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Comment by sersi | Hacker News Reader

A friend of ours is an old lady who needed to spend a few weeks in the hospital. While she was there, her house was squatted and removing the squatters took a bit more than a year during which time she was effectively homeless. So I am glad that the laws are gradually being tightened against squatters

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Yep, a very common story. Or someone whose parents pass away, they take a few months to put affairs in order and start selling the house, only to find out the house is now being squatted and they have a nightmare to deal with.

But somehow people much prefer the “bohemian squatters sticking it to greedy capitalistic landlords who don’t use their property” narrative.

Apparently in France it’s common enough that you can hire people, effectively goons, to harass and intimidate them into leaving.

I think it was in Andy Mcnab's autobiography, where there was a story of a British SAS (Elite special forces) soldier who came home from an overseas tour to find squatters in his house. Apparently he sent flowers to them while they were in hospital.

Yup that was in France. Now with the law of 2023, it's significantly easier to deal with squatters.

Be careful though when hiring goons, you might get involved with the wrong kind of people.

It didn't take a year to remove the squatters. In fact, it probably took about 10min.

It took a year to remove the squatters without risk of government violence being applied to the owner.

There's a subtle difference.

What's the point of what you wrote here?

Think about that a little more.

It's not uncommon to be able to illegally do something very quickly that would take longer to do legally. I'm sure most of us are already aware of that.

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