British humour at its finest

[KRonn]

This is an Onion article, or the British version of Onion, right?   

If this is true, there should be no frigging way that someone can just go into someone else's home, take over, and not be subject to immediate removal by law enforcement. This is just nuts otherwise. Don't take a vacation, or you too could find some squatters in your home, that you can't get rid of, and who actually have protection on their side! Lol...

[Sheilbh]

Evicting squatters isn't exactly easy, at least in Sweden and Norway. It appears to be equally difficult in England.

You seem to be confusing squatters with tenants - which is more difficult (your example's a tenant).  The article says that a court order was granted evicting the squatters within 24 hours.  I don't know how you go about enforcing that - is it the police or what? - but it's evidently not too difficult.

[Slargos]

This is an Onion article, or the British version of Onion, right?   

If this is true, there should be no frigging way that someone can just go into someone else's home, take over, and not be subject to immediate removal by law enforcement. This is just nuts otherwise. Don't take a vacation, or you too could find some squatters in your home, that you can't get rid of, and who actually have protection on their side! Lol...

I read about a guy in Sweden who long story short invited a dutch woman to come stay with him over her holiday. He found out much too late that she was an abusive crazy person and ended up staying with his buddy since he feared for his life. Court orders? "You invited her, so there's no legal grounds to evict her."

It's not so simple as "it's my house", evidently.

[Neil]

Is it wrong to look down on gypsies?

[Slargos]

Evicting squatters isn't exactly easy, at least in Sweden and Norway. It appears to be equally difficult in England.

You seem to be confusing squatters with tenants - which is more difficult (your example's a tenant).  The article says that a court order was granted evicting the squatters within 24 hours.  I don't know how you go about enforcing that - is it the police or what? - but it's evidently not too difficult.

No argument here. I have little experience with squatters and I fervently hope the rules are different.

It's atrocious that they should need a court order to evict them, however.

[Sheilbh]

It's atrocious that they should need a court order to evict them, however.

Well by the sounds of it the squatters say they have a tenancy agreement, which makes me think RH's right and someone's taking advantage of them both.  The court order's presumably because you need to prove that you are the owner of the property and that it's not a property subject to squatters' rights.  If not how would the police know that you're able to demand people be evicted?

[Sheilbh]

"You invited her, so there's no legal grounds to evict her."

She must've been a vampire.

It's not so simple as "it's my house", evidently.

Well of course not, if you're asking the police to do the eviction.

[KRonn]

Yeah, tenants are obviously a very different case and do have some valid protections.

[Slargos]

"You invited her, so there's no legal grounds to evict her."

She must've been a vampire.

It's not so simple as "it's my house", evidently.

Well of course not, if you're asking the police to do the eviction.

Since evicting her on his own would probably involve violence (in soviet sweden, grabbing someone and pushing them out the door constitutes assault) which could lead to his being prosecuted for the act of protecting his property rights, I think the entire situation is bizarre.

[Cecil]

Spending time on Flashback much Slarg?

[Slargos]

Spending time on Flashback much Slarg?

What's that? 

And who the fuck are you again? 

[Richard Hakluyt]

The Daily Mail does milk these stories for as much as possible.

Having ripped up the civil eviction order the next step is for the bailiffs to throw them out forcibly. I would imagine that the coppers will endeavour to find out if the Romanians were actually ripped-off by some criminal or other.

The legal costs to the family will be minimal.........in fact I suspect they will be nothing at all, unless they needlessly hired a lawyer.

The law seems to be fairly well-balanced in these matters 

[Malthus]

Evicting squatters isn't exactly easy, at least in Sweden and Norway. It appears to be equally difficult in England.

2006, iirc, saw a case like this blow up in Norway, where an elderly couple had rented out part of their house (common practice in norway to have one or several rental units attached to the house) to a man who turned out to be violently mentally ill, and after they attempted to evict him for 6 months when he stopped paying his rent and got generally abusive, and they were denied this in court, he eventually snapped and murdered the couple in their sleep.

My brother had some painful experiences with crazy house-mates when he was renting. It is very, very difficult to legally remove a crazy person, if you are renting with them. The problem in this case was that a bunch of folks were essentially renting the house, so the landlord didn't care - the renters as a group were responsible for the rent, and if one didn't pay, was none of his business, the rest had to make up the difference.

And of course with a crazy person living in the room and refusing to pay rent, you can't rent it to someone else.

So my brother tried having him evicted. Not at all easy, if you aren't the landlord. Because the guy was crazy, there were all sorts of special procedures - the whole thing took on a nightmare tinge.

Eventually they just did the obvious - *they* all moved out to a different place, leaving the landlord with the crazy person and no paying renters, and let *him* deal with it.

Even that wasn't as horrible as what happened to some friends of mine, who ended up nailing the door to the basement shut because a crazy and threatening person lived down there are refused to either pay rent or move. The landlord even had the cops in and the guy hauled off to the looney bin, to no avail - he was back in 48 hours, broke a window, got back in. I saw this guy, and I couldn't for the life of me tell if his insanity was an act or not. Certainly, he got a kick out of intimidating people (this was before they nailed his door shut etc.) - he liked to linger when they had guests over, making everyone uncomfortable with his ramblings and mutterings, showing off his large hunting knife in a pseudo-friendly but actually threatening manner, etc. - and then, when he left, waiting a second for everyone to exhale with relief before comming *back* and announcing "I'm baaaack!". You could tell he knew everyone was worried about him, and he liked it.

[Slargos]

 

Was he jewish? 

[Malthus]

Was he jewish? 

Not to my knoweldge, no.

Funny part was, his family had money. He was estranged from them, however. They'd put up with his - ways - for years and finally, I think he simply scared them.

He lived in truly incredible squalor. He filled the basement with cast-off junk (he was a "hoarder" to the max) and had tunnels and runs through it - there must have been tons of crap down there. He'd stopped bothering to bathe, shave, or brush his teeth ... it didn't help that he was a big, ugly, tattooed fellow.

It is difficult to tell whether he was "crazy" or just liked to live like that, though. Is wanting to live like that "crazy"? It is certainly anti-social.