February 17, 2009 • 21 mins
The practice of squatting is usually defined as camping on unused land or moving into an abandoned structure -- and it's more common than you might think. Tune in and learn more about squatting in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W. Bryant.
We like to call him Chuck here on Stuff you
Should Know, which is what you're listening to. So there
(00:20):
you have it. There's there's the introke Chuck. That's nice.
I'm coffeed up now, so I'm I'm firing on all pistons,
are you Yeah? I got the hicks Chuck ready to go? Yeah?
Have you, uh, you know much about homelessness there, Chuck?
Not really? Have you ever heard that, um, homelessness really
began to take steam in America? Uh in the sixties,
(00:42):
seventies and eighties when states started just shutting down mental institution.
I have heard that. Actually, and this this part is unsubstantiated,
but I I since I say it's a rumor, I'm
going to just continue it anyway. How about that? It
sounds good? Um. Apparently in New York there was series
of shutdowns in the eighties. Ronald Reagan's often blamed for this,
(01:03):
although he didn't have any necessarily direct hand and shutting
down mental institutions. Not like you're insane, you're out on
the street. But it was under his administration that a
lot of them uh went under basically and you know,
you have all these um mentally infirmed people, uh and
now they have nowhere to live. So apparently in the
(01:24):
state of New York, they gave him a bus ticket
like fifty bucks and sent him to New York City.
And the homeless population has just shot through the roofs
since the sixties, right, there was homelessness before the Great
Depression was a big time for homelessness and hoboism, which
is a word I just made up, um, But it
(01:45):
really really picked up in the sixties, seventies and eighties,
and and now we have the homeless problem that we
have today. Um. And it's this is not to say
that you know, if you're a homeless person, you're you're
mentally unstable. It's that's not necessarily a case. But the cut,
the the closing down of state institutions and the company
the country really had that effect, right right, that's sad.
(02:07):
And I do know that you know a lot of
homeless people are suffering from various forms of mental illness.
Self that that kind of makes sense. But they're also
expanding the definition of homeless um. Homelessness before UH usually
just encompass somebody who had no home or was staying
in a shelter um, and they expanded it to include
people who are living in like weekly motels, uh, staying
(02:30):
on other people's couches. Apparently that just shot the numbers
through the roof. Wow. Yeah, sure so. Apparently in two
thousand seven UM, the estimated number by the National Alliance
to and Homelessness for homeless people on the streets was
about six hundred seventy one thousand and change, almost six people. Right,
(02:51):
so that doesn't include the college dude crashing on his
buddy's couch during the fish tour. And actually, that's a
pretty funny that you say that, because I used to
have a friend named Hippie Rob who was staying at
my house for a really long time and he would
not leave right. You know, I liked him a lot,
he was a good friend, but man, he really knew
(03:12):
how to move right, and he was staying on my couch. Finally,
one day I took Hippie Rob to Kmart and said,
here's twenty bucks by a good tent, right, And he
bought a tent and I put him in the car
with his tent and drove into the woods. It was
like it was a lot like that scene for Mai
where the mom drops off young David the robot um
(03:36):
and uh, it was less sad though. Wow, that's an
incredible story. That is a true story. He was just
he was squatting in your own house. He was. Actually,
it's funny that you mentioned squatting since this the the
title of his podcast, right like that. So my homeless
segue was really intended to serve as a Jessie juxtaposition
between um, the number of people homeless on the streets,
(03:59):
which is about with the number of vacant housing units
in the US that same year, which was sixteen point
seven million. Interesting, So basically, what we're what we have
in this country is a homeless problem with a clear solution.
There's vacant houses, and yet people around the street still, Um,
(04:21):
so why don't we just move them in to vacant houses? Right?
It would be a little tricky, I guess, but it
seems possible. Actually, there are people who are doing it
right now. Yeah, there's this a group called take Back
the Land out of Miami um, and they have been
staging uh, basically homeless move ins into vacant housing down there.
