***SQUATTER UPDATE***

[PassingFair]

Police removed them at about 9:00 last night.

The police had gone by the house around 5:30 and
told them (woman and two kids) :cry: that they
had no permission to be there.

She produced a "lease agreement" and said that
she had met with a "leasing agent" at the house
on Saturday and given him $850 for deposit, et.
al. and began moving stuff in on Sunday night.

Police said that the leasing agent and lease
were bogus and she would have to go. She said
OK...2 hours later she moved MORE STUFF into
the house.

By this time, my brother (he moved out of the
house last year) was at the neighbor's house.
He's a city EMT, so he called the cops and told
them that the "perps" if you will were in the
house and that he was going over alone if they
didn't get there. He had a buddy monitor the
ride calls so he knew when the police would arrive.

The police and my brother went into the house and
the woman started to take things out to her car.
Three TV's, multiple microwaves, junk ..NO BEDS.

My brother was nice to her, said she was as much as
a victim as he was...blah blah blah, but he believes
the WHOLE story is a scam.

Her SISTER is squatting in a foreclosed property
across the street, and the police couldn't evict her
because there is no one with standing complaining!

I told my mom to SELL at any price, because this could
happen again at any time. 2 years ago this house was
appraised at $140,000. Now she will be lucky to get
$50,000. for it.

My parents bought in in 1971 (I VERY WELL remember the
day)....we were moving UP from our old neighborhood.

:cry:

Thank you, everyone, for all of your concerns and suggestions!

Although they were a little tardy, three cheers for the Detroit
Police Department for the professional way they handled all parties
concerned.

On edit: The "leasing agent" was a P.O. Box in Pontiac. She
couldn't remember where she had originally found him. The
police think her documents were phony.

[PeaceNikki]

1. Sad and awful.

It sucks that people are this desperate and that you were put in this position.

:hug:

[PassingFair]

4. I'm looking for something other than "squatters" to call these people.

It is DEHUMANIZING.
Even though I think these people
were participating in a racket.

She moved back in with her mother.
(Which is where I would be if I
became unable to pay my mortgage...)

[LostinVA]

2. I think the woman is lying through her teeth

Especially because of what you said about her sister,a nd how she was very "fuck you" and kept moving stuff in.

Thanks for the update -- I was wondering on the ride to work if you would post anything.

Heard anything from MrsG?

[PassingFair]

3. My brother and the police think she's lying, too.

But there's nothing they can do with the
woman across the street until the bank
and/or owners make a complaint!

Crazy World!

:crazy:

Mrs. G is due to arrive in Texas on the 18th...
got off to a late start on Sunday, but she IS
on her way.

Her house look SO EMPTY....

Anybody looking for a place to squat, PM me....
(just kidding, Laura, if you read this...)

[LostinVA]

5. That is actually brilliant -- you could squat-lease MrsG's house!

I agree with your brother and the police. That P.O. Box is either fake or hers.

[PassingFair]

6. Shhhhh! She'll hear you.

:spray:

[LostinVA]

8. The scary thing is, you COULD do that!!!!!

[PassingFair]

19. SquatterLady came back for her cats this morning...

and tried to talk my mother into letting her BACK IN!

Said she had no where else to go and had slept in her
car last night.

Said my mom could "evict" her later!

She told my brother that she had been living with her mother.
She told my mother that she had been living with her sister.

She told my mother that the "city" would pay her rent!

Chutzpah!

[Callalily]

7. Thank you for the update.

A sad, sad story, all around. Homeless shelters are bursting at the seams, while their funding is rapidly depleting. Where do people go when there's no place to go? Our country is in such a sad state.

Thanks also for the update about MrsG. If you see/talk to her, tell her howdy from me.

[JVS]

9. Have you considered finding a house-sitter to keep her out?

[LeftyMom]

11. Or at least getting an alarm system.

The next break-in might not be a squatter, it might be somebody who rips all the pipes out of the walls and dismantles the air conditioner for scrap, or somebody setting up a lab, or any number of worse things.

[JVS]

10. Question number two: can you have this person arrested and/or prosecuted?

[PassingFair]

14. I don't think so....

part of the scam, if it IS a scam, is that
they have a "lease agreement", making them
"victims", too.

The police should track down the "leasing
agent", if there is one, but that didn't
seem likely.

[LostinVA]

15. That's why I think it's a scam

[SacredCow]

16. Their behavior was surely questionable....

Driving around the block when your family members were there, etc... If they had leased the property on the up and up, they wouldn't have done that.

