UKForge: Man Leaves For Vacation, Returns To Find 15 Weird Flatmates

I'm saying that confronting you with that choice delegitimizes your entire fucking nation and everyone who lives there. Nobody should have to choose between letting squatters keep you from your own damned home, and losing your livelihood....

....but I think you're exaggerating here. I doubt that "confront first, then have your day in court" would ruin your career forever.

As the law stands at the moment, to use force would risk criminal prosecution andif convicted yes I would ruin my career forever as the Law Society would bar me from practice for both conduct unbecoming my profession and for the inevitable conviction and custodial sentence.

So, that is why I call for the law to be changed, instead of trying to be a vigilante. See this is real life, not Hollywood. In real life our jobs and home are more important than five minutes of macho law breaking. So we do the next best thing, we call for changes in those things we disagree with.

The best of real life is that for all the jizz swapping going on in this thread, when actually faced with such a choice there isn't one person here who would do it any differently, including you.

Holy crap! I have no life and waste too much time at work!

It is contemptible fucking dishonesty to equate self-defense with vigilantism.

Meanwhile, this guy has to live with his sister while squatters deny him access to his own fucking home. Un-fucking-acceptable. Full stop. No debate can be entertained on that point.

Then you don't know a fucking thing about me. Or, more likely, you're akin to an alcoholic who feels better about his habit by pretending everyone else is just as bad. Only your malady is the lack of a spinal column.

Some pics from said link:


Connan Gupta went to stay with his sister while his house was decorated and returned to find squatters had moved in.


Italian students changed the locks of the house and said they couldn't afford to pay rent while they were studying in London


The kitchen area of the house the squatters are occupying. There is no sink so the squatters wash kitchenware in the bathrooms


Brazen: Some of the squatters smile for the camera in the back room of the house where all their possessions have been placed


Over-run: A pet cat belonging to the squatters (bottom right) makes itself at home in one of the bedrooms of the £700,000 five-bedroom property

God damn am I glad I don't have to deal with some shit like this. I'm renovating my place now, and have been doing so for a while. I assure you if I went over there one day and found squatters had moved in and wouldn't leave the first thing would be to "convince" them it would be considerably more healthy to just pick up their shit and move on than it would be for me to evict them.

Granted the law is on my side here and why teh UK allows this kind of shit is beyond a mystery.
Were I there I'd be hard pressed not to make the front door a drive through and stomp the ever living shit out of the scumbag occupiers if need be.

I don't know though, occupation seems to be second nature over there if history is any indicator.

But this isn't self-defence. In our legal system self defence is when there is a threat to you, not when you are locked out of a property you own. Your law may include property as something to be defended but if ours does not then my only option is to break the law.

So its not dishonest to equate it with vigilantism since if I showed up armed with a weapon and attacked the squatters since I would be taking the law into my own hands. I'm not prepared to risk putting food on my table and a roof over my head for the sake of committing a crime because some people think its the macho thing to do.

So again, the implication is that I agree with this scenario. I've made it abundantly clear I do not and I favour a law that would allow immediate possession of the property through force exerted by the police.

But, until that occurs the only option for immediate poession risks criminal prosecution and, for reasons repeated several times, it is a risk I personally would not be able to take and the consequences to me would be too high.

If I had my way the law would be changed so that we could hang squatter from trees for deviling the property of others. But I ain't making myself homeless for it.

I really don't understand the concept of why you feel I am less of a man because I don't want to piss my career away and lose my home as a result.

Sure you may be a macho man. Congratulations to you. But you are also a stupid man if you are prepared to act with your brawn instead of you brain at the expense of your livelihood.

Fucking scum.

A legal system that does not allow me to act reasonably in defense of my own property has no legitimacy. Even there, I seriously doubt I could be charged with kicking in my own door. Using your brain in this situation means not giving in to the urge to initiate actual violence. Just remove them at gunpoint without injuring anyone, and let the police deal with them outside. Where the law differs from this, the law is wrong, and society will eventually catch on to that fact if enough people defy it.

Chup is right, the same thing could happen here in the states.

This guy hasn't even visited his house in 2 years. So, it's not as if he's sleeping on the streets.

Yes, I know. It's his property and that's the end of it. And, he'll have it back soon enough.

If he can wait two years before even checking on the property, he can wait a couple weeks for the legal process to work.

