If the laws are idiotic, you can always employ people who work outside it.

A team of Romanian/Bulgarian/Polish big guys will take care of your squatter problem for less than 1000 Euros. There's likely people of other nationalities doing this, I wouldn't know, I only dealt with these three and they operate everywhere.

And no deaths or major injuries, of course, that's just bad business.

Sadly there's no easy app for connection.

I think this has the same problem as all non-legal security. I can see entrepreneurial big guys deciding this a good business, and just paying some people a nominal amount to squat, while offering their services to the property owners to "remove them". Eventually, they don't even need the squatters in the loop, just "Nice place you got here. It'd be a shame if someone squatted in it."

That's what the government does already with the police / court system / lawmaking. You pay taxes for protection. In the past they were at least removing squatters. We're at a point where they don't even bother doing their job.

Any use of violence need opposing and competing forces in a market to work.

Judging by the quality of service, it obviously doesn't work when the government has a monopoly of legal violence.

As you mentioned, having people doing it illegally is prone to the creation of a black market. Black markets need to stay hidden so they'll have lower standards and generally a worse experience for everyone involved. If there wasn't any control on these "big guys", eventually someone would come up with a way to broadcast these "big guys" reputation. Someone could easily hire some other "big guys" to keep the other ones in check.

The black market can have higher standards because the barrier for entry is much smaller or nothing which creates more competition.

Having a legal and black market operating side by side can mean more quality and variety for the black market. The drug market is a great example where in places a legal market exists the black market can offer better prices, better quality and a variety of strains the commercial growers cannot.

That's a very interesting point of view! I wonder if maybe you're describing a Canadian point of view? I've heard the government screwed up / over-regulated (not sure about the details) distribution of Cannabis in Canada and people still had to use the black market to buy cannabis.

We don't need a black market, we just governments not to get in the way in what they consider legal or not. I think you're advocating for small independent producers vs big monolithic ones (which sounds great, I'm in!). In a world where licenses don't cost half a million, that can be a legal market as well.

> The black market can have higher standards From my anecdotal European experience this hasn't been the case. Eg. If I think about cannabis in Netherland, what you can buy in a coffee shop is generally much better than any black market deal you can find in all of Europe. You can get cannabis from Amsterdam in the rest of Europe as well (amongst the dozen fakes) but it will cost much more.

In a black market you have a higher risk of getting scammed, lower quality and no controls. Online marketplace with reputation systems help a lot but it's still not like buying on Amazon.

The barrier to entry is higher because you have to setup the tools to act anonymously (eg. Tor, cryptocurrencies), you have to worry about stealth and you're running the risk of going to jail. The quality / price ratio goes down pretty quickly. Sure, you're not paying taxes and you don't have to do accounting, but I think the negatives are more expensive than that.

"it obviously doesn't work when the government has a monopoly of legal violence."

I heart afganistan has no such monopoly, opportunity!

That's because Afghanistan isn't a government, the Western world just tries really hard to try to make people think it is or should be for a variety of mostly grifting reasons

Monopoly on violence doesn't necessarily mean that self defense and defense of property is illegal.

The US governments have a monopoly on violence and sanction self defense and defense of property.

If the government comes for you, good luck explaining the officers you don't accept their laws and that you're just defending yourself. You'll end up in jail, a fugitive or dead - unless you're in GTA.

That doesn't conflict with what I wrote

But the legal system probably wouldn’t treat these types of thugs as nicely as garden-variety squatters, no? Otherwise such gangs would have already taken over France.

I think in order to avoid open conflict from law enforcement, these types will try to avoid residing at the scene of the crime. Instead, they will rely on referrals for repeat business, while keeping things on the down low.

Or forcing out legitimate residents and becoming the squatters themselves. Privatized legal enforcement comes with a whole lot of problems.

Regular state-employed cops can and often do employ largely the same strategy but on a much bigger scale.

Oddly I have a simplistic view that this is how the Feudal system began. Meaning the populous realized their current government wasn't protecting their property and safety, so they got together and hired some people to do that for them. Over time those men took power for themselves. This theme is played out time and time again in history, if a government can't protect the property of its people it will eventually be replaced. Sadly this may take many decades to occur but the trend is there historically.

I think it arose in the opposite direction. Rulers realized that they didn't have enough centralized power to effectively rule their territory, so they hired lower-level rulers who would get land in exchange for military service.

Part of the motivation was economic: armed horsemen, the dominant military units of the time, were expensive to maintain. The breakdown in the economy in early medieval Europe meant that centralized rulers didn't have money to pay them. They gave them land instead, so they could support themselves in return for military service.

You might say it was a medieval take on the military-industrial complex.

