Earlier this year, a Florida resident, Patti Peeples, made national headlines after sharing her story of several squatters who moved into her Jacksonville property and caused $40,000 worth of damages. A New Florida bill is said to prevent this from happening again.
Florida lawmakers are trying to avoid this from happening again by moving forward with legislation that will fix a key loophole that was allowing this to happen in people’s residences.
Patti Peeples discovered that two female squatters broke into the rental property that she owned after she sent a handyman to do some work. When Peeples was informed of this, she asked the squatters to leave but they showed her a lease from a fraudulent landlord which dragged the issue out for a little over a month.
In that time, the two females caused $38,000 worth of damage to the property. They smashed walls, and windows, and took cabinets off the walls; they even broke toilets and spread fecal matter everywhere in the rental.
In April, Peeples told Fox News, “These squatters know the laws better than most attorneys do, and they use them to their advantage and the police are absolutely hamstrung…They know that this is a civil matter. The police have absolutely no right to remove these squatters and treat them as criminals, as individuals that have broken in or trespassed, and they simply throw up their hands and say, ‘You need to go through this civil court system and evict them.’”
This new bill would allow the immediate removal of squatters by law enforcement if they are unable to provide a true and legal lease agreement from a landlord or proof that they are paying rent at the property.
This is not only an issue in Florida, but in other states as well, making this legislation a possible solution for other parts of the country.
Kevin Steele, a Republican State Representative of Florida, told News4Jax, “I pursued this bill because I saw the impact that it had on Patti and as well as others in the state…Number two, we’re putting penalties on the individuals if they provide fraudulent documentation. So they’re gonna have criminal charges on that perspective.”
This would make it easier for law enforcement to come in and make a better call than essentially having to take someone’s word for it.
“If somebody is living in a home and saying, ‘Hey, I signed a lease, I’m paying rent, I have a right to be here,’ whether or not that’s true, the police hear that story, then they hear a story of somebody who’s not living there and saying, ‘This is my place, these people don’t belong here,’ the police officer can’t make that legal determination,” says Pacific Legal Foundation’s vice president of legal affairs, Jim Burling said.
Overall, this could help people avoid issues like the one that Patti experienced. It’s a difficult issue to solve legally, but this could help move things in the right direction.