Give me one good example of where you have declared a law illegitimate and have actively defied the laws that apply to the jurisidiction in which you live and I might take you seriously.

All I see is an internet poster with a lot of hot air.

"Soon enough" is not for any outside party to dictate. Step #1 is removing the squatters immediately, by any means made necessary by the squatters' resistance. Give them a chance to leave peacefully, but no option of staying one second longer than the owner wishes. Immediately change the locks again, and secure it with your own people if necessary while you're in custody. Then the courts can sort out the petty legal minutae.

Are you asking me to confess to a crime?

It's all well and good to talk shit and say that you would do this or that. But, I also know you won't go outside the law regardless of how 'right' you are - in a situation like this.

So, this guy can petition the courts and contact his ... version of a representative and call the newspapers and demand a change in the law, but that isn't going to help him now.


Edited in light of the previous post - and the traffic ticket.

He was renovating it and went away for a week. How does that become two years. All of his clothes and possessions were in there.

I do understand Chup's lack of desire to screw himself long term for his short term tights, but get the facts straight.
Bottom line in the UK needs to get on the stick and get rid occurred stupid fucking laws and Prince Charles.

He wasn't gone for a week.

The funny thing is it seems to take quite a while to prove the property is indeed your (the homeowners) property.

Stop paying your utility bills/mortgage/taxes and I bet "they" will find out toot sweet who owns it!

When you owe a bank/corporation/government anything they will find you instantly!

"toot sweet"?

From the OP

Now there is an interesting angle. Oh, it's actually not mine? Guess I don't need to pay the mortgage or any utilities, then. Please, foreclose on it.

For that matter, what prevents him from selling it?

It's the Daily Mail. If you believe that, I've got this great piece of land down in Florida you might be interested in buying.

Who doesn't know what "toot sweet" means?

Okay, how about "lickety split?"

I think you might be misspelling a French phrase.

UA, of you resorted to violence to remove squatters in the US anyplace other than Texas (maybe) you'd be arrested and charged. Morally right or wrong, them's the facts. Of course here you could get PD to do it for you or maybe an Obama beer summit, but it would get done.

I'm not talking about this particular incident - because it's unlikely to happen like this here in the states.

But there are unfair things that happen here that are perfectly legal. After it happens, you live through the situation legally, then take actions to make sure it doesn't happen again.

But I'm not resorting to violence. I come home.."huh..my lock is stuck. Oh well, I'll just jimmy it and fix it tomorrow. Wait, who the fuck are you people? Get the hell out of my house!"

At that point, the trespassers either comply with the owner's wishes or initiate violence, in which case I would be acting in self-defense.

Or I hide a pattern of consistent disobedience. MJ prohibition and firearms restrictions come to mind. I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna let any outside party dictate what I do to my own body or what pieces of personal property I can own.

^^ You'd have a hard time in most places with that defense. Usually you cannot deliberately walk into a dangerous or likely dangerous situation and then claim it was self defense. You are expected to call the cops.

Handle it in every way like a home invasion. There is something seriously fucked up about the idea that entering my own home could ever be considered deliberately walking into a dangerous confrontation or initiating violence. All of the guilt rests on the trespassers. Break the door. It's your door. Demand they leave. So far, peaceful. Any ensuing violence would be initiated by them.

Huh. Just starting this thread, so maybe this ground has already been covered.

First off (and shortest) as Chup explained it, the thing that hit me was the similarity to Intellectual Property. You can't just patent, copyright, or trademark something. You have do use it in some way and if someone infringes on your rights, you need to defend them--otherwise you lose them. I hadn't thought of real property rights that way before.

On topic, yes, we have squatter's rights here in the US. They may have some ties to the old days of building the frontier, but when used properly they are also an efficient way of fighting urban blight.

Say you've got your stereotypical slumlord/absent property owner. Or maybe the owner has died without any heirs and no one has any visibility on a property so if falls into disrepair. Or a place is foreclosed and the paper is held by an insolvent bank in another state. Anyway a property sits unused and decaying. In principle, someone who might not be able to afford to buy the place could still afford to fix it up. So they can legally move in and use it as their home. They can start fixing it up and, when certain conditions are met, can make a case that they now own the property--sort of "finders keepers."

That said, I have no idea how often the ideal ever happens. IIRC, Alcatraz was squatted on by American Indians back in the 1970s.