If you're wondering how a "specialized rent-a-cop" like this guy gets away with using physical force in the context of a civil law dispute, here's the relevant quote:
> When Jacobs takes on a job, he and his contractors sign temporary leases with the property owner. This move is his secret weapon.
> Jacobs is a big fan of California’s “castle doctrine.” The state law says someone has no duty to retreat in defending themselves against an intruder in their home. They can legally use force, even deadly force, to protect themselves — so long as the force used is proportionate to the threat.
The signing of a lease makes the aggressor look like the aggressee. This strategy seems really shaky to me. I can't help but wonder how well it's been tested in court.
Once someone gets seriously hurt, some of these landlords might end up wishing they had just waited out the regular eviction instead.
If I did this to someone society liked (say, a girlfriend who had moved in and claims she is now a tenant), even as a fellow tenant, invited someone over with a sword to bear (but not "use") that sword as part of a pattern of activities intended to deprive her of her peaceful enjoyment of her tenancy including deploying "tear gas" and "smoke grenades" and play "extremely high-decibel sound" I would expect, at a minimum, I'd be looking at
At the very least I would expect to get booked, even if the charges didn't stick.
If I did this to some random homeless person or gang member, I'd expect basically a high five from the cops and nothing else.
Of course I do not live in CA, I live in AZ. In my state, ranchers have just straight up shot trespassers and nothing happened to them, despite the fact that by the book this would be highly illegal.
The guy doing this has discovered that in order to be convicted someone has to complain, then the police have to care, then a judge has to let it go to trial, a prosecutor has to actually want to competently build a case, and then after all that a jury actually has to convict you. I'm guessing the chance of all those stars aligning when the squatters are people literally spray painting "Kill all Bailiffs" (in one ASAP website screenshot) is next to nill.
I've never lived in AZ, but it sounds like this may have a lot to do with it. ;-)
Personal injury is an area where plaintiffs start out with a huge advantage. Judgments are large and cases are often settled out of court by landlords' insurance companies. Not only would you have no trouble finding a lawyer, they might actively seek you out.
But there's a loophole. Burbclaves will need to let deliverators in, which is a gap in the armor. How are they supposed to defend themselves? Some sort of rat thing?
There are 164,121 vacant housing units in the Bay Area[1].
While that's only ~6% of total housing units, it's still a lot of opportunity for both squatters and these businesses.
Generally though, this situation only feels possible due to compounding systemic failures. In some order: Not building enough housing, income inequality, homeless support, and law enforcement (or lack thereof).
Fixing problems further up the chain solves the problems further down, but is more difficult and probably creates other unintended consequences.
Not building enough housing? It seems like they've built 164,121 housing units too many. I think that the more correct explanation is that speculative investors are holding onto property indefinitely rather than selling or renting at a loss, preventing housing from falling back to its true equilibrium value.
And if we built more housing units in the Bay Area (increased supply), do you think that would make speculative investors' housing units increase or decrease in value?
It's not "indefinite". Most vacant housing units are not vacant for a long time. They might still be under construction or might just be turning over for the next resident in a week.
I.e. insufficient land value tax rates. California created a class of feudal lords with prop 13 who get to reap disproportionate societal resources from newcomers.
Edit: the solution to which is not allowing squatters disproportionate access to others’ property via unnecessarily long court procedures. Residental agreements should be filed with the county just like land sales are, so a cop can quickly lookup who legally belongs and act accordingly.
You can claim whatever rental rate you want as a basis for your financialization agreements, but you should have to start paying taxes as though you are receiving that number as actual cash rent after some limited grace period.
That would stop most of the shenanigans by private equity in the rental markets.
The article alleges that squatting is an organized crime activity. I've never heard of this before.
Do gangs really do this, or is it just renaming the activities of homeless individuals as organized crime? Because most of the homeless individuals in Oakland are the working homeless.
Idk about America but at least in Spain squatting is in fact a very lucrative activity for squatters that target investors. They track and buy information of houses owned by banks/investors or are “summer” homes.
Once they break in they ask just bellow of what hiring a lawyer and doing the legal process would cost. Or worse they rent illegally the home in the secondary black market.
The reason it works is because kicking them legally can take months or years plus lawyers and proceedings cost. It also drops the value of the surroundings if they are not kicked fast enough.
This sounds a lot like the plot to Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton and Matthew Modine.
The antagonist looks great on paper and gets keys before actually paying the deposit. Then shielded by that slim residence he proceeds to wreak havoc on the property to lower values to snap it up for a song.
> The article alleges that squatting is an organized crime activity.
No, it doesn't. It extensively quotes its primary interview subject, who at one point makes a (fairly vague) insinuation along those lines. His words were "more like organized crime", and they're rendered in the article within quotation marks.
> Do gangs really do this, or is it just renaming the activities of homeless individuals as organized crime?
> “The work we do is constantly changing,” Jacobs said. “It used to be that squatting was more of a homeless activity. Then it became more like organized crime. I’m kicking out a whole lot of gangs.”
