Stuff You Should Know - How Squatting Works

Episode Date: February 17, 2009

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast drying solution, especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from house.works.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W. Bryan. We like to call him Chuck here on Stuff You Should Know, which is what you're listening to. So there you have it.

There's the intro, Chuck. That's nice. I'm coffeeed up now, so I'm firing on all pistons. Are you? Yeah, I got the shakes, Chuck. I'm ready to go. Yeah, let's do it. Have you, you know much about homelessness there, Chuck? Not really. Have you ever heard that homelessness really began to take steam in America in the 60s, 70s, and 80s when states started just shutting down mental institutions? I have heard that, actually. And this part is unsubstantiated, but since I say it's a rumor, I'm going to just continue it anyway. How about that? Sounds good. Apparently in New York, there was a series of shutdowns in the 80s. Ronald Reagan's often blamed for this, although he didn't have any necessarily direct hand in 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 went under, basically. And you have all these mentally infirm people, and now they have nowhere to live. So apparently in the state of New York, they gave them a bus ticket, like 50 bucks, and sent them to New York City. Really? And the homeless population has just shot through the roof since the 60s. Of course, there was homelessness before. The Great Depression was a big time for homelessness and hoboism, which is a word I just made up. But it really, really picked up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And now we have the homeless problem that we have today. And this is not to say that if you're a homeless person, you're mentally

unstable. It's not necessarily a case. But the closing down of state institutions in the country really had that effect, right? Right. That's sad. And I do know that a lot of homeless people are suffering from various forms of mental illness. So that kind of makes sense. Well, they're also expanding the definition of homelessness. Homelessness before usually just encompassed somebody who had no home or was staying in a shelter. And they expanded it to include people who are living in weekly motels, staying on other people's couches. And apparently that just shot the numbers through the roof. Wow. Yeah, sure. So apparently in 2007, the estimated number by the National Alliance to End Homelessness for homeless people on the streets was about 671,000

in change, almost 672,000 people, right? That doesn't include the college dude crashing on his buddy's couch during the fish tour. No, no. And actually, that's 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 how to mooch, right? And he was staying on my couch. Finally, one day, I took Hippie Rob to Kmart and said, here's 20 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, see you later. It was a lot like that scene from AI where the mom drops off young David, the robot. Right.

And 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 is the title of this podcast, right? Do you like that? So my homeless segue was really intended to serve as a juxtaposition between the number of people homeless on the streets, which is about 672,000, with the number of vacant housing units in the US that same year, right? Which was 16.7 million. Interesting. So basically what we have in this country is a homeless problem with a clear solution. There's vacant houses and yet people are on the street still, right? 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. Really? Yeah. There's this group called Take Back the Land out of Miami. And they have been staging basically homeless move-ins in the vacant housing down there. Is this new housing or stuff that's been abandoned? I think it's both. Okay. A bank loan for clothes, stuff that's been on the market forever. And Miami apparently just got reamed by the subprime mortgage fallout. Oh, really? And there's plenty of houses to go around. So these people are just moving them in there. Same with homes, not jails. Right. Who are basically their mission is to stop the court system from just jailing homeless people. Right. So they're the San Francisco

tenants union. 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, right? Or they're down on their luck. Right. Doesn't matter. Basically, it's the distinction between whether or not 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? Right. So, okay, we're talking about squatting, Chuck. Yes. Let's go. Let's give a little background on squatting. Okay. Are you going to give a little background on squatting? Well, sure, Josh. Can you define 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 yours and not used. 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 in big trouble. Right. So it's an empty house. It's not yours or a piece of land. Yeah. And you've moved in or camped out on it and stayed there. Right. And that means you're squatting. Right. That is squatting. Yes. Right there. 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, you would think all you would have to do is go in, pull a gun on them and run them off. Right. Right. Or more peaceably, ask them to leave.

Yeah. Squatters don't usually, I think somebody who leaves if you ask them to was just crashing at that place. Right. A squatter is 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 that cut and dry because squatters can actually are protected in certain ways. Yeah. There's this thing called, well, there's property rights, the right of a landowner, a homeowner, right? Right. There's also tenants rights. Yes. Where if you rent like I do, I can't just be kicked out of my house because the landlord got sick of me. There's a lease. 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. Really? Yeah. So if you have an annoying house guest over for a long weekend at the end of the three days, if they don't feel like moving, you got a problem on your hands. Yeah. That's why I refuse to have any house guests for longer than two days. Yeah. That's just a good policy. It's a good rule of thumb. Two days and you're out. So all right. We've got property rights. We have tenants rights. And basically as an extension of the tenants rights, there's also this thing called adverse possession, right? 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 Gorilla Gardening podcast about someone beautifying