(04:42):
This new housing or stuff that's been abandoned. I think
it's both a bank owned foreclosed stuff that's been on
the market forever. Um in Miami apparently just got reamed
by the subprime mortgage fallout, and there's plenty of houses
to go around, so these people are just moving them
in there. Um. Same with home not Jails, who are
basically their their mission is to stop the the court
(05:06):
system from just jailing homeless people. UM. So they're in
they're they're the San Francisco Tenants Union. Uh. There's a
lot of people out there who are saying, there's an
empty house right there. This person is homeless. Whether it's
because they are insane or they're down on their luck
doesn't matter. Basically, it's the distinction between whether or not
(05:29):
housing is a basic human right. Sure, you know is
it Isn't it under capitalism? No, it's not. If you
don't have the money, you're on the street, whether this
is vacant or not. Right, So, okay, we're talking about
squatting Chuck, Let's let's go. Let's give a little background
on squatting. Okay, are you going to give a little
background on squatting? Well, uh, sure, Josh. Can you define
(05:53):
squat Yes, it's when you actually live in a place
or on a parcel of land that's unused or not yours. Yeah,
not not yours and not us. Yeah, we should make
the distinction because if you move into a house with
a family already living there, you've just committed home invasion
and you're you're in big trouble. Right. So it's an
(06:14):
empty house, it's not yours or or a piece of land,
and you've moved in or camped out on it and
stayed there, right, And that means you're squatting. That is
squatting right there, um, which would probably be the end
of the story, right, because if you own that land
or you own that house and you have a squatter,
(06:35):
you would think all you would have to do is
go in, pull a gun on them and run them off, right,
or more peacefully asked them to leave. Yeah. Usually I
think somebody who leaves, if you asked them to was
just crashing it at that place. A squatters one who
just says no, right, I'm not moving. Well, you would
think it'd be that cut and dry, but it's actually not,
(06:57):
um that cut and dry, because squatters can actually are
protected in certain ways. Yeah. There there's this thing called well,
there's property rights, the right of a landowner, a homeowner. Right. Um,
there's also tenants rights. Uh where if you rent like
I do. Um, I can't. I can't just be kicked
out of my house because the landlord got sick of me.
(07:19):
There's a least, there's a there's a contractual obligation, there's
laws that guide that along. The thing is is in
I think every state, these same rights are extended to squatters,
and a tenant right actually kicks in in Georgia after
three days. Yeah. So if you have an annoying house
(07:40):
guest over for a long weekend, at the end of
the three days, if they don't feel like moving, you've
got a problem on your hands. Yeah, that's why I
refused to have any house guests for longer than two days.
That's just a good policy, it's a good rule of thumb.
You're out. So um, all right, we've got property rights,
we have tenants rights, and basically, as an tention of
(08:00):
the tenants rights. Um, there's also this thing called adverse possession,
which is the ultimate nightmare of somebody who has a squatter. Right.
We heard a little bit back from fans about when
we did our Grilla Gardening podcast about someone beautifying, um,
like a strip of public land. Potentially that could lead
to adverse possession. So that's a reason that someone might
(08:21):
not want that. Yeah, Well, I think the the technical
definition of adverse possession is, uh, living openly, continuously and hostily.
And hostily isn't like you're chasing, you know, little kids
around your yard with the stick. It's you're you're not
moving if they ask you to. Well yeah, and it
means you don't permission, right um. They you have to
(08:43):
live there for a set period, right right Um, And
that's usually state by state. In California, if you can
do that for five years, um, you own the property.
In West Virginia it's ten. In Texas it's thirty. But
I think every state again has a rule of ever's possession.
So basically, if you live there, if you are especially
(09:04):
if you're keeping the place up that kind of thing,
and people know you're living there, Uh, once that that
time period comes up, you can go pay the property
taxes and that's yours. Right. That's the key though, I think,
is the property taxes. I think that makes it official.
I imagine that that almost never happens, that ever ever's
possession takes place, right you think, Well, I mean in
(09:26):
this day and age, with this many people crawling on
the planet, you know, land, land is it's important, it's expensive. Right, Well,
I'm gunning for it. Is this time? Is it time
for my squatting story? Yeah? Please, I'm a squatter, Josh, oh, yeah,
that's right. And when you're talking about yeah, are you
sure you want to talk about this? Chuck? Yeah, because no,
this is no one knows where I live. Um, My
house that I bought has a has a little strip
(09:48):
of land behind it, very small strip of land about
a hundred feet by forty ft I would say, And
the previous owner of the home had that um sectioned
off for some reason, and it's technically separate from my property.
We never heard from the sky and we moved in
and that's half of that strip of land is most
(10:08):
of my backyard. So Emily and I decided that, you know,
we're just gonna put our fence up, put our privacy,
fence up, plant grass and you know, claim possession of
this land if we never hear from this guy. We
checked with the county and there were years of back
taxes owed on it. Then he clearly abandoned he thought,
I guess he thought he could build something on it,
but there there's not enough room. You have to have variances,
(10:31):
be a certain amount from the curb and all that
to build something, so you couldn't build anything on it
and basically just kind of dumped it. Um. So we
have claimed it as our own and we've been in
the house for I think three years now. Have you
been living hostily? We haven't been living very hostile. What's
the what's the time limit in Georgia? You know, I'm
not I'm not positive. I believe it's seven years, but
(10:53):
we need to look that up for sure. And we've
also been in touch with the county about the back taxes.
