“California homeowners are facing an ongoing squatter crisis across Los Angeles,” Newsweek reported in May. Based on comments from Daniel Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, Newsweek said that “thousands of homes are being invaded by squatters who live in them without paying rent, and many cause major property damage or even physical injury to property owners.”
And it can happen in the best neighborhoods, even in the famed 90210 Zip Code, the “most exclusive” in the country – LeBron James’ neighborhood. “Just a few doors down from James’ home,” the Los Angeles reports, “a group ‘squatting’ in 1316 Beverly Grove Place” had been “throwing parties reminiscent of Burning Man” in the quiet neighborhood “at all hours of the night,” complete with DJs and rave lights. The squatters were eventually evicted, but it was a long, uneasy process.
There are roughly 1.2 million empty homes in California, second only to Florida, where 1.7 million are unoccupied. California also has the fifth-lowest vacancy rate. At the same time, no other state has as many homeless (more than 181,000), nor does any other contribute to the problem quite like California – 28% of the country’s homeless are in this state.
If homeless advocates, those activists who make up the homeless-industrial complex and made California’s cities hostages of the homeless while normalizing their behavior, ever began to direct the unhoused to vacant homes, then trouble inevitably will follow. Don’t think that they would never do that. These are people who have little invested in civil society. Their mission is not to administer a remedy for homelessness and the factors that drive it but to empower the homeless in their wretched conditions, as if they are endangered species who cannot be moved from their natural habitat.
If the advocates are willing to protect the “rights” of their “clients” to occupy and defile public spaces, and they are, then appropriating private property is not a giant leap.
To their credit, lawmakers passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation, Senate Bill 602, that is intended to curtail squatting.
But is it enough? Apparently, some don’t believe it is. Just a few weeks ago, almost a year after SB 602 became law, a company that buys homes with cash was still warning property owners that “squatters in California possess a range of rights and privileges that are far broader than those in many other states.”
Rather than always looking within, maybe California could look outward to Georgia, which has had one of the worst squatting problems in the country. The case count there “jumped from three in 2017 to 50 in 2021 – to 198 in 2023,” says the Pacific Legal Foundation. In response, legislators passed a law that sharply expedites the process. The repossession time has been cut from eight months to 10 days.
“Homeowners,” says the Pacific Legal Foundation, “have expressed delight with the Georgia Squatter Reform Act.” Kyle Sweetland, PLF’s strategic research manager, suggests that “other states should follow Georgia’s lead.”
It could happen here. The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles recounted in May “a recent lobbying visit to Sacramento,” in which its “delegation discussed the need for anti-squatter legislation with approximately a dozen legislators.” Several, said Daniel Yukelson, the group’s executive director, “expressed interest in investigating the matter further for the 2024-2025 legislative session.”
If it doesn’t happen, expect to see more “squatter busters” at work. They “barge in on squatters” while armed, says Yukelson, or wait for them to leave before moving in themselves. “Their plan: live with the squatter, install cameras, dirty the bathrooms, take the ‘best’ spot on the couch, eat the squatter’s food, and make things uncomfortable for the squatters until they eventually leave.”
They are more effective, less costly and faster than the legal process. But sometimes situations turn ugly, even violent. If lawmakers want to avoid future carnage, they need to enact civil measures to better protect property rights.
Kerry Jackson is the William Clement Fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.
