No good deed goes unpunished

[Silent_Bob]

As deputies moved in, squatters disappeared from Colorado Springs home for sale

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/colorado-springs-area/as-deputies-moved-in-squatters-disappeared-from-colorado-springs-home-for-sale

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A family that refused to leave a home for sale in Colorado Springs suddenly disappeared before sheriff's deputies arrived to evict them.

Pauline Hawkins moved out of her home on Crystal Mountain Road in Colorado Springs and moved to New Hampshire last year.

Hawkin's home was for sale when her real estate agent called in November and said a family had moved in.

The family told the agent, Linda Schauer, that they paid $2,700 to rent the home. Schauer thought the family had been scammed by a fake landlord. Hawkins told KRDO-TV in Colorado Springs that she felt bad and told the family they could stay until Christmas, but then they refused to leave.

Because Hawkins let them stay it became a civil matter and she had to go to court to evict them, as if they were tenants.

"It's completely shocking that there are laws that are protecting these people to stay in my house. That's the other thing that is completely shocking, there are no laws to protect me," said Hawkins.

KRDO-TV said deputies with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office went into the home Tuesday to evict the family and found the family gone except for a few belongings they left behind.

The home was cleaned and is now back up for sale.

"I am so thrilled that they are out," Hawkins told KRDO-TV.

[WithoutAPaddle]

Pauline Hawkins moved out of her home on Crystal Mountain Road in Colorado Springs and moved to New Hampshire last year.

...Schauer thought the family had been scammed by a fake landlord...and told the family they could stay until Christmas, but then they refused to leave.

Because Hawkins let them stay it became a civil matter and she had to go to court to evict them, as if they were tenants.

"It's completely shocking that there are laws that are protecting these people to stay in my house. That's the other thing that is completely shocking, there are no laws to protect me," said Hawkins....

My sympathies go to the homeowner Hawkins.  The fact is, however, that contrary to her lament, there ARE laws protecting her... the ones that she used to evict the squatter/tenant.  If she, herself, had still been living in the house at the time, she could have booted them out immediately.   In the county where I am living now, I was told that in a house in which the absentee landlord rented rooms to unrelated adults and one tenant had filed a complaint with the police that led to another of the tenants being found in possession of cocaine, the tenant had to vacate within seven days.  In this case, I imagine the tenant was entitled to a 30 day notice to quit or something like that.  If I was the landlord in this instance and was so inconvenienced, this incident would not rank very high on my all-time list of having been inconvenienced by the inconsiderate acts of others.

[Tom Sawyer]

I've heard that in some states it can be 6 months before you can evict someone.

[WithoutAPaddle]

I've heard that in some states it can be 6 months before you can evict someone.

I'm pretty sure that in Massachusetts, it can be dragged out nearly that long.  In the instance described in the opening post, the occupant probably can buy a second month of delay just by disputing the factual claims of the verbal "rental" agreement, and then getting at least one continuance.

Back in the mid 1980s, a friend of mine who owned an old, four apartment house in New Hampshire was trying to clear it of tenants so he could remodel, and it took longer than a month to get rid of the obstinate one who had nowhere to go.  Like a lot of large old houses that had been built for one or two family occupancy and then divided into smaller apartments, the landlord had been paying for the electricity because there were individual fused circuits that ran from one apartment to another, and it took some effort to even figure out which circuits serviced this apartment unit.  My friend and I got a couple of walkie talkies and at night time, one of us would unscrew fuses in the panel while the other would stand outside, looking for lights going out in response to our fuse removals.  Each time we'd do that, he'd immediately turn off all his lights, so it must have taken a week before we finally had him blacked out.

My father owned an old house that had been made into two apartments without anyone having professionally segregated the electrical systems, and not only did he eventually discover that one tenant was paying for about 3/4s of the electricity, there was one circuit that actually "looped" the two fuse boxes, such that it went from one fuse in one box, to various outlets and ceiling light fixtures in both apartments, back to a fuse in the other fuse box.  The most challenging part of the eventual, professional "repair" was bullshitting the tenants while we had the electricity off for a couple of days, so they wouldn't figure out that they had been paying for a lot of each others electricity for several years and demand some kind of restitution.