Still haven't been paid and when it comes to time,
we're gonna pay the taxes and claiming his around. Nice. Nice,
Keep keep living the dream, Chuck, Keep fighting the good fight, right,
keep squatting and uh well, there in addition to living
continuously openly and hostily. Right. Um, there's actually some steps
(11:14):
that a squatter can take to basically lay claim on
a place, right. Um, if you're keeping if you're keeping
a place up, if you clean it up, maybe plant
some shrubs something like that. Yeah, plant, Um, you're you're
you're saying you're laying claim on the place, and you're
also you're also showing that it's actually going to it's
doing better in your possession, whether you really own it
(11:36):
or not, which goes a long way to um. But
let's say you move into a place, you throw up
some curtains, plant a couple of bushes, Maybe you borrow
a lawnmower from a friend with a house and you
cut the lawn something like that, and um, you you
you've set up house. Right, one of the first things
you can expect is a visit from the cops. Because
(11:58):
if you if you live in a neighborhood and the
house has been empty and all of a sudden there's
somebody living in it, especially somebody who drives their shirts
on a clothesline out front, Um, they're they're going to
take notice and they're going to call the cops on you.
But there's not a lot of cops can do though, No,
there's not. UM. This is if you can prove tenant
(12:18):
rights that you are staying there, whether you're supposed to
be or not. Right. UM. One good way to do
this is to go to the utility company and ask
to have the power turned on and start paying a
power bill there, which you can gain. Yeah. Yeah, you
don't have to prove ownership. I never have had to. UM.
You just go and set up a an account, start paying,
and then you have bills that are coming in your
(12:39):
name to that address. If the cops show up to
your house, you get to show them this and they say,
good enough for me. And what you've just done is
shifted the burden of proof that you're not supposed to
be there from you the squatter, to the landlord. And
it's a huge headache for landland right and becomes a
civil matter. It is a civil matter. The cops are
immediately taken out of the the equation. Indeed, I have
(13:02):
to tell you, UM, when I first researched this article,
I was very much gung ho like squatters rights, let's,
you know, put the homeless in homes and and I
get that, Like I still feel that, UM, But I
I was kind of brought down to earth a little
bit when I interviewed our CEO, Mike Castcon, who actually
had a long, harrowing story with a squatter. Um, he
(13:26):
had like a rental place, right and um, he had
a tenant that had a lease and the lease came
up and the tenant moved out, but the tenant and
had a friend staying there, and the friend didn't move out,
and she said, I'm not moving, sorry, budd. And so
Castcon says that when you you think all the things
that you can do to get rid of somebody who's
(13:48):
a squatter, you you can't do like you can't turn
off the power, you can't turn off the water. Um,
you basically have to make sure that they're comfortable and
safe and get found your place. Yeah you can get big,
I'm fine. Um. And he also said he spent you know,
several thousand dollars in court fees and and um, you know,
things like having subpoenas delivered that kind of stuff. Uh,
(14:09):
and missed work getting this person out of his place,
and good luck getting you know, a refund on anything
like that, right or getting right Yeah, Yeah, no, I
don't think she had much money. Um. Yeah, So that
was that kind of changed my my attitude a little
bit at the very least. Now I start to see
it from both sides, you know, because there's there's a
(14:32):
victim in it, even though when you're talking about putting
the homeless and housing it's kind of tough to see
it that way, but but there definitely is. So what
do you do, well, how to get a squatter out?
Tell me, well, I think there are legal avenues that
you need to go through. Uh, if you're a landlord,
which does not include, like we said, turning off the
water and power, because you can get in trouble for that.
(14:55):
If you're a landlord, you can basically you need to
call an attorney. If you have a squatter, don't make
a move, just say I'd like you to get out.
They say no, You say to be continued and go
get a lawyer. But there the the landlord that's tough.
You know that. You usually if you're an individual landlord,
you don't have you know, vast resources. So the the
(15:16):
great enemy of the common squatter is gentrification urban renewal,
because all of a sudden you have developers in the equation,
and developers tend to have much deeper pockets and possibly
fewer scruples than the individual landlord. There's actually a squat
um a house that was being squatted in, uh down
the street from me a couple of years back. Yeah,
(15:38):
it was bad um and one day it wasn't there anymore.
It down just tore it down. Interesting the developer did,
yeah yeah, and wait, waited till the person was out
of the house, or just showed up with the I
don't know. Um, I've seen a couple of people who
were squatting in the house walking around since then. So
I guess you gave him a chance to get out.
