Thou shalt not steal.
Or, as every pre-school kid is taught, don’t take things that don’t belong to you.
Except if it’s someone’s home. Except if it’s in New York City.
Two city homeowners are facing the ultimate theft in separate cases as squatters have laid claim to their homes. One homeowner was actually arrested for confronting squatters who had invaded her home.
You can thank the city’s ultra-liberal squatter’s rights law, which allows trespassing criminals to take possession of your home if the trespassers have lived there for a month straight.
So you can pour 30 years of money and sweat equity into a home and lose it to a squatter if the illegal entrant lives there for 30 uninterrupted days.
Talk about a home invasion.
What if you needed to be away for a month to be with a sick relative? Or to visit a new grandchild? What if you finally took that extended vacation that you’d been dreaming about for your whole life?
Sorry, a squatter can take your house away from you if you’re gone for a month and they manage to swoop in. And you can’t change the locks, turn off the utilities or remove their belongings in an effort to get them to leave. Try it, and you become the criminal.
No, you have to evict them legally. Even though they’re on your premises illegally. You, the homeowner, has to pay a lawyer and other attendant legal fees. You have to spend untold hours in court.
It’s another example of Dem-led New York City bending over backward to coddle criminals instead of valuing hard-working city taxpayers and homeowners.
Come to New York City after crossing the border illegally? We’ll give you a place to live and other benefits.
Commit a crime and get arrested? You likely won’t have to pay bail and you’ll likely be put right back on the street to offend again. Heck, you won’t even be stopped, never mind arrested, if you’re roll out of a store with a cartful of stolen goods.
Landlords can’t easily remove problem tenants who refuse to pay rent and who trash properties. Mom-and-pop homeowners can no longer make their premises available for short-term rentals.
But criminal squatters can just move in and take over someone’s home. It could be your home.
So much for private property rights, which is perfectly in keeping with the top-down, socialist agenda permeating New York these days.
It’s not like this everywhere. In the rest of New York State, a squatter has to be on the premises uninterrupted for 10 years and has to pay the property taxes in order to take possession.
Even in lefty haven California, a squatter has to be in residence at a home for five continuous years and maintain the property in order to claim squatter’s rights.
But in enlightened New York City, it only takes 30 days for you to lose your home and find yourself in the middle of a legal nightmare. Unless you hire security guards when you’re gone for an extended period.
Think of all the agony that we go through in order to buy a home. Finding the right home in the right neighborhood. Securing a mortgage. Getting the money together for the down payment. Getting the inspection done. Securing the title and signing that mountain of papers and checks at the lawyer’s office. Never mind the money spent on renovations and the like after you move in.
It’s the biggest investment that many of us will make in our lifetimes. And yet city lawmakers allow a criminal to take it away from us in a month.
That’s whose side they’re on.
NYC’s crazy squatter’s rights law is more coddling of criminals over taxpayers (opinion)
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20.03.2024
Thou shalt not steal.
Or, as every pre-school kid is taught, don’t take things that don’t belong to you.
Except if it’s someone’s home. Except if it’s in New York City.
Two city homeowners are facing the ultimate theft in separate cases as squatters have laid claim to their homes. One homeowner was actually arrested for confronting squatters who had invaded her home.
You can thank the city’s ultra-liberal squatter’s rights law, which allows trespassing criminals to take possession of your home if the trespassers have lived there for a month straight.
So you can pour 30 years of money and sweat equity into a home and lose it to a squatter if the illegal entrant lives there for 30 uninterrupted days.
Talk about a home invasion.
What if you needed to be away for a month to be with a sick relative? Or to visit a new grandchild? What if you........
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