It really doesn't go far enough. There ought to be a legal requirement for the service industry to check their hires are fully paid up on their rent before they can be allowed to hire them.
That way, people who can't compete in the Californian housing market will stop being babied and finally be allowed to get the message and then redirect their energy on migrating to somewhere with cheaper rent like Idaho or Guatemala.
> “Our officers will respond to investigate the nature of the call,” OPD said in a statement. “If our officers determine this is a landlord-tenant issue, the case will be referred to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office for further investigation.”
People unlawfully squat and the official position of the Police is shrug.
Small wonder people are unhappy with the system and there's a market popping up for extra-judicial evictions.
Would probably be much cleaner all around if in such cases the law dictated possession back to the property owner with ~ treble damages/attorney's fees/statutory damages/reversion of possession in the cases where the alleged squatter was lawfully occupying. Basically enough to entice a lawyer to take the case on contingency and make it unequivocally in the favor of a hypothetically wronged tenant, while not allowing squatters to abuse the existing legal process.
That sounds like a mostly reasonable approach from the police though. Do you want want a police raid just because you did something the landlord doesn't like? Do you want the issue decided on the spot with little actual knowledge? Unless the place is being actually damaged, it's likely better to take the time - there's too much possibility for harassment otherwise.
Police are not in the business of reading contracts and determining who is in the right or wrong.
They'll remove trespassers but these squatters will usually claim that they have a rental agreement, or that they've lived there long enough that there is a de facto agreement.
The working homeless are worse at contributing to natalism than the working housed and there are too many Americans for the global aquifer budget to support. A mass fertility reduction can only really happen through a decline in prosperity. Ideally, the American housing policy framework should be exported globally as much as possible, too.
“For housing attorneys and a former squatter we spoke with, companies like Jacobs’ are symptoms of a dysfunctional system where property is treated as a profit-producing commodity instead of a shelter a person is entitled to.”
As a red stater, I really can’t understand the last statement. If someone is in a bad spot, there are numerous ways some shelter can be offered. The homeless person may have to put up with some shelter rules ( or maybe friend or relatives rules ), but shelter is available.
To say someone is entitled to shelter in someone else’s house just isn’t credible to me.
I think it's an attempt to normalize the idea that shelter is a basic human right. As a blue-stater, I'm undecided on whether I agree that it's a right, but I definitely think that nobody has a right to shelter in any property they choose.
It's a pretty complicated issue, and the legal patchwork of state versus county versus city laws can make it really difficult to untangle. I think that given the system we have, everyone in it is pretty much behaving rationally, if in their own best interests. I understand why the squatters would choose a squat over a shelter.
The only reason why this guy gets away with these tactics is because the police agree with it and low key would be happy to do it themselves. Not because they appear to be legal.
If this guy gets away with it, the homeowner likely would too, unless he's got some sort of special payoff scheme to the police.
From what I can gather from the article, it does seem to be entirely legal. He never forcibly removes the squatters, just makes their life annoying and difficult, and they usually choose to leave. He also doesn't attack anyone, and only uses the weapons for self defence.
I think any property owner could do the same, but it's just a risk that they don't want to take. Who wants to get up close to a (potential) knife wielding meth addict?
Yeah. I think the additional trick is that squatters often have a fraudulent lease. That makes it owner vs. tenant, and the police have orders to err on the side of not facilitating an illegal eviction. The owner could attempt to owner-occupy the property, but there's no document for that and there is a lease. So when the police show up, the owner is very likely to be the one removed or arrested.
The sword guy makes it tenant vs. tenant, so neither party has that formal advantage. Of course the police know the game, but they're generally happy with the workaround.
In the article they interview one of his customers and the guy basically says he is just a finance nerd that likes to ride his bike and hug his wife and he has no experience with potentially violent situations. So, I'm imagining a lot of customers are like that.
> When Jacobs takes on a job, he and his contractors sign temporary leases with the property owner. This move is his secret weapon.
> Jacobs is a big fan of California’s “castle doctrine.” The state law says someone has no duty to retreat in defending themselves against an intruder in their home. They can legally use force, even deadly force, to protect themselves — so long as the force used is proportionate to the threat.
The signing of a lease makes the aggressor look like the aggressee. This strategy seems really shaky to me. I can't help but wonder how well it's been tested in court.
Once someone gets seriously hurt, some of these landlords might end up wishing they had just waited out the regular eviction instead.
1) Domestic violence 2) Harassment 3) Possibly Assault
At the very least I would expect to get booked, even if the charges didn't stick.
If I did this to some random homeless person or gang member, I'd expect basically a high five from the cops and nothing else.
Of course I do not live in CA, I live in AZ. In my state, ranchers have just straight up shot trespassers and nothing happened to them, despite the fact that by the book this would be highly illegal.
The guy doing this has discovered that in order to be convicted someone has to complain, then the police have to care, then a judge has to let it go to trial, a prosecutor has to actually want to competently build a case, and then after all that a jury actually has to convict you. I'm guessing the chance of all those stars aligning when the squatters are people literally spray painting "Kill all Bailiffs" (in one ASAP website screenshot) is next to nill.