The problem is that the big guys will very soon figure out: hey, squatters good, make business for us! And before you know it, the thugs themselves are doing the squatting. And before you know that, the biggest thugs are doing that because they beat the weaker thugs in the squatting turf war: there are no bigger thugs you can call.

You're not thinking far enough. Squatting property will only pay the bills. Stripping literally everything of value out of the property before using the husk as a pop-up drug lab is the way you make real money

This entire thread is covered in the OP.

There's really no problem you can't solve, with the law or otherwise, by paying people to commit violence on your behalf.

You apparently live one hell of a privileged life in a fully functional country with a good legal system if you're saying such simplistic things. Striving for such nice conditions in all jurisdictions is laudable, but the practical reality is that in much of the world, a normal person subjected to abuse often has to resort to extralegal and sometimes violence recourse. The law is next to useless in these places. I live in one such country and your platitude would have just maintained a status quo of abuse against innocent people in many situations where they had to use or pay for violence by others to solve major problems.

We live a civilized life, because our ancestors banded together, fought, and died to establish a government that was stable. That's not privilege, that's a way of life bought and fucking paid for. It doesn't just happen, and has to be guarded and cultivated. Unless and until similar costs in lives are paid, I honestly don't see a path to civilized life in much of the world.

It keeps getting proved over and over that first world, well off countries can't pay or train or subjugate other cultures into civilized engagement with the world or even their own people. Nation building is an awful joke of a policy, and at some point people have to figure their own shit out.

There are legal and illegal immigration and asylum possibilities all over the world, or you can take up arms against corruption and tyranny. It sucks, but being born doesn't entitle you to anything unless there's a culture and civilization to make good on those entitlements.

"you can take up arms against corruption and tyranny."

Taking up arms is thr easy part mate, there is no shortage of thay going round. creating a functional society is the difficult one.

There are lots of examples to use as templates. You can have hyper religious militant sharia, or you can have civilization compatible with the rest of the world. If you try for both, the community of nations is not going to let you participate meaningfully. I guess "hermit kingdom" is option 3, if you can get nukes.

Forget sharia, from Russia to Brazil many countries are still struggling with crime and corruption, despite drawing inspiration from existing examples and templates.

To pretend this can be easilly achieved is just folly

Okay, let me put it to you this way, straight from examples right here in the city I live in and many others in my country: You and your neighbors get along in the small residential/commercial community you inhabit. Things are fairly peaceful even though otherwise your country is riddled with corruption, police that are WORSE than useless (they're often highly criminal and/or collude with criminal gangs) and your little community of neighbors is trying to get by and largely watching over their neighborhood.

Then, one day, a small group of thieves starts entering and assaulting stores, trying to extort people and robbing others on the streets, threatening more violence if people don't cooperate better. You try calling police, but they either don't show up at all or only do so late and never investigate anything worth a damn (remember, they collude, and they're likely colluding with your newly arrived local thugs).

So, your neighbors and you organize together and ambush these thugs the next time they come along with their attempts at violence. You catch and badly beat a few of them then toss them out into a public area where an ambulance can pick them up. It sends a clear message, the extortions stop.

Is this ideal? Nope. It's awful, but you want peace for your business, community and family, and what other recourse do you have? Should you and all your neighbors just spew platitudes about ideals of law and order while being assaulted regularly? Or should the whole neighborhood, as you say, apply for overseas asylum and wait months or years for a response (likely negative)? Maybe they should abandon their homes and everything else of their culture to illegally flee, letting the country sink further into chaos?

They mostly won't do these things. because they want a peaceful home that is their real home, and with legal options having been marginalized, communities and groups sometimes really, no-shit-no-other-option have to take matters into their own hands.

Maybe that clears things up about perspective from within a highly functional, lawful country that had decades or centuries before you were born to become like that, letting you simply enjoy it and criticize others who aren't so lucky yet.

It's really clear. If your home is invaded and there is no rule of law, you ambush and kill the thugs. If that's not feasible, or if the retaliation can't be handled, then you leave for a place where you aren't chattel for a gang of thugs. Because it's no longer your home. If your country won't or can't protect you and your neighbors, it's not your country, so yes, fleeing is the only rational move. They can't extort you if you're not there anymore, and you run the chance of grouping up with enough like minded others that you might be able to return and take back your land with force.

I'm not criticizing the people who find themselves in shitty situations. I'm criticizing your statement that the civilization I am fortunate enough to live in is "privilege." It is a carefully guarded and deliberately constructed civilization designed precisely to defend individuals from mobs and strongmen. That is a right, not a privilege, secured by violence and death and sacrifice.

When there is no rule of law, might makes right. Securing civilization from lawlessness universally starts with blood and death and is a horror show. It's that, or leave for a better place. By staying, you're giving power to the exploiters. Worse, you're giving them the means to abuse and exploit more people, and more generations of people.