But the house isn't there anymore, which is really on
(16:00):
a cynical a little sour, I should say, because now
it's just an empty piece of land. Yeah yeah, but
I guess he really didn't want people staying in his house,
so he sent the wrecking ball through, right, And and
so urban renewal in general, in general, once you have
the presence of developers, but not just developers, um, you know,
and upwardly mobile people who really don't want squatters hanging
(16:21):
around and bringing part property values back down right right. Um,
So if you're if you're a squatter, you're in trouble
once once a place gets tapped for you know, gentrification, right.
And I would guess, and this is a generalization, but
that most people that move in squat into a place
it's abandoned probably don't do massive improvements. And you know,
it's it's probably not that kind of situation. No, I
(16:43):
can tell you the squat down the street for me
was was not the case. Yeah. Yeah, So, but I
am in a in an area that's being gentrified as
we speak, right. Um. And apparently Geneva, Switzerland, went through
a similar thing in the nineties. There was a group
called Rhino and they were basically political activist squatters and
(17:03):
at its peak this group held a hundred and fifty
apartment buildings apartment buildings, not apartment units in the city. Um,
and all of a sudden there's this urban renewal movement
that comes through Geneva, and by two thousand seven they
had like twenty seven, which is still a substantial amount
of apartment buildings, but compared to a hundred and fifty.
(17:24):
You can see, once once an areas targeted like this,
then then there's nothing you can do. Have to move
out to the sticks. They've also done this in London,
in Denmark, just to name a couple. Yeah, yeah, now
there is a there is Squatting can be good to
some extent that Okay. So there's this Peruvian economist. His
name is here Nando de Soto. Very nice, thank you, UM,
(17:47):
and he created a what he called a roadmap to
wealth and it was specifically designed for UM post Soviet
former satellite countries that we're making the transition from communism
to the free market. UM. And one of the one
of the UM facets of this, one of the major
parts of it was that squatters on rural land, the
(18:10):
rural poor who were just like living on land and
Shanny's and that kind of thing, their land, the land
that they were squatting on should be UM parceled up
and they should go register it and then by being landowners,
they would have credit available to them, which should considerably
get the economy going right. Interesting thing. It's unproven, but
it's actually being tried UH in a country called the
(18:32):
Prettiness Strovi, which is UM an unrecognized nation that used
to formally be part of Moldovia. Interesting. UM, So we'll
see if it happens, right, see if they get their
seat at the u N. Yeah. Yeah, well we'll see.
Only time will tell, and if they do, you can
bet that it's going to be because of Hernando de
Soto and they'll probably put them on some sort of
(18:53):
currency probably or statue at least. So that's that's squatting, right, squatting.
I will continue to squad and maybe in a few
years if we're still doing this podcast, and then I'll
let everyone know how it went. Yeah. I'm really curious
to see how this goes. And I hope you didn't
just out yourself. I don't think so. I would kick so. Um,
you got anything else you want? You want to get
something off your chest? Maybe maybe a little listener mail.
(19:19):
All right, let's hear Josh, this comes to us. And
I'm not gonna read this person's name because it's slightly sensitive.
We'll just say that the name starts with the G.
And G wrote us about the Delta Force podcast. And
here's what I remember that one. Yeah, here's what G
had to say. Uh, the podcast reminded me of a
friend I used to have a work when Ronald Reagan
started doing his war drugs. My friend, let's call him John,
(19:41):
was removed from the military and sent on these black ops,
black operations. Uh, an amount of money would be left
in a safe deposit box in the in the mark's area,
and the mark was so when he had to kill.
Uh with a photo of the mark and some other information. Uh,
the mark is was usually a drug lord or a
higher up deem to big of a threat. So John
(20:02):
and his partner would use the money to buy local
guns and supplies, then head out and snipe with the PERSONA. Yeah,
Waxham and this is you know this guy would tell
these stories in the break round. Evidently, Uh. He said
it wasn't a one day operation. They had to set
up camp tonight before and set up land mines around
their camp, so anyone coming in would get tripped up
(20:24):
by the land mine coming and trying to kill them.
And he says on countless occasions he would hear an explosion,
thinking assassin was coming to kill him, only to find
a shredded cow had happened upon the land mine. And
so because are always the innocent by standards and anything.
So this is an amazing story. And I don't know
if it's true, but I don't see no reason why
this person went right in and make all this up,
(20:46):
so it sounds pretty good to me. Yeah, well, thanks
a lot. Gee, that story is absolutely nuts. And uh.