like a strip of public land. Right. Potentially that could lead to adverse possession. So that's a reason that someone might not want that. Yeah. I think the technical definition of adverse possession is living openly, continuously and hostily. And hostily isn't like you're chasing little kids around your yard with a stick. You're not moving if they ask you to. Well, yeah. And it means you don't have permission. Right. You have to live there for a set period, right? Right. And that's usually state by state. In California, if you can do that for five years, you own the property. Right. In West Virginia, it's 10. In Texas, it's 30. But I think every state, again, has a rule of adverse possession. They do. So basically, if you live there, if you

are, especially if you're keeping the place up, that kind of thing, and people know you're living there, once 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. Right. I think that makes it official. I imagine that that almost never happens, that ever adverse possession takes place, right? You think? Well, I mean, in 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. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Are you sure you want to talk about this,

Josh? Yeah. Because no, this is, no one knows where I live. My house that I bought has a little strip of land behind it, very small strip of land, about 100 feet by 40 feet, I would say. And the previous owner of the home had that sectioned off for some reason and it's technically separate from my property. Right. We never heard from this guy and we moved in and that's half of that strip of land is, is most of my backyard. So Emily and I decided that, you know, we're just going to 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 that 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, 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. 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 hostily. What's the, what's the time limit in Georgia that you know? I'm not, I'm not positive. I believe it's seven years, but 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 time, we're going to pay the taxes and claim it as our own. Nice. Nice. Keep, keep living the dream, Chuck. Keep fighting

the good fight. Keep squatting. In 1968, five black girls dressed in oversized military fatigues were picked up by the police in Montgomery, Alabama. I was tired and just didn't want to take it anymore. The girls had run away from a reform school called the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children. And they were determined to tell someone about the abuse they'd suffered there. Picture the worst environment for children that you possibly can. I believe Mt. Mays was patterned after slavery. I didn't understand why I had to go through what I was going through and for what. I'm writer and reporter, Josie Duffy Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate how this reform school went from being a safe haven for black kids to a nightmare and how those five

black girls changed everything. All that on unreformed. Listen to unreformed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. Miami had become the murder capital of the United States. They were making millions of dollars. I would categorize it as the Wild Wild West. Unleashing a wave of violence. My God took a walk into the devil's den. The car killed. They just killed everybody that was home. They start pulling out pictures of Clay Williams' body taken out in the Everglades. A world orbiting around a mysterious man with a controversial claim. This drug pilot by the name of Lamar Chester. He never ran anything but grass until I turned over that load of coke to him on

the island. Chester would claim he did it all for this CIA. Pulling many into a sprawling federal investigation. So, Clay wasn't the only person who was murdered? Oh no, not by a long shot. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for Murder in Miami. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In addition to living continuously, openly, and hostily, there's actually some steps that a squatter can take to basically lay claim on a place. If you're keeping a place up, if you clean it up, maybe plant some shrubs like we did. Something like that, yeah. You're laying claim on the place and you're also showing that it's actually doing better in your possession whether you really own it or not, which goes a

long way too. 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. Right. And you've set up a house, right? One of the first things you can expect is a visit from the cops. Right. Because 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, they're going to take notice and they're going to call the cops on you. True. But there's not a lot of cop can do though. No, there's not. This is, if you can prove tenant rights that you are staying there, whether you're supposed to be or not, right? Right. 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 do pretty easily. Put it in your name. Yeah, you don't have to prove ownership. I never had to. I haven't either. You just go and set up an account, start paying, and then you have bills that are coming in your name to that address. Right. 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. Right. And it's a huge headache for a landlord. Right. And it becomes a civil matter. It is a civil matter. The cops are immediately taken out of the equation. Indeed.

I have to tell you, 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 I get that. Like, I still feel that. Right. But I was kind of brought down to earth a little bit when I interviewed our COO, Mike Cascon. Yes. Who actually had a long harrowing story with a squatter. Yeah. Really fascinating. He had like a rental place, right? And he had a tenant that had a lease and the lease came up and the tenant moved out. But the tenant had had a friend staying there and the friend didn't move out. And she said, I'm not moving. Sorry, bud. Right. And so Cascon says that when you think, all the things that you can do to get rid of somebody who's a squatter, you can't do. Right.