There are no good or easy choices in such situations. You kill, you leave, or you perpetuate the hellscape, inflicting it on your local society.

The idea of the state having a monopoly on violence is the foundation of all successful civilizations. The idea being that if there is no monopoly, the right and responsibility to use violence falls to individuals, and when individuals are wielding violence without consequences, rule of law is meaningless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

I mostly agree with the ideas you're expressing, and that they're a vital part of any decent, functional society. My strong disagreement is with criticism of vigilante reactions under dysfunctional circumstances, and with the perhaps unintentionally flippant insistence that people should just leave their home if they live in partly lawless places, or that they can at all easily do this, with families and precious possessions included.

Staying isn't just a casual preference for most people, it's a basic economic necessity and an emotional attachment to the idea of not giving up and ceding one's home to abusive people because things got tough.

People aren't normally thinking in some abstract sense that "I should leave this country and stop giving abusive social elements the means with which to perpetuate themselves". They're more often thinking. "This is my home and where my family is from, why should I flee everything I know instead of fighting back however I need to?".

There are a couple, in particular I imagine violence won't be much help when the law has one of its psychotic episodes and refuses to reflect reality in a sensible way.

So stuff like people being declared dead incorrectly, identity fraud. I'm also reminded of an incident in the Netherlands that lead to the fall of the current (still acting; it's complicated) government, where the tax agency was somehow convinced people had fraudulently received particular subsidies and decide to get the money back plus interest, which it turns out tax agencies are very good at.

Good luck finding anyone to beat up there. You can scare people but you can't intimidate red tape.

> You can scare people but you can't intimidate red tape.

The history of Scientology versus the IRS suggests otherwise.

The detail you forgot to mention there was the criteria the tax administration used to decide the "people" they fought were fraudulent. And the detail of the documents they destroyed when parliamentarians tried to investigate the issue. There is the law and there is above the law.

There's a lot of details I neglected to mention, simply because it's impossible to succinctly explain on just how many levels things went wrong.

If your violence isn’t working it means you just aren’t using enough of it.

Well I suppose one way or another the problem stops existing or stops being worth solving.

No violence, and not breaking the law. The way it works a couple of big loud slobs moves in and starts a 24/7 party. They are squatters too so police cant throw them out, and your problem tenants quickly give up after slipping on vomit , listening to music all night and being unable to use kitchen/bathroom.

I can think of one. What if your problem is that someone with more money than you is paying thugs to commit violence on their behalf?

You'd have to band together with other people like you to stop them. I guess you'd also need some mechanism for restraining the worst impulses of the mob we've just organized, like a governor restrains a steam engine. We could call it a "government." I bet it would be a hit.

Except maybe curing disease, self fulfillment etc

Well, unless you're going against someone much bigger than you.

Hit first, hit fast, hit hard.

Squatting is also violence.

You can't solve violence without violence.

Your definition of violence appears to equate things done to objects and things done to people.

Failing to differentiate between these things makes me wonder are you some sort of animist?

Doing things to objects that belong to other people is doing things to those people.

Sure, for two different definitions of "doing things". But the existence of different definitions is precisely the point.

Unless you are claiming that cutting someone's paper is equal to cutting their skin?

Eh, one would need to cut a lot of skin to hurt me as much as one would by cutting one of my father's paintings

I like this statement; at first blush, it appears uncouth and brutish - upon closer inspection however, it reveals the "natural state" of nature itself.

French too, this was attempted ofc, we have documentaries about big guys employed by desperate home owners trying to kick squatters out of their main property they "lost" when going to vacations, and it doesnt work.

They get sued, it often becomes very violent, because to have the balls to seize the property of someone who s in short vacations you need to be quite violent yourself, children are always involved and well meaning outrage artists always point out the poor children being sent back to the streets etc.

I live in Hong Kong now where real estate is "a dream". You can rent anything with just a pile of cash and 30 minutes because if you dont pay rent they know the police just enter, throws everything out and put you in jail awaiting trial.

I d recommend France to try, not sure what we d truly lose.

While it may be a solution to your immediate problem, there can be consequences to developing a "relationship" with those who operate outside the law. (Because now 1) know your identity; 2) know you are to some extent nonchalant about operating within the bounds of the law; 3) know you have money; and 4) now have evidence of your extralegal actions.)

Working to reform suboptimal laws may be difficult, but it is a better investment than handing your money to organized crime.

> better investment than handing your money to organized crime

it is, but this investment is costly, because it takes a lot of time and effort, with no real guarantee of success, and when you are eventually successful, other people could easily free-ride off your investment (since it's a non-excludable outcome).

