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