If you have an amazing or harrowing tale of cow's
being blown up, or people being greased, or you just
want to say hi, you can send an email to
Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
(21:07):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
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reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W. Bryant.
We like to call him Chuck here on Stuff you
Should Know, which is what you're listening to. So there
(00:20):
you have it. There's there's the introke Chuck. That's nice.
I'm coffeed up now, so I'm I'm firing on all pistons,
are you Yeah? I got the hicks Chuck ready to go? Yeah?
Have you, uh, you know much about homelessness there, Chuck?
Not really? Have you ever heard that, um, homelessness really
began to take steam in America? Uh in the sixties,
(00:42):
seventies and eighties when states started just shutting down mental institution.
I have heard that. Actually, and this this part is unsubstantiated,
but I I since I say it's a rumor, I'm
going to just continue it anyway. How about that? It
sounds good? Um. Apparently in New York there was series
of shutdowns in the eighties. Ronald Reagan's often blamed for this,
(01:03):
although he didn't have any necessarily direct hand and shutting
down mental institutions. Not like you're insane, you're out on
the street. But it was under his administration that a
lot of them uh went under basically and you know,
you have all these um mentally infirmed people, uh and
now they have nowhere to live. So apparently in the
(01:24):
state of New York, they gave him a bus ticket
like fifty bucks and sent him to New York City.
And the homeless population has just shot through the roofs
since the sixties, right, there was homelessness before the Great
Depression was a big time for homelessness and hoboism, which
is a word I just made up, um, But it
(01:45):
really really picked up in the sixties, seventies and eighties,
and and now we have the homeless problem that we
have today. Um. And it's this is not to say
that you know, if you're a homeless person, you're you're
mentally unstable. It's that's not necessarily a case. But the cut,
the the closing down of state institutions and the company
the country really had that effect, right right, that's sad.
(02:07):
And I do know that you know a lot of
homeless people are suffering from various forms of mental illness.
Self that that kind of makes sense. But they're also
expanding the definition of homeless um. Homelessness before UH usually
just encompass somebody who had no home or was staying
in a shelter um, and they expanded it to include
people who are living in like weekly motels, uh, staying
(02:30):
on other people's couches. Apparently that just shot the numbers
through the roof. Wow. Yeah, sure so. Apparently in two
thousand seven UM, the estimated number by the National Alliance
to and Homelessness for homeless people on the streets was
about six hundred seventy one thousand and change, almost six people. Right,
(02:51):
so that doesn't include the college dude crashing on his
buddy's couch during the fish tour. And actually, that's a
pretty funny that you say that, because I used to
have a friend named Hippie Rob who was staying at
my house for a really long time and he would
not leave right. You know, I liked him a lot,
he was a good friend, but man, he really knew
(03:12):
how to move right, and he was staying on my couch. Finally,
one day I took Hippie Rob to Kmart and said,
here's twenty bucks by a good tent, right, And he
bought a tent and I put him in the car
with his tent and drove into the woods. It was
like it was a lot like that scene for Mai
where the mom drops off young David the robot um
(03:36):
and uh, it was less sad though. Wow, that's an
incredible story. That is a true story. He was just
he was squatting in your own house. He was. Actually,
it's funny that you mentioned squatting since this the the
title of his podcast, right like that. So my homeless
segue was really intended to serve as a Jessie juxtaposition
between um, the number of people homeless on the streets,
(03:59):
which is about with the number of vacant housing units
in the US that same year, which was sixteen point
seven million. Interesting, So basically, what we're what we have
in this country is a homeless problem with a clear solution.
There's vacant houses, and yet people around the street still, Um,
(04:21):
so why don't we just move them in to vacant houses? Right?
It would be a little tricky, I guess, but it
seems possible. Actually, there are people who are doing it
right now. Yeah, there's this a group called take Back
the Land out of Miami um, and they have been
staging uh, basically homeless move ins into vacant housing down there.