So what a "rational" actor would do is wait for someone else to expend their resources doing this, while they themselves pay to gangs/organized crime to obtain their own property back in the mean time.

This is a hard thing to get across to people coming at it from a perspecitve of being higher up on some imaginary natural hierarchy.

Also, real organized crime immediately flips on you when people notice their loud obvious daylight crimes and there is blowback.

A team of Romanian/Bulgarian/Polish big guys will take care of your squatter problem for less than 1000 Euros...., then they can squat in your house.

They could.

Once you decide to go outside the law, you take responsibility, do your research and prepare as best as you can.

See, these people don't exactly want to be criminal gangs, they just want a quick Euro for little risk.

So, your house and you want to kick out squatters - yeah, sure. Someone else's house and you want them to break in - no way, we're not insane.

Most of the time.

If you deal with some crazy cunts, they can burn your house down.

Generally why the legal way is preferable. But if you're desperate, you can look at alternatives.

But that's bad for business, see.

Is there no risk of retaliation? They know who you are and where you live, and presumably, they do not have much to lose.

It’s probably a safer strategy for a full-time landlord than someone who wants to kick squatters out then move in themselves.

There's a company famous in Spain dedicated to that, they appear on TV news constantly.

They're all over the BBC article this post is about. In fact it reads like an informercial

Don't give the big guys money. They'll be coming for more.

Try offering them something else.

The citizen seized the the monopoly on violence to the state under the condition that justice is upheld. If that condition is violated, the contract between state and individual is broken.

> The citizen seized the monopoly on violence

I think you meant to write "ceded". To seize is to grab hold of, to cede is to give away.

Right, thanks.

Yeah, you go do that, see how well that works for you in The state’s courts.

Cover your delicate ears, it's a real world out there.

While I don't agree with the idea in the comment.c this person is speaking from experience (supposedly). They should be allowed to share it, and their viewpoint

it's not the point of covering delicate ears. it's just not proper. substitute the eastern european nationalities the parent refers to for the term 'black' and tell me how does it ring to you :)

> Someone gets by effraction in an apartment/house, stay there for 48 hours and they are good to stay forever.

That's not true. No mention of 48h anywhere. Only place i found it is here: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F35254

"Le préfet rend sa décision dans un délai de 48 heures, à partir de la réception de la demande." which roughly translate to "The prefect renders his decision within 48 hours of receiving the request."

We have a family house that was squatted on the coast during last winter. We asked the squatters to leave (while redacting a letter to the prefect) and they too believed the "48 hour" stuff. The police did not however, and made them leave quite quickly (less than a week).

> That's not true. No mention of 48h anywhere.

Please see https://immobilier.lefigaro.fr/article/ce-que-vous-devez-sav... and https://immobilier.lefigaro.fr/article/logement-squatte-pour...

The 48 hours are a generally applied rule for the squatters to be differentiated from, say, burglars. Because otherwise someone forcibly coming into your house while you are there could not be arrested at all.

The ones you mention is for the preéfet to statute about the expulsion.

> We have a family house that was squatted on the coast during last winter

I honestly pity you. I know of two families whose house was squatted and it took months for them to get back their house (in a terrible state); They never got anything from the quatters (nor from the insurance in one case).

Le Figaro is notoriously bad at sorting facts from right-wing rumors. That squatter theme is a recurrent subject to scare their typical landlord readership. Find primary sources for that.

It is difficult to find more primary sources than being friends with people who were squatted and having witnessed what they went through.

Regardless, as an American reading this thread,it’s strange how common an occurrence in France squatting seems to be.

Isn't it common in the California?

At 30 days they gain rights as a tenant. There was a case years ago of someone with an AirBnB I believe where they stayed longer than 30 days and then refused to leave claiming they had established the place as their residence.

I rented a place in Colorado for over thirty days and the owner refunded me sales tax because that was long enough to establish residency.

Sounds perfect. Nobody should own more than one residence. Another family taking over is the best outcome for the community. Absentee landlords really need to be given the boot.

I don't understand your point at all. What's an absentee landlord in your book? A landlord who doesn't live in the place they are renting out? I would assume that's - all of them?

A non absentee landlord lives on the same land as the rental unit.

Clearly that's not what the GP means, because there would be no dilemma with someone living in a property held by a landlord for more than 30 days if the absentee landlord can just live next door.

Do you mean a contiguous, legal parcel of land or a more natural division, like valleys, mountaintops, coastlines, etc.?

What kind of logic is this? Nobody can save up to buy real estate for profit?

Being against the exploitation of a basic human need (i.e. housing/shelter) for profit seems reasonable to me.

