Somebody forces his way into your home and insists on hanging around. You can’t eject him yourself, but you manage to contact the police. The police arrive. You prove you’re the owner. The police arrest the intruder and you resume full use of your property.
Patti Peeples and Dawn Tiura want intruders to be treated this same way — as criminals to be thwarted immediately — if owners are away when intruders intrude.
The pair co-own a Jacksonville, Florida, house that they rent out. After the last tenant moved out, two squatters moved in. They were discovered by a handyman.
To evict the squatters, Peeples and Tiura had to go to court to start justice’s slow wheels turning. It took more than a month.
The squatters told police that they’d been conned by a rental scam. But they had recently told the same story to explain their occupancy of another home in the neighborhood.
Also, they threw a brick and feces at the owners’ car as the owners were driving past the house.
And after the squatters were finally evicted, the owners discovered massive damage: missing appliances, holes punched in walls.
So, not innocent. Much less sanitary.
“Squatters are nothing more than criminals who are breaking and entering into a house,” Peeples says. “They should not be handled in civil court. They should be treated within the criminal court system.”
There’s certainly no reason to let them linger and wreak revenge for having suffered the inconvenience of being caught.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with PicFinder.ai and DALL-E2
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
3 replies on “It’s a Crime”
I don’t have much respect for the journalists who took measures to hide the identities of the perpetrators. Doing so reduces the social penalty paid by the perpetrators, and increases costs paid by their next victims.
Property rights are human rights and guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
The owners are correct, this is criminal and these squatters should be provided forced housing, by the state in jail or prison as well as full civil liabilities for the assets stolen and all other damages caused.
Protecting squatters is insanity.
It is time for the country to reaffirm the concept of private property rights and enforce them. Failure to do so will destroy the society.