...

I fail to see how taking up residence in the property without a lease or paying money to the owner isn’t stealing.

How do other business in England prevent this? When a store closes in the evening, what is stopping someone from breaking in and claiming occupancy? It doesn’t seem like society can function like this.

I normally don’t advocate for violence, but in cases like this, it seems necessary.

Property rights are human rights.

https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law/squatting-in-nonresidential...

I'd expect that both "causing damage" and "not leaving when they’re told to by a court" are doing the heavy lifting in practice.

If what they're doing, as they claim, isn't illegal then let the courts decide it and set precedent for others. You can't go arbitrary advocating violence outside the bounds of the law, of it's against the law they should be kicked out, if it's not against the law let property owners get the laws updated.... I'm sure as a class they've got plenty of sway in the UK.

This is happening more in the U.S. (or at least being reported more). Getting these people out can take weeks to months using the court system. If the police aren't willing or able to evict trespassers, I suspect that people who can't afford to have their property tied up for that long will resort to . . . private eviction services.

This already happens in Spain. It is very common that the private eviction services negotiate rather than force them out. And the negotiation is basically a piece of the payment, say, they might split 2.5k/2.5k and both squatter and evictor go home happy, and the owner is 5k worse off.

They obviously often know each other, but as far as I known, they have never found them being explicit accomplices.

> I suspect that people who can't afford to have their property tied up for that long will resort to . . . private eviction services.

Are they itching to spend time in prison?

One I saw has the owner rent the house to someone, who then moves in with the squatters. Since the renter has rights to be there, the squatters can’t really do anything, and then eventually get annoyed and leave. Once they are gone, cancel the lease and you have the house back.

I worked for a top tier bank back in the day and I remember when squatters took over a neighboring building that (I think) the bank owned but was empty. It took months to get the squatters evicted, and we were reminded weekly to not disturb the squatters. I found the whole situation quite absurd.

You could equally find it absurd with current rent/property prices that a building is empty. Don't get me wrong, if I was a property owner, I'd probably argue the other way. But I'm very worried nowadays whether my kids will ever have affordable housing when they become adults.

This goes back to old common law, and is also why the U.S. does this. There isn't a registry for renting, it's private contracts between private individuals. The only way to validate a contract dispute is via civil litigation.

It's a core example of how the foundations of western society were not built for, and failed to evolve for the population and socioeconomic problems of today.

To take this explanation a step further: the intuition that someone should have is that the police can't meaningfully do anything here, since they're not equipped (much less competent) to evaluate private agreements without an independent finding of fact from a court.

Generalizing the GP's desired outcome here would be a civil liberties nightmare: the police would either need to be informed of every private deal I make (no thanks), or would be empowered to determine on the spot whether I'm "rightfully" living where I say I do. Most people would rather have a society with occasional squatters and winding legal decisions than one where the police can snoop your lease agreement or unilaterally kick you out of your house in the middle of the night.

What’s so special about rent here that makes it so difficult for police to evaluate? Surely rent is not particularly confounding compared to, say, theft or kidnapping.

Rent is determined by a private contract, like GP said. It doesn’t even have to be a formal contract in most countries. It’s essentially a civil concern and not a criminal one, unlike theft or kidnapping.

Couldn’t this logic then be extended to anything? People could steal anything with impunity.

The police can’t prove I didn’t have an informal agreement to be the sole operator of your car, for example. For kidnapping, how can they prove I’m not just a baby sitter?

If we are going to take people at their word, why would buildings be put in a different class than people or things?

I get not wanting people with a legitimate claim to a building to be kicked out, but in the case of a building like this, wouldn’t zoning issue prevent it from being used as housing? Even if there was an agreement, I’d expect zoning laws to override it. Obviously IANAL, but this doesn’t make a lot of sense and it seemed like it should be a solved problem by now.

You're asking why there's a difference between civil and criminal law. The answer is that some things are disputes between people, and other things are codified as crimes. Kidnapping someone is a codified crime; having a dispute over a contract (including a lease or other document allowing occupancy) isn't. It could be made into a crime via legislation, but I think my other comment puts forward a decent argument for why doing so would be pretty bad for our civil liberties.

(The underlying "why" here is that calling the police for a theft or a kidnapping results in a criminal accusation, while just having a dispute over rightful ownership or occupancy is not itself criminal.)

How can they be competent to assess car ownership but not homeownership?

Isn’t nearly all personal property the result of private dealings between private individuals? We seem to be capable of, for instance, using force to prevent a bank robbery or recover money stolen in a bank robbery.

If you misbehave in a nightclub you get dragged out of the property by bouncers, i.e. private security. Do squatters have legal protections that clubbers don't?

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