A new report by the Pacific Legal Foundation looks into the scope of the squatting problem nationally, and suggests some solutions. Squatters are people who live in or on someone else’s property, though they don’t have any legal claim to it, don’t own it, and don’t have permission to be there.
This issue has gained a lot of attention recently with some high-profile cases, particularly in New York City. For example, earlier this year a woman was arrested for changing the locks to her $1-million property in Queens after a squatter had allegedly moved in.
NTD spoke with one of the report’s authors, Mark Miller, who is a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. He says this problem has become more pronounced since the foreclosure crisis of the late 2000s.
While squatting laws were originally designed to make more efficient use of abandoned properties, Miller says many squatters today are simply trespassers, and that police should have the authority to remove them quickly without the owner having to go through the court system to do so.