(04:42):
This new housing or stuff that's been abandoned. I think
it's both a bank owned foreclosed stuff that's been on
the market forever. Um in Miami apparently just got reamed
by the subprime mortgage fallout, and there's plenty of houses
to go around, so these people are just moving them
in there. Um. Same with home not Jails, who are
basically their their mission is to stop the the court
(05:06):
system from just jailing homeless people. UM. So they're in
they're they're the San Francisco Tenants Union. Uh. There's a
lot of people out there who are saying, there's an
empty house right there. This person is homeless. Whether it's
because they are insane or they're down on their luck
doesn't matter. Basically, it's the distinction between whether or not
(05:29):
housing is a basic human right. Sure, you know is
it Isn't it under capitalism? No, it's not. If you
don't have the money, you're on the street, whether this
is vacant or not. Right, So, okay, we're talking about
squatting Chuck, Let's let's go. Let's give a little background
on squatting. Okay, are you going to give a little
background on squatting? Well, uh, sure, Josh. Can you define
(05:53):
squat Yes, it's when you actually live in a place
or on a parcel of land that's unused or not yours. Yeah,
not not yours and not us. Yeah, we should make
the distinction because if you move into a house with
a family already living there, you've just committed home invasion
and you're you're in big trouble. Right. So it's an
(06:14):
empty house, it's not yours or or a piece of land,
and you've moved in or camped out on it and
stayed there, right, And that means you're squatting. That is
squatting right there, um, which would probably be the end
of the story, right, because if you own that land
or you own that house and you have a squatter,
(06:35):
you would think all you would have to do is
go in, pull a gun on them and run them off, right,
or more peacefully asked them to leave. Yeah. Usually I
think somebody who leaves, if you asked them to was
just crashing it at that place. A squatters one who
just says no, right, I'm not moving. Well, you would
think it'd be that cut and dry, but it's actually not,
(06:57):
um that cut and dry, because squatters can actually are
protected in certain ways. Yeah. There there's this thing called well,
there's property rights, the right of a landowner, a homeowner. Right. Um,
there's also tenants rights. Uh where if you rent like
I do. Um, I can't. I can't just be kicked
out of my house because the landlord got sick of me.
(07:19):
There's a least, there's a there's a contractual obligation, there's
laws that guide that along. The thing is is in
I think every state, these same rights are extended to squatters,
and a tenant right actually kicks in in Georgia after
three days. Yeah. So if you have an annoying house
(07:40):
guest over for a long weekend, at the end of
the three days, if they don't feel like moving, you've
got a problem on your hands. Yeah, that's why I
refused to have any house guests for longer than two days.
That's just a good policy, it's a good rule of thumb.
You're out. So um, all right, we've got property rights,
we have tenants rights, and basically, as an tention of
(08:00):
the tenants rights. Um, there's also this thing called adverse possession,
which is the ultimate nightmare of somebody who has a squatter. Right.
We heard a little bit back from fans about when
we did our Grilla Gardening podcast about someone beautifying, um,
like a strip of public land. Potentially that could lead
to adverse possession. So that's a reason that someone might
(08:21):
not want that. Yeah, Well, I think the the technical
definition of adverse possession is, uh, living openly, continuously and hostily.
And hostily isn't like you're chasing, you know, little kids
around your yard with the stick. It's you're you're not
moving if they ask you to. Well yeah, and it
means you don't permission, right um. They you have to
(08:43):
live there for a set period, right right Um, And
that's usually state by state. In California, if you can
do that for five years, um, you own the property.
In West Virginia it's ten. In Texas it's thirty. But
I think every state again has a rule of ever's possession.
So basically, if you live there, if you are especially
(09:04):
if you're keeping the place up that kind of thing,
and people know you're living there, Uh, once that that
time period comes up, you can go pay the property
taxes and that's yours. Right. That's the key though, I think,
is the property taxes. I think that makes it official.
I imagine that that almost never happens, that ever ever's
possession takes place, right you think, Well, I mean in
(09:26):
this day and age, with this many people crawling on
the planet, you know, land, land is it's important, it's expensive. Right, Well,
I'm gunning for it. Is this time? Is it time
for my squatting story? Yeah? Please, I'm a squatter, Josh, oh, yeah,
that's right. And when you're talking about yeah, are you
sure you want to talk about this? Chuck? Yeah, because no,
this is no one knows where I live. Um, My
house that I bought has a has a little strip
(09:48):
of land behind it, very small strip of land about
a hundred feet by forty ft I would say, And
the previous owner of the home had that um sectioned
off for some reason, and it's technically separate from my property.
We never heard from the sky and we moved in
and that's half of that strip of land is most
(10:08):
of my backyard. So Emily and I decided that, you know,
we're just gonna put our fence up, put our privacy,
fence up, plant grass and you know, claim possession of
this land if we never hear from this guy. We
checked with the county and there were years of back
taxes owed on it. Then he clearly abandoned he thought,
I guess he thought he could build something on it,
but there there's not enough room. You have to have variances,
(10:31):
be a certain amount from the curb and all that
to build something, so you couldn't build anything on it
and basically just kind of dumped it. Um. So we
have claimed it as our own and we've been in
the house for I think three years now. Have you
been living hostily? We haven't been living very hostile. What's
the what's the time limit in Georgia? You know, I'm
not I'm not positive. I believe it's seven years, but
(10:53):
we need to look that up for sure. And we've
also been in touch with the county about the back taxes.
