Global Courant 2023-04-17 13:30:30
Property owners who have fallen victim to squatters taking over their homes are rethinking being landlords.
Patti Peeples, 61, said investment properties were meant to subsidize her retirement, but after spending $5,000 in legal fees to remove squatters who occupied her home for 34 days, she’s had enough.
“Every income I hoped to live on this year is being diminished by this theft,” she told Fox News. “They stole my house from me for a while, and then they escalated it by doing nearly $40,000 in damage.”
SCRATCHES TAKE OVER 34 DAY HOUSE IN FLORIDA
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The two female squatters caused $38,000 in damage, including smashed walls and windows, cabinets falling off the walls, a missing washer and dryer, broken toilets, and feces scattered throughout the home.
Peeples first learned that the squatters were moving in after she sent a handyman to make repairs while awaiting a home inspection after showing the house to an interested buyer 48 hours earlier.
“He called me in a panicked way and said, ‘Patti, there’s a mother pit bull with 10 to 14 babies sleeping on the porch and I can’t get in the house,'” she said. “I had no idea why there would be a dog for sale in my house.”
Patti Peeples saw the destruction left by squatters in her home after 34 days. (Courtesy of Patti Peeples)
Peeples rents out a few houses with her business partner, Dawn Tiura, but decided to sell them after the tenants moved out.
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When Peeples tried to ask the squatters to leave her property, they showed a lease from a fraudulent landlord and claimed they had a right to stay.
A police report revealed that one of the women had recently been evicted from a nearby home in mid-February following an almost identical situation, including a lease with the same address for the bogus landlord.
A home in Jacksonville was destroyed after squatters moved into it. (Courtesy of Patti Peeples)
“I have absolutely no right to enter this house because these squatters expect privacy, even though the law knows they are squatters, I know they are squatters and they know they are squatters,” Peeples said. .
Peeples said she feared for her safety during arguments with the squatters.
“We were driving by at night and they threw a rock at my car and damaged it, and we had the window half down and they threw human feces in the car,” Peeples said.
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She says that after reviewing this situation, she believes “the laws are too negative for landlords.”
“It is now my decision to get rid of all my rental properties,” she said. “And I’ll have to figure out another way to subsidize my retirement.”
Peeples added that Tiura, who is based in North Carolina, has decided to stop investing in Florida real estate.
In Houston, Texas Linda Jiang told ABC13 that after a months-long battle she was also a victim of squatters.
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After arriving at her residence to tidy up the yard, she found she had been locked out of her rental property by squatters who had changed her locks and refused to leave.
In both Jiang’s and Peeple’s cases, the police told the property owners that they could not help and that both situations were a civil matter to be dealt with through the courts.
One of the squatters on Jiang’s property, Tamisha Holmes-Bey, also claimed to have been a victim of a fake lease scam.
The house in Jacksonville illegally occupied by squatters for 34 days. (Courtesy of Crissie Cudd)
Despite telling local news outlets that she was not from Texas, ABC13 found that she had lived in Texas for decades and that a woman with her name has been evicted three times since 2019.
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“It was very frustrating dealing with this, but now I’m glad she’s gone, and I hope lawmakers will do something and change the law and protect homeowners instead of the squatters,” Jiang told the local outlet.
She added that she intended to secure the house and is considering selling the house to stop being a landlord.
Click here for more information about the squatters in Jacksonville, Florida.