Sounds dangerously socialist to me

Buying more real estate than you use is hoarding. There is only so much liveable land. Out of all the things capitalism can apply to this is morally the worst.

Except people don’t live on land. They live in homes. There’s plenty of empty land. But to house people you need to make the deep capital investment of building housing on that land. Capital accumulation requires capitalists.

They live on both. There's a reason why cali/vancouver are so popular, it's because of their easy weather.

Plus, the home you're buying is on land that's next to a bunch of utilities which are there because generations have worked towards them. Should you be able to hoard all of this (hospital, public transport, etc) just because you're "investing in housing" (which in most part is just sitting on empty houses to sell it to other people that need these utilities)?

This is why vacant home ownership should be taxed to oblivion: you're profiting off something that isn't yours. The only reason the home is appreciating is because the land you're on is gaining value because it's either:

- Most livable land

- Has utilities

- Has people living there that make the city attractive

And owning a home participate in none of this without taxes. Not only that, your incentives are aligned with preventing people from building more houses so yours appreciate, which is a net negative for the city.

Not common by any metric in California, nope.

I love "the California", I will use this from now on when referring to it (in Montana--they really do love Californians, so so much).

We rented a house from friends (well, really their father's estate who had died the year prior, it was put up in a school auction) outside Nice a few years back. They had a caretaker go by the house a few days before we were to arrive only to find evidence someone was living there. It was supposed to be vacant. The squatters were (very luckily) not there at the time and they called the police right away. The police said make sure they can't get back in or else you will be in court for 2 years trying to get them out. They hired a company to sit guard 24/7 and locked up the house and sold it as quickly as they could. When they first told us we were like oh it's ok we will stay there if you got them out! I am glad they insisted that was a bad idea and found us a new house, the squatters tried to get back into the house a few times because it turns out they had hidden some drugs there. The good news is that my friend and his brother came over to sort out the mess and we were able to hang out for a few days! Great town except for all the squatting :)

This reminded me of a funny (in a sense) video that got viral a while ago here in Spain, where someone had squatted on the apartment of some romanian dude. He was talking to the camera with a hammer on his hand: "spanish law says this or that, well we are going to solve this with romanian law, which says that you do not screw with me"...

Blows the door lock away with the hammer and proceeds into the premise. I would love to know what happened afterwards, but I can imagine.

The problem in France is that we have a completely surrealist approach to property.

If you want to get back to your house, police is going to stop you because you are entering by effraction when someone is lawfully permitted to stay in a place that belongs to someone else.

These squatters will sue you. They have the right to live somewhere, so your place is as good as anything else.

They have children, so they have more rights than you for your house.

They can destroy everything, and you should be happy to get back a ruin.

Like I said, I truly love my country but this is one of the few things that drive me completely crazy and where I understand violence of people getting back their house (like the Romanian dude)

I would imagine the intent of this "surrealist approach" is to disincentivize the commodification of housing (as a form of political pressure against consolidation of large real estate portfolios)

It'd be really interesting to see some laws like that in Canada - if only by the letter - as a way to discourage buying empty homes for investment.

From reading other points in the thread it seems like owning a home for investment in France is an extremely risky proposition.

>From reading other points in the thread it seems like owning a home for investment in France is an extremely risky proposition.

The amount of people owning property and the size of the real estate market says otherwise. Squatting is just one of those things with an over-sized media footprint.

> The amount of people owning property and the size of the real estate market says otherwise

You usually buy to rent. renting is ultra-complex in France as well but at least you know what you are getting into.

> Squatting is just one of those things with an over-sized media footprint

Right until the moment it hits you. Have you had been squatted? No? So how can you have an opinion on the impact to someone?

>You usually buy to rent.

Yes, I know. Renting is part of "investing".

>Right until the moment it hits you. Have you had been squatted? No? So how can you have an opinion on the impact to someone?

I'm not talking about personal impact, I'm talking about social and economic impact. Just go look at the numbers for squatting in France. It's statistically irrelevant. By your logic we should all be very concerned about things that nearly never happen. That's not a sane way of living. By the same token people should only be able to discuss things that have personally happened to them. Which is nonsense.

> Renting is part of "investing".

And?

> I'm talking about social and economic impact

With this approach we should not invest whatsoever in rare diseases. Or help disabled people because they are less useful for "social and economic impact".

Just look at the number of rare diseases, or disabled people. They are statistically irrelevant. Screw them.

That "commoditization of housing" is a growing buzzword that doesn't make sense on face value. Commoditization is to make it fungible and easy to exchange. Housing developments, apartments, and condos go with interchangeable ones. Since the industrial revolution at least housing has been born commoditized as a norm. Economies of scale are king.