Still haven't been paid and when it comes to time,
we're gonna pay the taxes and claiming his around. Nice. Nice,
Keep keep living the dream, Chuck, Keep fighting the good fight, right,
keep squatting and uh well, there in addition to living
continuously openly and hostily. Right. Um, there's actually some steps
(11:14):
that a squatter can take to basically lay claim on
a place, right. Um, if you're keeping if you're keeping
a place up, if you clean it up, maybe plant
some shrubs something like that. Yeah, plant, Um, you're you're
you're saying you're laying claim on the place, and you're
also you're also showing that it's actually going to it's
doing better in your possession, whether you really own it
(11:36):
or not, which goes a long way to um. But
let's say you move into a place, you throw up
some curtains, plant a couple of bushes, Maybe you borrow
a lawnmower from a friend with a house and you
cut the lawn something like that, and um, you you
you've set up house. Right, one of the first things
you can expect is a visit from the cops. Because
(11:58):
if you if you live in a neighborhood and the
house has been empty and all of a sudden there's
somebody living in it, especially somebody who drives their shirts
on a clothesline out front, Um, they're they're going to
take notice and they're going to call the cops on you.
But there's not a lot of cops can do though, No,
there's not. UM. This is if you can prove tenant
(12:18):
rights that you are staying there, whether you're supposed to
be or not. Right. UM. One good way to do
this is to go to the utility company and ask
to have the power turned on and start paying a
power bill there, which you can gain. Yeah. Yeah, you
don't have to prove ownership. I never have had to. UM.
You just go and set up a an account, start paying,
and then you have bills that are coming in your
(12:39):
name to that address. If the cops show up to
your house, you get to show them this and they say,
good enough for me. And what you've just done is
shifted the burden of proof that you're not supposed to
be there from you the squatter, to the landlord. And
it's a huge headache for landland right and becomes a
civil matter. It is a civil matter. The cops are
immediately taken out of the the equation. Indeed, I have
(13:02):
to tell you, UM, when I first researched this article,
I was very much gung ho like squatters rights, let's,
you know, put the homeless in homes and and I
get that, Like I still feel that, UM, But I
I was kind of brought down to earth a little
bit when I interviewed our CEO, Mike Castcon, who actually
had a long, harrowing story with a squatter. Um, he
(13:26):
had like a rental place, right and um, he had
a tenant that had a lease and the lease came
up and the tenant moved out, but the tenant and
had a friend staying there, and the friend didn't move out,
and she said, I'm not moving, sorry, budd. And so
Castcon says that when you you think all the things
that you can do to get rid of somebody who's
(13:48):
a squatter, you you can't do like you can't turn
off the power, you can't turn off the water. Um,
you basically have to make sure that they're comfortable and
safe and get found your place. Yeah you can get big,
I'm fine. Um. And he also said he spent you know,
several thousand dollars in court fees and and um, you know,
things like having subpoenas delivered that kind of stuff. Uh,
(14:09):
and missed work getting this person out of his place,
and good luck getting you know, a refund on anything
like that, right or getting right Yeah, Yeah, no, I
don't think she had much money. Um. Yeah, So that
was that kind of changed my my attitude a little
bit at the very least. Now I start to see
it from both sides, you know, because there's there's a
(14:32):
victim in it, even though when you're talking about putting
the homeless and housing it's kind of tough to see
it that way, but but there definitely is. So what
do you do, well, how to get a squatter out?
Tell me, well, I think there are legal avenues that
you need to go through. Uh, if you're a landlord,
which does not include, like we said, turning off the
water and power, because you can get in trouble for that.
(14:55):
If you're a landlord, you can basically you need to
call an attorney. If you have a squatter, don't make
a move, just say I'd like you to get out.
They say no, You say to be continued and go
get a lawyer. But there the the landlord that's tough.
You know that. You usually if you're an individual landlord,
you don't have you know, vast resources. So the the
(15:16):
great enemy of the common squatter is gentrification urban renewal,
because all of a sudden you have developers in the equation,
and developers tend to have much deeper pockets and possibly
fewer scruples than the individual landlord. There's actually a squat
um a house that was being squatted in, uh down
the street from me a couple of years back. Yeah,
(15:38):
it was bad um and one day it wasn't there anymore.
It down just tore it down. Interesting the developer did,
yeah yeah, and wait, waited till the person was out
of the house, or just showed up with the I
don't know. Um, I've seen a couple of people who
were squatting in the house walking around since then. So
I guess you gave him a chance to get out.
