Brooklyn Councilmembers, Residents, Call for Action to Stop Squatters

By Matis Glenn

Councilmembers, concerned residents and others called for legislation Thursday to tackle the citywide rise of squatters – people who enter homes and live in them, who cannot be evicted by homeowners without a lengthy, costly court process.

Under the current law, people who occupy a home for 30 days are considered tenants, regardless of their ability to produce a lease or other proof. Any action taken by homeowners to regain their property, such as changing locks, removing furniture, or shutting off utilities, can land them in handcuffs.

Residents who attended the press conference held photos of a house on 67th Street that had been allegedly burned down last year by an angry squatter, who had also stolen from neighbors and destroyed their security cameras.

Councilmembers Kalman Yeger (D), Inna Vernikov (R) and Susan Zhuang (D), representatives from state assemblymembers, the local community board, and residents spoke outside Zhuang’s Gravesend office on Stillwell Avenue.

Zhuang says that the victims cannot afford the steep legal fees necessary to evict squatters. “They don’t have the money to pay legal fees, thousands of dollars…some people told me more than $100,000 [in] lawyer fees, and it took him four years to take the squatter out of the house.”

“Imagine you have spent your entire life savings into buying a home. You have that home for 30 years, and then you decide to leave abroad for a month. You come back…only to find it overtaken by strangers. And now you have lost, in a matter of 30 days, your property rights. Those rights have now been transferred to strangers, to people you don’t know,” Vernikov said.

“We allowed a chaotic, anarchist city to become what we are seeing today,” Yeger said. “Nobody cared when they jumped the turnstiles, so then they started the shoplifting spree. Nobody cared when that turned into pharmacies closing, big businesses closing, small business closing.

“It has to end. It ends when a homeowner calls the police on a squatter, and the squatters are arrested and removed from the premises. Anything short of that is a failure.”

Yeger referenced a bill proposed by State Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz, a Republican, that would make it easier for police to intervene and would clarify the definition of “tenant” to exclude squatters.

“And to those who say ‘well, it’s just a story here or there,’ first of all, even one is one too many, and I don’t know anyone who can disagree with that,” Yeger said. ”But what is the harm in passing, for example, the Blumencranz bill in the assembly? There are multiple democrats who have signed on to that bill, there are multiple who signed on to the senate version of the bill. What would be the harm in passing a common sense law that said that squatters are not tenants?

State Sen. Mario Mattera, a Republican, introduced another bill similar to Blumencranz’s; it has 10 co-sponsors, all Republicans.

When asked by Hamodia as to what people who go away to the Catskills during the summer months should do to protect themselves from squatters, Yeger said: “It’s the responsibility of every homeowner to have someone watching the house; appoint someone to pick up your mail, too. Check up on your neighbors’ homes if they’re away, and immediately report anything suspicious.”

mglenn@hamodia.com