If what the talking point is just trying to sinisterize "private ownership of real estate" that still doesn't make sense as an approach. It just gets squatters and promotes violence through greviances unresolvable through the legal system like how prohibition leads to drug gang fights.

Well, in that case, it doesn't seem to be a working strategy?

What happens if one were to help these folks get into the house of a politician or three?

Bet police response would be fairly different for the modern nobility, especially since they can claim the are state secrets involved and get a whole lot of different branches involved with the issue.

Can one break in when they are on vacation and squat it back for 48 hours to reclaim?

I actually asked the question to police once (or enter by force and just stay there). They did not know.

"don't know" = it's in that gray ares where the more sympathetic person will probably win in court.

Not. The 48 hours rule is fake news

What happens if you make/let the property become dangerous? Are you required to maintain the property whilst not being able to enter it?

Yes you are. You are responsible for the safety of the property; including inside. In other words if the "new tenants" get electrocuted because installation was not according to the code, you have a problem.

So just disconnect utilities then. I don't want them to drown in my bathroom or be electrocuted. I also want to replace locks so burglars don't rob them

You cannot disconnect utilities. You have to stop the contract with the providers and risk the fact that your new friends will be dissapointed not to have power anymore. So they will complain to the power company and tell that their children will die. And the power will be back, you paying for it.

Or they will simply steal it from someone else.

Or, ultimately, pass a contract with the power company.

As for the locks, changing them is the first thing they do.

There is even a web site "how to squat for dummies" (the title is different) where they explain in simple words what to do to have a successful squatting.

There is even a web site

Do they ever sue you tho? Don't the judges have any common sense?

How about you get your friends oversquat the squatters? Who are they going to sue now?

This is from the same country that bans (and will criminally charge "fathers") for performing a paternity test. [0]

Wait until they learn about Stand Your Ground laws... [1]

[0] https://www.ibdna.com/paternity-testing-ban-upheld-in-france...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law

This is incorrect. You can have a paternity test in France, in a lawful context.

The regulations (in French) are here: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F14042

One cannot perform of procure a paternity test. Only a judge can order it. This is exactly what I said.

So the judge can simply say no and the (legal) father is now on the hook. And furthermore, the legal system will manufacture a criminal if the legal father decides to test his own DNA with the one of his alleged (for whom he is financially responsible) child.

What if a third party performs the test?

Doesn't matter, even outside of France, the results won't be able to be used. Worse, the person who got the test can get fined or even jailed for it.

I’m curious how a law seeking to prohibit anyone from attempting to prove their own innocence could even be taken seriously by any judge or lawyer with a successful education from a legitimate formal legal institution.

Preventing someone from attempting to prove their own innocence is similar to the witch trials of old and a grotesque violation of human rights. Any sovereign legal system preventing defending ones innocence through modern forensic means, has little grounds to protest if as a result their legal system is openly mocked and ignored by other countries that do support defending self innocence.

The fact that a supposed modern nation with elected officials elections should have a miscarriage of justice this grotesque seems akin to a theocracy or monarchy that decides at arbitrary the outcomes of legal proceedings without any actual consistent basis for ensuring justice is upheld.

Did anything remotely ever happened?

Is suspicion that your child is not yours a "lawful context"?

No, because the law has a sucker and doesn't want you to get out of paying.

How are people not protesting this? Who would even enact such a law?

The government once they found that they would have to pay a very large sum to take care of every child out there whose legal father decided to no longer pay once he found out the child is not his (and/or just to spare the child from all the drama, once the court says yes you're not the biological father but you're still on the hook).

I think it was after a survey on cheating and promiscuity, but I'm not sure of this since this was just something I heard of from other people and I can't find much from a quick search on the internet.

The reasoning is that the priorities of the child come before the priorities of the father, so in order to protect the stability of the family you are not allowed to know.

As to who supports this, a lot of women seems to be in support of it (they have nothing to gain from opposing it) and all the people who seem to 'think of the children'.

Some politicians claim to be against allowing the paternity test on the ground that it is against the values of the republic since it's an aknowlegment of the importance of relations blood, genetics, and race(ism), but these are the words of politicians so they don't mean much.

Is there an alternative that keeps the government from having to pay so much for non paying fathers? Ergo, paternity insurance scheme?

I don't understand how this can possibly work. If someone can break into your house, occupy it, and gain the right to stay, can't you just do the same? Then you have two occupants in the house. What the heck kind of law or arbitration gets to determine who is allowed to occupy the beds in the house and use the kitchen?

They can't stay if you catch them fast enough. If you want to pull the same scam to get it back, you need to convince them to be gone long enough for you to live there a couple days, unnoticed.

So when the cops show up how is it not a he said she said situation? If I “break in” to my house, they call the cops on me as a “burglar” how does the cop know how long either party has been present?