But the house isn't there anymore, which is really on
(16:00):
a cynical a little sour, I should say, because now
it's just an empty piece of land. Yeah yeah, but
I guess he really didn't want people staying in his house,
so he sent the wrecking ball through, right, And and
so urban renewal in general, in general, once you have
the presence of developers, but not just developers, um, you know,
and upwardly mobile people who really don't want squatters hanging
(16:21):
around and bringing part property values back down right right. Um,
So if you're if you're a squatter, you're in trouble
once once a place gets tapped for you know, gentrification, right.
And I would guess, and this is a generalization, but
that most people that move in squat into a place
it's abandoned probably don't do massive improvements. And you know,
it's it's probably not that kind of situation. No, I
(16:43):
can tell you the squat down the street for me
was was not the case. Yeah. Yeah, So, but I
am in a in an area that's being gentrified as
we speak, right. Um. And apparently Geneva, Switzerland, went through
a similar thing in the nineties. There was a group
called Rhino and they were basically political activist squatters and
(17:03):
at its peak this group held a hundred and fifty
apartment buildings apartment buildings, not apartment units in the city. Um,
and all of a sudden there's this urban renewal movement
that comes through Geneva, and by two thousand seven they
had like twenty seven, which is still a substantial amount
of apartment buildings, but compared to a hundred and fifty.
(17:24):
You can see, once once an areas targeted like this,
then then there's nothing you can do. Have to move
out to the sticks. They've also done this in London,
in Denmark, just to name a couple. Yeah, yeah, now
there is a there is Squatting can be good to
some extent that Okay. So there's this Peruvian economist. His
name is here Nando de Soto. Very nice, thank you, UM,
(17:47):
and he created a what he called a roadmap to
wealth and it was specifically designed for UM post Soviet
former satellite countries that we're making the transition from communism
to the free market. UM. And one of the one
of the UM facets of this, one of the major
parts of it was that squatters on rural land, the
(18:10):
rural poor who were just like living on land and
Shanny's and that kind of thing, their land, the land
that they were squatting on should be UM parceled up
and they should go register it and then by being landowners,
they would have credit available to them, which should considerably
get the economy going right. Interesting thing. It's unproven, but
it's actually being tried UH in a country called the
(18:32):
Prettiness Strovi, which is UM an unrecognized nation that used
to formally be part of Moldovia. Interesting. UM, So we'll
see if it happens, right, see if they get their
seat at the u N. Yeah. Yeah, well we'll see.
Only time will tell, and if they do, you can
bet that it's going to be because of Hernando de
Soto and they'll probably put them on some sort of
(18:53):
currency probably or statue at least. So that's that's squatting, right, squatting.
I will continue to squad and maybe in a few
years if we're still doing this podcast, and then I'll
let everyone know how it went. Yeah. I'm really curious
to see how this goes. And I hope you didn't
just out yourself. I don't think so. I would kick so. Um,
you got anything else you want? You want to get
something off your chest? Maybe maybe a little listener mail.
(19:19):
All right, let's hear Josh, this comes to us. And
I'm not gonna read this person's name because it's slightly sensitive.
We'll just say that the name starts with the G.
And G wrote us about the Delta Force podcast. And
here's what I remember that one. Yeah, here's what G
had to say. Uh, the podcast reminded me of a
friend I used to have a work when Ronald Reagan
started doing his war drugs. My friend, let's call him John,
(19:41):
was removed from the military and sent on these black ops,
black operations. Uh, an amount of money would be left
in a safe deposit box in the in the mark's area,
and the mark was so when he had to kill.
Uh with a photo of the mark and some other information. Uh,
the mark is was usually a drug lord or a
higher up deem to big of a threat. So John
(20:02):
and his partner would use the money to buy local
guns and supplies, then head out and snipe with the PERSONA. Yeah,
Waxham and this is you know this guy would tell
these stories in the break round. Evidently, Uh. He said
it wasn't a one day operation. They had to set
up camp tonight before and set up land mines around
their camp, so anyone coming in would get tripped up
(20:24):
by the land mine coming and trying to kill them.
And he says on countless occasions he would hear an explosion,
thinking assassin was coming to kill him, only to find
a shredded cow had happened upon the land mine. And
so because are always the innocent by standards and anything.
So this is an amazing story. And I don't know
if it's true, but I don't see no reason why
this person went right in and make all this up,
(20:46):
so it sounds pretty good to me. Yeah, well, thanks
a lot. Gee, that story is absolutely nuts. And uh.
If you have an amazing or harrowing tale of cow's
being blown up, or people being greased, or you just
want to say hi, you can send an email to
Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
(21:07):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. M HM brought to you by the
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