The Big Apple has seen a troubling trend of unwelcome squatters illegally sleeping in homes and apartments across the five boroughs, making it extremely difficult to evict them.
Housing court backlogs and recent changes to the law have made evicting unwelcome tenants a bigger and longer-lasting headache for landlords, legal experts told the Post.
“These things are happening a lot more than they have in the past,” said real estate attorney Josh Price. “Squatters are much more sophisticated than they used to be. They do careful planning, forge documents, and conduct raids before breaking in.”
City law was amended twice in 2019, making it impossible for landlords to set up squatters without “special procedures” and requiring them to sue to evict squatters. .
Alan Goldberg, a Manhattan real estate attorney, said he has seen a 10% to 20% increase in the number of squatter cases over the past two years, which he attributes to the immigration crisis, post-pandemic homelessness and media coverage. Ta.
“Ironically, the more it gets talked about, the more people think about it,” Goldberg said.
“I think it’s getting more media attention, more immigration crisis and more homeless people,” he said. “The media kind of encourages squatters by telling people about squatters.”
Goldberg said the term squatter is often misused, noting that a squatter is a trespasser who enters and stays on a property illegally, whereas a licensee is a trespasser who “enters and remains on a property illegally. ”He said he would move and stay.
These may include relatives of deceased property owners or legal tenants who have overstayed their welcome.
The problem stems from a loophole in the law that allows anyone who remains in a property for an extended period of time to claim legal possession, despite the landlord’s objections.
This deadline is 10 years in most of the Empire State, but only 30 days in five boroughs, making the city’s property owners significantly more vulnerable to unwanted settlers.
And no one is tracking that number.
State court officials say no one knows how many illegal occupancy (or “unlawful possession”) cases exist because they are not specifically tracked once they are entered into the system.
Some lawyers in the Big Apple say squatters have long been a vexing problem in the five boroughs, and they don’t see an increase in the number of squatters in landlord-tenant disputes being fought in court. It is pointed out that there are still some
But thanks to a series of high-profile squatting cases that have hit the headlines, the issue is increasingly becoming a hot topic at the water cooler.
Last week, two squatters at a Jamaican housing complex sued the legal owners of their $930,000 home, claiming they were locked out despite having a rental agreement and using Shake Shack receipts as “evidence.” Attached as.
On Friday, a Queens judge dismissed the lawsuit, but it left a bitter taste for homeowner Julia Fruman. She complained that Fruman “has a very big problem with these criminals and squatters.”
In another incident in Flushing, squatter Brian Rodriguez demanded an $18,000 ransom to be evicted from a four-bedroom million-dollar home he had claimed, and police say she showed up. They even handcuffed the rightful owner.
In the Big Apple incident, a pair of teenage squatters allegedly killed property owner Nadia Vitels after she showed up at her late mother’s East 31st apartment on March 12. , a fatal situation.
And last week, federal agents raided a home in the Bronx. A group of troublesome immigrants with guns have illegally occupied the place, causing chaos in the neighborhood.
This dilemma has attracted the attention of some lawmakers.
State Rep. Jake Blumenkranz (R-Oyster Bay) is sponsoring a bill that would give property owners the power to stand up to squatters and make illegal trespassing a crime.
“I think anyone who’s been paying attention has noticed that this is becoming more and more of an issue,” Blumenkrantz told the Post last week. “People, especially immigrant groups and other groups who are trying to use the law against us, will take advantage of this loophole to the detriment of law-abiding citizens.
“We are now facing a trifecta of situations that we have never experienced before: a cost of living crisis, a housing crisis, and an immigration crisis happening simultaneously in the city,” he said. “These people are here and looking for a place to live. People on the internet are offering them a free path.”
Lawyers interviewed by the Post said a post-pandemic backlog of cases in the city’s five housing courts has slowed the progress of cases, including squatting cases, to a snail’s pace.
Natif Winiarsky, a partner at the firm Kucker, Marino, Winiarsky & Bittens, said that because of the backlog of courts and an expanded legal system, settlement cases can take as long as two years to resolve. said.
“Certainly the situation has gotten worse after the pandemic due to the backlog, but blaming it on the pandemic is a superficial explanation,” Winiarski said.
“This is a result of insufficient resources being devoted to the housing court system, and the system as we know it is at risk of collapsing,” Winiarski added.
Complicating matters are two amendments to state law in 2019 that gave squatters more rights and left legal property owners handcuffed as they try to take back their land. is.
New York Real Estate Procedure Law 711 was amended to provide that an occupant of a “dwelling house or residential accommodation” cannot be evicted without “special process.”
In addition, the new law provides that those who have established squatter rights cannot be removed without resorting to a lawsuit filed in local court.
Price, the real estate lawyer, said these laws are creating a nightmare for unwise squatters.
“They use tactics to assert ownership, such as mailing themselves and using false lease agreements to force utility companies to change their names to their own,” he said. . “It’s more onerous now than in years past because it takes so long for owners to get a court date.”