[Lethe]

21. the first thing they did was change the locks

total squatter bs

[1]

22. hey, i'm glad you resolved that so quickly...

scammers hurt your property. they ruin it. they bust it up. your property. they hurt you.

the fact that your "guests" had a lease agreement, and a lease agreement they couldn't sell to the police convinces me.


a good scammer would fill out the standardized form listing anyone they know with a working phone as the leasing agent. if the police call, the working phone just pretends it to be legit. yes, i represent the property. yes, the lease is valid. yes, i did accept the down payment. bla, bla, bla...

its not all that hard to create enough confusion to get the police in a bind about what to do. think about it. who do they believe? what action do they take that won't get them sued tomorrow? hummm...


the beauty part is that you were persistant, your scammers were idiots, and you resolved the problem.

this time.

[1]

23. sorry. double post. delete...

[Tuesday Afternoon]

12. bizarro. Glad it resolved fairly easily and quickly.

That is horrific to see the drop in appraisal!

[supernova]

13. I'm glad this was resolved last night

and it didn't go on for long.

Damn right, she sounds like she's fronting for stolen property (most likely in the neighborhood or nearby).

Ugh. It's really a sad situation all the way around.

I agree about the alarm system. The latest thing around here is to go to abandoned houses or empty commercial properties and steal the copper pipes. Scary that people are this desperate.

[Blue_Tires]

17. i hope there is nothing missing

so why did she start moving MORE stuff into the home at first, and where did she get it?

and certainly she wasn't ignorant enough to think you can move in a home with an $850 deposit? even the cheapest scumhole, crime-infested efficiency apartment i once lived in needed a $1300 deposit...

[PassingFair]

18. She left her CATS.

Five of them. She was going to come back for them last
night, but I don't know if she did or not. My brother
can't be reached at work, and I don't know where my
Mom is right now.

I hope she came back for the cats!

[merh]

20. I'm glad that you were able to get the police out there

It appears that Detroit is known as a squatters haven.

http://squattercity.blogspot.com/2005/08/even-dead-dont-know-detroit.html

[Wapsie B]

24. Omg 140k down to 50k!

That's a tremendous drop in price. I have to wonder how many squatters there are out there?

[quakerboy]

25. A thought

I am glad that you were able to get them out. And I hope that your mom is able to sell the house soon so as to avoid any further problems. Or at least, find a temporary tenant who she can trust while she looks to sell it.

I followed this incident with interest. I agree with most that it was likely a scam on the part of the recent evictee, and you are lucky the neighbors were paying attention. But I also look at the other side. If they were in a bank owned foreclosure rather than on the private property of one of our own, would we all be up in arms? Or would we potentialy be applauding them the same way many of us cheered the workers who took over that plant until they got their Pay?

It makes me think.

[Shakespeare]

26. TOTALLY different situation.

Somebody in a foreclosed property at least started out as a legitimate dweller. These people committed theft of PassingFair's home. They illegally took possession of it, changed the locks, and had phony lease papers. It's like comparing somebody who had their car repossessed to somebody who went out in the middle of the night and stole someone else's car. Completely different.

[quakerboy]

27. I do understand

And I have no problem with what PassingFair did, and a lot of problem with the scamming squatters. That was not my point.

But to be fair, I find in examining myself that if someone had done this to, say, JP Chase, instead of PassingFairs Mother, It would not bother me nearly so much, and I think that I might in fact on some(many) levels applaud it. And given they were determined enough to do to, and their sister is across the street, it seems likely that these persons eventually will do it again, somewhere. I hope that when they do, they make it into a bank foreclosure, not yet another private individuals vacant home. Yet another little cottage business we all will get to deal with the effects of, thanks to the reign of unrestricted free market capitalism.

[PassingFair]

28. I certainly learned a thing or two....

If I am rendered homeless, I'm going to take over
a 5 bedroom McMansion with granite counter tops
in the kitchen!

Having fake documents that the police can't really
confirm stops you from getting tossed out until
real ownership is established, and I heard several
people during this time tell me that, had they stayed
over 72 hours in the house, we would have had to conduct
actual eviction procedures to get them out (anecdotal
evidence ONLY, the police never told me this, and I
don't really believe it.)

I have had the water turned off at the house, so it
will be less inhabitable, but my friend tells me that
utilities are no obstacle to the professional squatter
brigade, who have clean aliases to use to get utilities
turned on.

My mom just wants to get rid of the house now. She is
sad, because she raised 5 kids, there, and was happily
married there. My dad is no longer alive, but she "feels"
him in the house....

Life in the 00's...who knew they would SCREW IT UP THIS BADLY!