But there's a loophole. Burbclaves will need to let deliverators in, which is a gap in the armor. How are they supposed to defend themselves? Some sort of rat thing?

Some rule of law would be nice, so that we don't have to resort to private security forces.

> in the context of a civil law dispute

The squatters are very frequently committing criminal fraud, by showing a fake lease to the police to portray themselves as legitimate tenants. Leases aren't recorded like deeds, and landlords' signatures often appear in public records. So it's easy to make a good enough fake that the police will take the squatters' side. I don't know why this article doesn't mention that, but a web search ("fake lease squatter") will show this is routine.

The squatters don't expect to win their dispute in court, just to take advantage of the extended time to trial. Oakland's eviction moratorium lasted for literally years, and they're still working through the backlog. When the case finally reaches court, the squatters will get evicted but the fraud is almost never charged. So from the squatter's perspective, it makes sense to fake the lease.

From a small landlord's perspective, the tradeoff may thus be certain financial ruin waiting for the judicial process vs. a slight chance of ruin if the "nightmare cotentant" approach goes wrong. So it's no surprise the sword guy has business. The risk that his services would be used against a real tenant is partially mitigated by the risk that that tenant would sue. The fake tenants prefer to stay out of court, since the judge (and opposing counsel) will look more carefully at their fake lease than the police did.

Georgia recently created an accelerated judicial review for cases where the landlord is alleging that the lease is fraudulent, separate from default on a non-fraudulent lease. That seems like the right approach to me.

If I did this to someone society liked (say, a girlfriend who had moved in and claims she is now a tenant), even as a fellow tenant, invited someone over with a sword to bear (but not "use") that sword as part of a pattern of activities intended to deprive her of her peaceful enjoyment of her tenancy including deploying "tear gas" and "smoke grenades" and play "extremely high-decibel sound" I would expect, at a minimum, I'd be looking at

1) Domestic violence 2) Harassment 3) Possibly Assault

At the very least I would expect to get booked, even if the charges didn't stick.

If I did this to some random homeless person or gang member, I'd expect basically a high five from the cops and nothing else.

Of course I do not live in CA, I live in AZ. In my state, ranchers have just straight up shot trespassers and nothing happened to them, despite the fact that by the book this would be highly illegal.

The guy doing this has discovered that in order to be convicted someone has to complain, then the police have to care, then a judge has to let it go to trial, a prosecutor has to actually want to competently build a case, and then after all that a jury actually has to convict you. I'm guessing the chance of all those stars aligning when the squatters are people literally spray painting "Kill all Bailiffs" (in one ASAP website screenshot) is next to nill.

Not building enough housing? It seems like they've built 164,121 housing units too many. I think that the more correct explanation is that speculative investors are holding onto property indefinitely rather than selling or renting at a loss, preventing housing from falling back to its true equilibrium value.

Apparently you don't need a license to carry swords in California, which is surprising. Maybe Ken-Sama was onto something.

Idk about America but at least in Spain squatting is in fact a very lucrative activity for squatters that target investors. They track and buy information of houses owned by banks/investors or are “summer” homes.

Once they break in they ask just bellow of what hiring a lawyer and doing the legal process would cost. Or worse they rent illegally the home in the secondary black market.

The reason it works is because kicking them legally can take months or years plus lawyers and proceedings cost. It also drops the value of the surroundings if they are not kicked fast enough.

Now theres an entire sector around it.

> The article alleges that squatting is an organized crime activity.

No, it doesn't. It extensively quotes its primary interview subject, who at one point makes a (fairly vague) insinuation along those lines. His words were "more like organized crime", and they're rendered in the article within quotation marks.

> Do gangs really do this, or is it just renaming the activities of homeless individuals as organized crime?

My guess would be the latter.

If they will be treated as organized criminals anyway, why not just say fuck it and organize?

Everybody pitch in and get some melee experience. Let the civil disobedience commence.

Yeah, he couldn't possibly be making self serving false statements.

Obviously you should believe him without question. What motive could he possibility have to lie?

Kinda just seems insane. Also reading the article, he just cited NDAs when asked to provide evidence that he actually successfully evicted anyone

It really doesn't go far enough. There ought to be a legal requirement for the service industry to check their hires are fully paid up on their rent before they can be allowed to hire them.

That way, people who can't compete in the Californian housing market will stop being babied and finally be allowed to get the message and then redirect their energy on migrating to somewhere with cheaper rent like Idaho or Guatemala.

He could even pocket half and hire a guy to do the evictions for him.

> People unlawfully squat

My understanding of CA tenancy law is that it's so tilted in favor of the tenant, that if someone just claims to be one, the police have to shrug.

> Small wonder people are unhappy with the system and there's a market popping up for extra-judicial evictions

Well-intentioned laws, upon contact with the real world, often end up with undesirable secondary and tertiary consequences such as this.

That sounds like a mostly reasonable approach from the police though. Do you want want a police raid just because you did something the landlord doesn't like? Do you want the issue decided on the spot with little actual knowledge? Unless the place is being actually damaged, it's likely better to take the time - there's too much possibility for harassment otherwise.

Police are not in the business of reading contracts and determining who is in the right or wrong.

They'll remove trespassers but these squatters will usually claim that they have a rental agreement, or that they've lived there long enough that there is a de facto agreement.

Honestly I think there are too few evictions.

The working homeless are worse at contributing to natalism than the working housed and there are too many Americans for the global aquifer budget to support. A mass fertility reduction can only really happen through a decline in prosperity. Ideally, the American housing policy framework should be exported globally as much as possible, too.

https://www.footprintnetwork.org/

From what I can gather from the article, it does seem to be entirely legal. He never forcibly removes the squatters, just makes their life annoying and difficult, and they usually choose to leave. He also doesn't attack anyone, and only uses the weapons for self defence.

I think any property owner could do the same, but it's just a risk that they don't want to take. Who wants to get up close to a (potential) knife wielding meth addict?

In the article they interview one of his customers and the guy basically says he is just a finance nerd that likes to ride his bike and hug his wife and he has no experience with potentially violent situations. So, I'm imagining a lot of customers are like that.

I think the legal approach depends on him being a tenant, which the homeowner can't actually be so easily (because they live somewhere else).

I think it's an attempt to normalize the idea that shelter is a basic human right. As a blue-stater, I'm undecided on whether I agree that it's a right, but I definitely think that nobody has a right to shelter in any property they choose.

It's a pretty complicated issue, and the legal patchwork of state versus county versus city laws can make it really difficult to untangle. I think that given the system we have, everyone in it is pretty much behaving rationally, if in their own best interests. I understand why the squatters would choose a squat over a shelter.