One tactic is for them to have a "deed of sale" on hand. They show it to the cops and the cops tell you to get out, and settle it in court. Never mind that real property isn't transferred quite like that, or that you have state id that matches the address. The cops just take the "deed" at face value and kick you out.

So you also pull a "deed of sale" from your backpocket and tell the cop that those guys are fraudster because you also have matching state id, while they do not.

I assume cops don't care and leave it to the court systems

Also - you can't deny them entry if they leave, and you have to keep your house in livable condition (as if you're a charity landlord).

Can't you just break in, post a selfie to twitter saying "the squatters have left :)", leave, then break in 48h later and keep the place?

I really highly doubt that the original squatters continuously inhabited the place, as though they were clinging to a new Kia in a radio contest.

But two days is insanely short amount of time.

On the other hand, as a burglar if you are caught, couldn't you simply claim you have been there over 48 hours and are a legal squatter. Most residential properties won't have CCTV, so it's your word vs theirs.

It doesn't work for you to break in because these are criminals and operate outside the legal system. They will attack you if you break in.

The police will respond to that.

Not fast enough tho

> I love my country, but the brain-dead idiots who passed these laws should be publicly pointed to, with their home address, so that they can kindly invite the squatters to come when hey are on vacation.

I mean unironically the people affected by it should do this.

Can I pull this off at say, Versailles?

It would be different because it would be Versailles. TV would be there, Macron would be called off and the situation would be fixed in minutes.

If you are in Trou-les-Bains then nobody cares.

Yeah but you basically move from whatever home you’re living in to some rich person’s vacation villa.

The law seems to be changed since 2021: https://www.french-property.com/news/french_property/evictio...

The changes were mostly cosmetic, see https://immobilier.lefigaro.fr/article/pourquoi-expulser-un-... (in French).

In particular, the fact that the authorities must reply in 48h was shown as a progress. The problem is that if they do not reply, it is equivalent to a denial of right (your request to evict the squatters has been automatically rejected)

My grandfather had squatters like this, he basically used a gang that specializes in evictions. They burst into the home in the middle of the night, forcibly removed everyone and their belongings from the premises, and threatened the family with violence if they attempted any legal proceedings.

Crazy life in the countries without rule of law.

Yeah, well, gotta do what you gotta do. When the laws are completely fucked, you take matters in your own hands. Citizens of ex-communist countries know a thing or two about it.

Spoke with a ex-prosecutor now Judge. They couldn't possibly fight mafia there, but drug laws were extremely harsh. Basically cops just planted drugs and it was an instant slamdunk case.

I'm from France and I used to go to a lot of squats, and what you say is not true. I don't live in squats but I know a girl who does. She was rejected by her parents because she is lesbian. Even in uninhabited houses, when the police comes, every squatters are out immediately. Even if they have no rights to do it, and the law is supposed to "protect" squatters. I witnessed police throwing tear gas and smoke grenade to get squatters out. And when they are out, the police acts as if nothing happened.

We have a different experience. As I wrote elsewhere, i know of two cases where it took months to get the squatters out - and what was left was a ruin. The cases in the news you see from time to time agree.

Squatting is simply stealing. Sorry but I have exactly zero compassion for people who come to my apartment, that I bought with hard earned money, and fuck it up. This is one of these cases where violence is the normal reaction.

I hope that people who support squatters give out their salary and live under a bridge - this would be a true alignement with their beliefs. Otherwise this just hypocrisy ("people should be able to live where they want, except in my house")

Sounds like a way around this is to rig up some kind of high/low pitch directional sound system that prevents them from sleeping and goes through ear protectors. All you have to do is put it in the wall and set it to make its noise after a random duration between 5-100 mins has passed. If you added some accelerometer detection, it could even stop when it detects someone making any considerable noise near it. If they try to rip it out you can have them arrested for vandalism of private property.

What are they going to do? Complain about it?

Interesting idea, but I suspect that jurisdictions soft on squatters are almost certainly soft on vandalism and theft of contents caused by said occupants. Once the owner reclaims their property, it's then an uphill battle to prove and pursue damages against people who are long gone.

Before an owner takes any action, they had best know what type of squatters they are dealing with. Some would be likely to set fire to the place on the way out (or not leave; perishing amongst the smoke and flames) if they are subjected to enough anguish.

Not only they will complain, but you will get arrested for assault on people quietly living in a house.

I think the situation is hardly understandable for someone outside of France.

How is it assault for the owner of the property to install a contained sound system in a building that they legally own?