I've never lived in AZ, but it sounds like this may have a lot to do with it. ;-)
Personal injury is an area where plaintiffs start out with a huge advantage. Judgments are large and cases are often settled out of court by landlords' insurance companies. Not only would you have no trouble finding a lawyer, they might actively seek you out.
Truer words have not been spoken!
While that's only ~6% of total housing units, it's still a lot of opportunity for both squatters and these businesses.
Generally though, this situation only feels possible due to compounding systemic failures. In some order: Not building enough housing, income inequality, homeless support, and law enforcement (or lack thereof).
Fixing problems further up the chain solves the problems further down, but is more difficult and probably creates other unintended consequences.
1: https://census.bayareametro.gov/housing-units?year=2020
https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/vacant-nuance-in-the-vac...
In LA it's mostly because the power company takes like, months to hook up new buildings for no reason.
Edit: the solution to which is not allowing squatters disproportionate access to others’ property via unnecessarily long court procedures. Residental agreements should be filed with the county just like land sales are, so a cop can quickly lookup who legally belongs and act accordingly.
You can claim whatever rental rate you want as a basis for your financialization agreements, but you should have to start paying taxes as though you are receiving that number as actual cash rent after some limited grace period.
That would stop most of the shenanigans by private equity in the rental markets.
Do gangs really do this, or is it just renaming the activities of homeless individuals as organized crime? Because most of the homeless individuals in Oakland are the working homeless.
Once they break in they ask just bellow of what hiring a lawyer and doing the legal process would cost. Or worse they rent illegally the home in the secondary black market.
The reason it works is because kicking them legally can take months or years plus lawyers and proceedings cost. It also drops the value of the surroundings if they are not kicked fast enough.
Now theres an entire sector around it.
The antagonist looks great on paper and gets keys before actually paying the deposit. Then shielded by that slim residence he proceeds to wreak havoc on the property to lower values to snap it up for a song.
No, it doesn't. It extensively quotes its primary interview subject, who at one point makes a (fairly vague) insinuation along those lines. His words were "more like organized crime", and they're rendered in the article within quotation marks.
> Do gangs really do this, or is it just renaming the activities of homeless individuals as organized crime?
My guess would be the latter.
Everybody pitch in and get some melee experience. Let the civil disobedience commence.
Badass hero.
Obviously you should believe him without question. What motive could he possibility have to lie?
That way, people who can't compete in the Californian housing market will stop being babied and finally be allowed to get the message and then redirect their energy on migrating to somewhere with cheaper rent like Idaho or Guatemala.
People unlawfully squat and the official position of the Police is shrug.
Small wonder people are unhappy with the system and there's a market popping up for extra-judicial evictions.
My understanding of CA tenancy law is that it's so tilted in favor of the tenant, that if someone just claims to be one, the police have to shrug.
> Small wonder people are unhappy with the system and there's a market popping up for extra-judicial evictions
Well-intentioned laws, upon contact with the real world, often end up with undesirable secondary and tertiary consequences such as this.
Would probably be much cleaner all around if in such cases the law dictated possession back to the property owner with ~ treble damages/attorney's fees/statutory damages/reversion of possession in the cases where the alleged squatter was lawfully occupying. Basically enough to entice a lawyer to take the case on contingency and make it unequivocally in the favor of a hypothetically wronged tenant, while not allowing squatters to abuse the existing legal process.
They'll remove trespassers but these squatters will usually claim that they have a rental agreement, or that they've lived there long enough that there is a de facto agreement.
The working homeless are worse at contributing to natalism than the working housed and there are too many Americans for the global aquifer budget to support. A mass fertility reduction can only really happen through a decline in prosperity. Ideally, the American housing policy framework should be exported globally as much as possible, too.
https://www.footprintnetwork.org/
Uhh I think you got it backwards.
The poorer a country is, the higher its fertility rates.
Countries that have already gone through the industrial revolution and demographic transition form a different cluster with an inverted trend line.
As a red stater, I really can’t understand the last statement. If someone is in a bad spot, there are numerous ways some shelter can be offered. The homeless person may have to put up with some shelter rules ( or maybe friend or relatives rules ), but shelter is available.
To say someone is entitled to shelter in someone else’s house just isn’t credible to me.
It's a pretty complicated issue, and the legal patchwork of state versus county versus city laws can make it really difficult to untangle. I think that given the system we have, everyone in it is pretty much behaving rationally, if in their own best interests. I understand why the squatters would choose a squat over a shelter.
If this guy gets away with it, the homeowner likely would too, unless he's got some sort of special payoff scheme to the police.
I think any property owner could do the same, but it's just a risk that they don't want to take. Who wants to get up close to a (potential) knife wielding meth addict?
The sword guy makes it tenant vs. tenant, so neither party has that formal advantage. Of course the police know the game, but they're generally happy with the workaround.