squatters rights take entirely too long to kick in these days
Squatter’s rights wouldn’t be applicable here, time aside.
The point of squatter’s rights isn’t to try to generate more housing in random nooks, but to force regularization of the situation – like to encourage property owners to act to eject people now rather than waiting fifty years and then, surprise, enforcing submarine legal rights.
Using squatter’s rights requires that possession be adverse and open. Like, you can’t secretly hole up in a corner somewhere, as the person in the article did. You have to be very clear, have everyone know that you’re living there. The property owner also has to be making no efforts to remove the person. Those restrictions aren’t just arbitrary – they’re to limit it to situations where is a long-running divergence between legality and the situation in place and where nobody is attempting to rectify the situation themselves (either via selling rights to live there or ejecting a person or whatever).
almost like our property codes were written for an era that is more than a century gone
Nah, speaking from personal experience, I grew up in a sutuation where my family took care of a small adjacent strip of property we didn’t own for 20+ years. The true owner lived ~5 houses down and for 18+ years he didn’t know he owned it. —In that situation we could have claimed the property and the only reason we didn’t is the cost of surveying the property was greater than it’s perceived value. it was probably 20 ft wide and had a large storm drain running under the middle of it that came from a walmart parking lot a half-mile away.
fast-forward a few years and the people we sold the home to were moving out and the number of acres listed had been updated to include that strip of land.
Sounds like long enough for her to claim squatters rights and no longer be homeless.
The threshold in Michigan is 15 years of conspicuous, uncontested, and exclusive occupancy. So, no.
The court may argue that the space behind a retail marquee is not a home.
Pure commercial zoning, legally can not be a home.
There’s a lot of bullshit in zoning to begin with. Why exactly can’t we have mixed commercial and residential areas in suburbia? Slap some apartments on top of grocery stores, bakeries/restaurants, and shops; or is forbidden to have much of anything within walking distance of homes?
Because then you wouldn’t need a car
Mixed use zoning is considered the gold standard of city planning, and it’s why housing in Tokyo is so cheap comparatively
or is forbidden to have much of anything within walking distance of homes?
I think we both know it is. No one knows why tho.
Doesn’t sound homeless to me. Maybe they should just let her stay.
“Welcome to camping with Steve”
They should leave her there.
The director of a local homeless assistance group is quoted as saying:
“Obviously, we don’t want people resorting to illegal activity to find housing."
IANAL but here’s a funny twist of the law. It’s not generally illegal, per se, for the woman have done this until she was caught and legal action was taken and was successful. The mere act of it was not in itself illegal. Heck, in California you have to give squatters 3 days notice (the area where she stayed could be seen as “vacant”).
Anyway, food for thought. Lest, you know, one require housing.
Trespassing is illegal, even if the law sometimes gives even law-breaking squatters extra rights in evictions.
Wasn’t “trespassing” what cops charged students with for sitting on their own campus?
Yes, many of them committed the crime as well.
After they were asked to leave. That’s what made it trespassing.
They paid quite a bit of money to be there.
Meanwhile, pro-Israeli protesters from outside campus blare loud music during the middle of finals and the administration shrugs.
Other Israeli groups invaded campuses armed with baseball bats. No arrests of Israelis appear to have been made.
So it appears the universities are punishing students residents for the actions of counter protesters.
By invoking “trespassing”
They paid quite a bit of money to be there.
And that doesn’t matter a damn once they’ve been asked to leave.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad. I’m saying it’s how the law works
I’m not saying it’s good or bad
:-/
If it’s bad we should change the law. Right now, legally, these people were trespassing. That’s a fact.
Yes, trespassing is illegal. But you haven’t trespassed until it’s established that you have trespassed. Legally.
You obviously aren’t legally guilty of it until you’ve been charged and convicted, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t actually done it in the meantime.
but that doesn’t mean you haven’t actually done it
Yes, but you are only guilty of it, legally, if you are caught :)
A subtle but useful distinction in my book.
That’s not how trespass works. You have to be “noticed” that you are not welcome on the property. Once you are on notice you have trespassed if you haven’t left
No, at least common law trespass definitely does not require any noticing. Can you show me any statutory form that does? Obviously crimes are hard to prosecute without witnesses, but very few crimes require someone to notice at the time for it to be a crime.
“Common law” has no relevance to state law matters in the US (nor Federal, for that matter). Here is the relevant statute in this case:
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-750-552
The bar for trespass is met only if the perpetrator has been “forbidden” from accessing the property by the owner. This does not have to be in person, or verbal. A “keep out” or “no trespassing” sign would suffice, and this is why such things exist. In this case I would be immensely surprised if there weren’t some kind of employees only, authorized personnel only, or keep out sign posted on whatever method of ingress was used to reach the inside of the sign.
The intent of this is clear, it’s so nobody can get done for merely setting foot on a property in some situation where they didn’t realize they’d left public right of way or a property where they had authorization to be. You have to tell the person to GTFO (either preemptively or upon discovery) and if they don’t, then they can be arrested.
Ohh, my bad. Y’all mean like “given notice”, not like “disturbing the owner”. I read that too fast.
Common law is still valid in every state in the US (except maybe Louisiana), although obviously statutory law usually overrides it. You’re right that there’s no federal common law since Erie v. Tompkins though.
And I agree with your analysis of that statute. That is interesting too, since my state, Illinois, does not require explicitly being forbidden by the owner. It’s much more in line with the common law idea of trespassing as simply being going somewhere without authority, express or implied.
Incorrect
Who TF snitched on Jane Doe?!
Contractors followed an extension cord and found her up there.
This was not a homeless woman, this woman had a home.
I want a picture of the place/sign.
Is this Escher’s secret sign home?
A stocked minifridge‽
Who snitched??
She has an extension cord that they saw.
Boo. If you see that extension cord, no you didn’t.
Luxury. Best we could manage was a paper bag in a septic tank.
We were evicted from our septic tank.
A 34-year-old woman was living inside the business sign, with enough space for a computer, printer and coffee maker, police said.
The computer I get. The coffee maker…okay, for some people I get. I dunno if a printer is at the top of my priority list but, hey, I dunno, maybe she needed it for work.
But:
A Keurig coffee maker.
Man, if I were squatting in a store sign, I think that I would be using a Mr. Coffee and Folgers ground coffee, not a razor-and-blades-model coffee maker.
She had a job and no rent lol.
She probably pulled it out of a dumpster. And you can get or make inserts to use regular grounds instead of cups.
Food banks actually carry a ton of those pods, and hang onto them because no one really has a keurig who goes to food banks.
Reusable pods are cheap. I’ve been using them in my keurig for a few years now and they’re great.
Heck she could have been using it to just boil the water and adding folgers in afterwards.
Reusable pods are free if you’re near a bank
That’s innovative, have to give her that.
She had a home, but they kicked her out.
