I have a pretty good imagination. And I've volunteered in a shelter for years. But I really can't imagine how terrible being homeless would be. Not having a place of my own to hang my hat at the end of the day...No privacy...None of my things around (other than what I can carry)...No trips to the kitchen for a snack...No comfy bed to nap in...No luxuriating in the shower...No curling up with a good book. Or even a bad one...No welcoming family and friends...No putting up my Christmas tree...No sense of security...
I see how god-awful it is to be homeless, so damned hard.
It always amazes me how well most of the guests - most of them homeless, or at best housing insecure - at St. Francis House are able to keep it together. I don't see what's roiling around inside, but most of the folks I see are clean and more polite and pleasant than you might think would possibly be the case. The resilience I see every time I'm in SFH never fails to amaze me.
Years ago, when I worked in a dinner program for the poor and the homeless, I told a fellow volunteer that I wouldn't have the courage to be poor.
That still holds.
If I were homeless - unless it was the result of some sort of immense natural or national disaster, which would be plenty bad but which I can imagine navigating and surviving - if I found myself homeless, I'd probably flip out on day one.
So I have plenty of sympathy for those who end up squatting, occupying abandoned buildings so that at least they have a roof over their heads and the ability to get and stay out of the elements.
For those (knowingly) squatting in an unoccupied house, I'm a little less sympathetic. (I wrote knowingly, because apparently there are some folks who are scammed into signing a legitimate-looking fake lease from an imposter landlord.)
My direct experience with squatters is pretty much limited to squatter-adjacent.
A few years ago, a unit in my building was occupied by a couple who stopped paying rent shortly after they moved in. It took a few years to dislodge these Pacific Heights wannabes, who were a colossally hostile and occasionally downright scary presence. Plus costly. I didn't own the unit they were squatting in, but these con jobbers ended up suing all the owners in the building personally on a bogus, exceedingly flimsy pretext. Suing the owners netted them zero, but cost us quite a bit in legal fees to ward them off. Fortunately, there was eventually a court order that dislodged them.
So my sympathy when I read about squatting situations tends to be leaning towards the landlord.
One squatting situation that I came across recently caught my eye for its sheer brazenness.
From the jump, there were signs that something wasn't quite right when the management company managing the rental was nowhere in evidence when the new kids on the block moved in, tearing down and tossing aside the rental sign and calling in a locksmith.
The "new kids" did have a legitimate looking contract, but it was a fake. And from the tenor of the article, these folks weren't innocents being scammed, but were themselves the scammers. While the new neighbors were doing grocery shopping, and having the cable guy connect them, they had no furniture, but were just camping out on blankets. Plus they had a lot of cars coming and going at all hours of the night.
Sensing that something was up, the neighbors first called the rental management company to confirm their suspicions. And when the cars starting drifting in, fearing that there might be something extra-illegal going on, some of the neighbors starting videoing the activity.
With no provable crime - and since the squatters had a fake lease in hand - the cops couldn't do anything.
The management company is lining up a court date for the eviction hearing, but until then (where "then" may take 6 months to a year)...
Meanwhile, the squatters, pissed off that their new neighbors weren't rolling out the welcome wagon, but were instead filming them, called the police to report that they were being harassed.
Reminds me of the joke about definition of chutzpah being the fellow who killed his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan.
There may be some benefit of the doubt here. Maybe the newbies really did think that they had signed a legit lease? But the no furniture, and the vehicular activity, suggests otherwise. Sounds pretty fly-by-nightish to me.
And given my experience with the couple from hell, I'm inclined to think that they're up to no good.
Good luck to the neighbors putting up with the hostility that will be emanating from the squatter house while the eviction crawls through the process. (And if I'm misjudging the squatters, my apologies.)
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Info source: ABC News (Chicago)
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