You can't turn off the power. Right. You can't turn off the water. You basically have to make sure that they're comfortable and safe. Right. You can actually get fine. In your place. Yeah. You can get big time fine. Right. And he also said he spent, you know, several thousand dollars in court fees and, you know, things like having subpoenas delivered, that kind of stuff. And missed work getting this person out of his place. Right. And good luck getting, you know, a refund on anything like that. Right. Oh, getting the squatter to pay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No. I don't think she had much money. No. That's why she was squatting. Yeah. So that was a, that kind of changed my, my attitude a little bit. At the very least now I start to, I see it from both sides, you know, because there

is, there is a victim in it. Even though when you're talking about putting the homeless in housing, it's kind of tough to see it that way, but, but there definitely is. Yeah. So what do you do? Well, how to get a squatter out? Yeah. Tell me. Well, I think there are legal avenues that you need to go through if you're a landlord, right? Which does not include, like we said, turning off the water and power because you can get in trouble for that. Right. 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. Okay. But there, 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 great enemy of the common squatter is gentrification, urban renewal, because all of a sudden you have developers in the equation. Right. And developers tend to have much deeper pockets and possibly fewer scruples than the individual landlord. There's actually a squat, a house that was being squatted in down the street for me. Really? A couple of years back. Yeah. It was bad. And one day it wasn't there anymore. So, just tore it down. Interesting. Yeah. The developer did. Yeah. Yeah. And it waited till the person was out of the house or just showed up with a... I don't know. I've seen a couple of people who were squatting in the house walking around since then. So, I guess

he gave him a chance to get out, but the house isn't there anymore. Interesting. Which is really kind of 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. Yeah. So, he sent the wrecking ball through. Right. And so, urban renewal in general, once you have the presence of developers, but not just developers, you know, and upwardly mobile people who really don't want squatters hanging around and bringing property values back down, right? Right. So, if you're a squatter, you're in trouble once a place gets tapped for gentrification. Right. And I would guess, and this is a generalization, but that most people that move in squat into a place that's

abandoned probably don't do massive improvements in... No. You know, it's probably not that kind of situation. No. I can tell you the squat down the street for me was not the case. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So, but I am in an area that's being gentrified as we speak. Right. And apparently, Geneva, Switzerland, went through a similar thing. In the 90s, there was a group called Rhino, and they were basically political activist squatters. Right. And at its peak, this group held 150 apartment buildings. Apartment buildings. Not apartment units in the city. And all of a sudden, there's this urban renewal movement that comes through Geneva. And by 2007, they had like 27, which is still a substantial amount of apartment buildings. But compared to 150,

you can see once an area is targeted like this, then there's nothing you can do. Right. Basically, they have to move out to the sticks. Sure. They've also done this in London and Denmark, just to name a couple. Yeah. Yeah. Now, there is a... There is... Squatting can be good, to some extent. How's that? Okay. So, there's this Peruvian economist. His name is Hernando de Soto. Very nice. Thank you. And he created what he called a roadmap to wealth. And it was specifically designed for post-Soviet former satellite countries that were making the transition from communism to the free market. And one of the facets of this, one of the major parts of it, was that squatters on rural land, the rural poor, who were just like living on land in

Chinese and that kind of thing. Right. Their land, the land that they were squatting on, should be 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 theory. It's unproven, but it's actually being tried in a country called Pridnis Strovih, which is an unrecognized nation that used to formerly be part of Moldova. Interesting. So, we'll see if it happens. Right. See if they get their seat at the UN. 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. Right. And they'll probably put them on some sort of currency.

Yeah, probably. Or a statue, at least. So, that's squatting, right, Chuck? Squatting. I will continue to squat and maybe in a few years, if we're still doing this podcast, then I'll let everyone know how it went. Yeah, I'm really curious to see how this goes. Yeah, I hope you didn't just out yourself. I don't think so. Okay. So, you got anything else you want to get something off your chest, maybe? Maybe a little listener mail. All right, let's hear it. Josh, this comes to us and I'm not going to 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 G had to say. The podcast reminded

me of a friend I used to have at work. When Ronald Reagan started doing his war on drugs, my friend, let's call him John, was removed from the military and sent on these black ops, black operations. An amount of money would be left in a safe deposit box in the marks area, and the mark was someone he had to kill. Yeah. With a photo of the mark and some other information, the mark was usually a drug lord or a higher-up deemed too big of a threat. So, John and his partner would use the money to buy local guns and supplies, then head out and snipe the person. Wax him. Yeah, wax him. And this guy would tell these stories in the break room, evidently. He said it wasn't a one-day operation. They had to set up

camp the night before and set up landmines around their camp. So, anyone coming in would get tripped up by the landmine, coming in trying to kill them. And he says, on countless occasions, he would hear an explosion thinking a assassin was coming to kill him, only to find a shredded cow had happened upon the landmine. Yeah. Cows are always the innocent bystander, don't they? So, this is an amazing story, and I don't know if it's true, but I don't see no reason why this works when you write in and make all this up. So, it sounds pretty good to me. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot, G. That story is absolutely nuts. And if you have an amazing or harrowing tale of cows being blown up or people being greased, or you just want to say hi,

you can send an email to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove, or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Bridgewater on the iHeart radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.