Should Squatters have rights? Poll Results/Discussion

Helonearth

chunkymunky wrote: »

clearly someone who has had no experience of squatters, they have no respect for the property they are "stealing". i hope you never have the problem they destroy furniture to burn, friends of mine even got there property back to find that floor boards had been taken up to burn, the toilet had been smashed so the squatters had taken to doing it in bottles and boxes, it took almost a year to get them out.

That is precisely my point. IF my property was returned to me when I wanted it back, without having been damaged, I wouldn't have a problem with someone squatting in an empty building I owned. The problem is of course that what you have described does happen.

I am quite aware that the ideal world doesn't exist but that doesn't stop me dreaming of it.

dalej_2

i took sqatters rights through my lawyer because i rented a property from a so called friend, i redecorated the whole house and recarpeted it and cleaned up the mess the last tenant made then i moved in and the landlady saw how i had improvred her property then decided to up my rent from the agreement we had she said the property was worth more rent slightly forgetting that i was the one who had done up and paid for all the new decor so i took squatters rights for the remainder of the lease, i did not pay her a penny rent.

guppy

harryhound wrote: »

Unfortunately in this overcrowded, over heating, world there are not enough natural resources to go round anymore.

Then how come there are so many long term empty properties? How come so many people in this country (myself included ) end up throwing away perfectly good clothes and food away every day?

Whatever the problem is, I don't think its a shortage of resources...

harryhound

Your food and clothes are not "natural" they are made using lots of fossil oil.
You can afford to throw them away because you are richer than 90% of the rest of the people on the planet. Your clothes and some of your food are produced by people being paid 2 GBP per day.
(they are the lucky ones, they have got a job).
Long term empty properties are owned by speculators, or people who have lost their marbles. Site value rating (ie you have to pay council tax or something similar even on derelict property or empty lots) plus the fear of squatters would encourage such owners to put their property back into productive use.

frag_2

So Harry your saying people should rent their properties because of fear of squatters!!!

Exactly! You've just bolstered the arguement that these people need to feared, why? Because generally they wreck a property with no regards to the true owner or the neighbourhood.

Bring them to justice! Criminalise them!

juniper1

I can't believe this post.
About 10 years ago, my husband and my 9 mth old son and myself moved from Devon to Sussex because my husbands work was in London. We had our house in Devon on the market and moved into rented in Sussex so that we could all be together (after 12 months of only seeing my husband at weekends and coping with a new baby). I also had to go back to work after maternity leave so it made sense to make the move. The house in Devon was under offer but unfortunately squatters moved in just after Christmas. It was difficult to know how they got in because there was apparently no forced entry. As the water was turned off, they got it reconnected. As the telephone was disconnected they got it reconnected just by saying they were the new occupiers. In fact we actually telephoned our old telephone number and they answered the phone! Unfortunately a catalogue was delivered through the door and they took the opportunity to purchase (on credit in my name) a number of items to make their 'stay' more comfortable - a chair bed/sleeping bags, that sort of thing. They didn't use toilet paper (as it costs money I suspect) so they used the catalogue pages and as they wouldn't flush down the loo they threw it out the window and the enviroment agency had to be called in! My husband's first reaction was to go down with some friends and beat the wotzit out of them and evict them himself BUT they have 'rights'. They stuck a notice on the door advising their 'rights'. We had to go through the courts to get them out. It actually took 11 days and they were gone when my husband went round after the court hearing with the baliffs. They knew exactly how it worked with the court system. I was advised that the people who squatted had been seen selling the Big Issue in the shopping precinct up the road. In total it cost us £1000 in solicitors and court fees. Worse than that we lost our buyers and had to drop the price on our house so we lost in total about £4000/£5000.
So if anyone believes that squatters should have rights over empty properties, think again. Would you like what happened to us to happen to you?
I have to say after all this, we were one of the lucky ones as the house just needed a good clean. They had not wrecked the property at all but imagine if they had. The loss would have been even more substantial.

harryhound

frag wrote: »

So Harry your saying people should rent their properties because of fear of squatters!!!

Exactly! You've just bolstered the arguement that these people need to feared, why? Because generally they wreck a property with no regards to the true owner or the neighbourhood.

Bring them to justice! them!

Hullo Frag,

These people need to be "feared" because they cost YOU the user of two or more properties MONEY.

What would you do with them after you had dragged them into court to
"Criminalise" them? What ever you are going to suggest is going to cost ME
and my fellow citizens a small fortune.

I think you are trying to portray me as a bleeding heart liberal; actually I believe people obtain the privileges of citizenship as a result of performing the responsibilities of citizenship. In other words the first thing I would do is burn the human rights act and replace it with a human responsibilities act.

One human responsibility would be to make arrangements to keep a roof over the head of you and your family, not sponging off the rest of us.
If push comes to shove, then squatting an empty property is preferable to a life of social security scrounging.

Harry.

DKLS

Squatters 'rights' pah!. Squatters should be re-classed as looters, that way they could be legally shot. Which is nothing more than they deserve.
Squatting is just another word for theft, personally I would happily risk a prison sentence to get them out of my property, and would employ the services of the local rugby club to help them move out.

Or thinking about it in more detail, I would pump a certain gas through the vents at night, and carry the deeply sleeping squatters and dump them on the nearest roundabout.

harryhound

Hi Juniper1,

"They knew exactly how it worked with the court system. I was advised that the people who squatted had been seen selling the Big Issue in the shopping precinct up the road. In total it cost us £1000 in solicitors and court fees. Worse than that we lost our buyers and had to drop the price on our house so we lost in total about £4000/£5000.
So if anyone believes that sqautters should have rights over empty properties, think again. Would you like what happened to us to happen to you?
I have to say after all this, we were one of the lucky ones as the house just needed a good clean. They had not wrecked the property at all but imagine if they had. The loss would have been even more substantial."

It may be a surprise for you, but I too have had a similar experience, with a property for which I was responsible; admittedly I had only one squatter.
My costs in GBP were not very high, because I did the leg work of filling the forms, serving the legal papers etc.,
I had to lurk about to gain entry and then endure a stressful discussion (well a load of codswallop) about rights and how God ordained the passage of our lives, before serving the papers. The uncertainty is very stressful, I agree.
Maybe I was lucky and got the court system when it was not choked by similar cases but I was back in touch with my potential buyers in about two months. During that time the value of the best offer went up 20K .

Life on benefits is quite acceptable if you pay nothing for the roof over you head, perhaps your place was actually being sublet by the head squatter:rolleyes:
Do you think drugs might have had a part in the lives of your squatters?
(At least they were intelligent enough to sell the Big Issue and bone up on land law.)

If you feed the birds in the garden, you risk getting rats; if you leave an empty property, you risk getting a squatter. That is just the way it is.

frag_2

DKLS wrote: »

Squatters 'rights' pah!. Squatters should be re-classed as looters, that way they could be legally shot. Which is nothing more than they deserve.
Squatting is just another word for theft, personally I would happily risk a prison sentence to get them out of my property, and would employ the services of the local rugby club to help them move out.

Or thinking about it in more detail, I would pump a certain gas through the vents at night, and carry the deeply sleeping squatters and dump them on the nearest roundabout.

Too dam right.


I agree with you Harry on the human responsibilities act. I'm sure we will havew to wait for a governmental change for that though, looking at labours track record.


Bring back Thatcher and hell hole prisons