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Comment by orwin | Hacker News Reader

> Someone gets by effraction in an apartment/house, stay there for 48 hours and they are good to stay forever.

That's not true. No mention of 48h anywhere. Only place i found it is here: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F35254

"Le préfet rend sa décision dans un délai de 48 heures, à partir de la réception de la demande." which roughly translate to "The prefect renders his decision within 48 hours of receiving the request."

We have a family house that was squatted on the coast during last winter. We asked the squatters to leave (while redacting a letter to the prefect) and they too believed the "48 hour" stuff. The police did not however, and made them leave quite quickly (less than a week).

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> That's not true. No mention of 48h anywhere.

Please see https://immobilier.lefigaro.fr/article/ce-que-vous-devez-sav... and https://immobilier.lefigaro.fr/article/logement-squatte-pour...

The 48 hours are a generally applied rule for the squatters to be differentiated from, say, burglars. Because otherwise someone forcibly coming into your house while you are there could not be arrested at all.

The ones you mention is for the preéfet to statute about the expulsion.

> We have a family house that was squatted on the coast during last winter

I honestly pity you. I know of two families whose house was squatted and it took months for them to get back their house (in a terrible state); They never got anything from the quatters (nor from the insurance in one case).

Le Figaro is notoriously bad at sorting facts from right-wing rumors. That squatter theme is a recurrent subject to scare their typical landlord readership. Find primary sources for that.

It is difficult to find more primary sources than being friends with people who were squatted and having witnessed what they went through.

Regardless, as an American reading this thread,it’s strange how common an occurrence in France squatting seems to be.

Isn't it common in the California?

At 30 days they gain rights as a tenant. There was a case years ago of someone with an AirBnB I believe where they stayed longer than 30 days and then refused to leave claiming they had established the place as their residence.

Sounds perfect. Nobody should own more than one residence. Another family taking over is the best outcome for the community. Absentee landlords really need to be given the boot.

I don't understand your point at all. What's an absentee landlord in your book? A landlord who doesn't live in the place they are renting out? I would assume that's - all of them?

A non absentee landlord lives on the same land as the rental unit.

Do you mean a contiguous, legal parcel of land or a more natural division, like valleys, mountaintops, coastlines, etc.?

Clearly that's not what the GP means, because there would be no dilemma with someone living in a property held by a landlord for more than 30 days if the absentee landlord can just live next door.

What kind of logic is this? Nobody can save up to buy real estate for profit?

Buying more real estate than you use is hoarding. There is only so much liveable land. Out of all the things capitalism can apply to this is morally the worst.

Except people don’t live on land. They live in homes. There’s plenty of empty land. But to house people you need to make the deep capital investment of building housing on that land. Capital accumulation requires capitalists.

They live on both. There's a reason why cali/vancouver are so popular, it's because of their easy weather.

Plus, the home you're buying is on land that's next to a bunch of utilities which are there because generations have worked towards them. Should you be able to hoard all of this (hospital, public transport, etc) just because you're "investing in housing" (which in most part is just sitting on empty houses to sell it to other people that need these utilities)?

This is why vacant home ownership should be taxed to oblivion: you're profiting off something that isn't yours. The only reason the home is appreciating is because the land you're on is gaining value because it's either:

- Most livable land

- Has utilities

- Has people living there that make the city attractive

And owning a home participate in none of this without taxes. Not only that, your incentives are aligned with preventing people from building more houses so yours appreciate, which is a net negative for the city.

Being against the exploitation of a basic human need (i.e. housing/shelter) for profit seems reasonable to me.

Sounds dangerously socialist to me

I rented a place in Colorado for over thirty days and the owner refunded me sales tax because that was long enough to establish residency.

Not common by any metric in California, nope.

I love "the California", I will use this from now on when referring to it (in Montana--they really do love Californians, so so much).

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