All that would need to do is provide the squatters some written notice informing them that this building was selected for testing a non harmful experimental rodent deterrence prototype the purpose of which is to minimize the presence of known plague vectors. (High/low frequency devices are often used for this and similar purposes). By notifying the “residents” in advance, it establishes that they are made aware that the owner of the property, although not actively seeking the removal of their presence from the premises at this current time has given them fair warning that these devices will be installed and made operational at the provided date and they are not actually being asked to leave. The legitimate justification behind the use of the property for this purpose is to afford maintenance and safety upkeep on said property by minimizing financial losses incurred while income from the property through other means is not possible due to it being forcibly prevented from generating income due to the presence of the squatters.

Perhaps the rebuttal to this approach are zoning laws favoring the sole use of the property as purely no residential.

Another unrelated risk that the squatters open them self up to is for the owner to contact multiple strict by reputation inspection agency that is likely to find some reason why the area should be not approved for renting to individuals due to safety reasons while those flaws are amended. During this and before the owner could establish communication with several repair companies seeking quotes on the repairs needed to meet the livable standards again but document that the repairs are not currently possible due to the potential financial legal liability of performing construction while the building is physically occupied. If a building inspection agency classifies the building as unsafe for residents then anyone choosing to stay there with children would be technically liable for child endangerment and would be at risk of being reported to the French equivalent of the child protective services.

If you stare at the playing field long enough there are always legal checkmate moves in every game no matter how inconsistent or ridiculous, even the French legal system. There appears to be a pattern of justice miscarriage in the French legal system possibly calling into question whether or not any other nation should ever honor any French extradition request as long as they hold laws as silly as this and preventing someone from seeking to prove with modern forensic science whether or not they are innocent of the accusation of genetic paternal responsibility.

The flowers in their “bouquet of evidence” are less than fragrant.

Was thinking the same, but perhaps better doors and a security system is easier?

Shellfish in the air ducts. No idea how long it takes to air out though.

rip out the walls to remove it ....

What the fuck. Laws should be empowering people to use force against these criminals instead of protecting them.

So what's your option if somebody squats your first and only house/apartment you own? Rent another place? Do you still need to pay property taxes in the property you can no longer use?

EDIT: what makes this particularly ridiculous is the timeframe you mentioned: 48 hours. I mean it would be a totally different thing if we were talking about squatting places abandoned for years. Yes you can make an argument about private property etc, but it's a different planet: if somebody squats my only house in which in paying a mortgage, that can easily put me in financial jeopardy. What should I do? Stop paying my mortgage? Squat another house myself?

Yes, you have to find another place to live.

You still have to pay taxes on property, as well as all the utilities you have a contract for.

You are also completely responsible for the safety of the house. If something happens to someone (inside the house to the squatters, or outside to a bypasser), you as the owner will be responsible.

The law protects squatters in their freedom to live where they see fit.

The law also theoretically protects the owners. The problem is that there are so many exceptions (children, ...) and requirements (negotiating with the squatters, ...) that what you get after months (some were apparently luckier) is usually a ruin and you are expected to be ecstatic about the fact that you got your house back.

The people who support this situation are despicable. Especially because I do not see them giving their house away and living under a bridge to live their dream of complete freedom.

When we will have meetings for the next election, I will ask the candidates about their opinion on squatters, and if they support them in any way, their home address so that can hop in, burn it to the ground and expect them to clap because freedom and equality.

EDIT to your EDIT: the problem is with houses people own as their primary ones (and come back from vacation to an occupied house), and the ones they use occasionally(week-ends, vacation, or rent).

If there is a building that is abandoned I do not see much problems outside of insalubrity and health/security risks.

I assume this happens unfrequently enough for being a major topic during an election.

Who pays for electricity, water, phone and internet? The squatters or the flat owner? How do they a contract in without proof of rental? Property taxes?

Does the policy goes to the house if there is "anonymous" tips of drugs, child abuse?

Will they be able to sleep with heavy/trash metal music directed to their windows 24/7 at realistic concert levels :-)

So many ideas, so many questions....:-)

Right! The implication of the parent is that property tax bureaus all across France are constantly being screwed around with? Surely a law in France that undermines the taxation system would be changed quickly? Unless there is some mechanism to force the owners to pay tax for a house being squatted in?

Of course. Landlord is responsible for taxes. Tenant isn't. Tenant not paying rent is landlord's problem.

If the ownership of the property is in dispute there is no clear landlord. That’s the gist of having squatters being able to stay in the place for years on end battling a court case. Otherwise the judiciary in France is behaving inexplicably.

> Someone gets by effraction

I didn't know this word -- apparently it's an older English (but still current) French word for what we usually call "burglary" or "breaking and entering" in English now. I might say "Someone breaks into an apartment/house..." in this context.

"breaking" is an unusual usage as well. It's the use of any force -- not literally breaking something. Pushing a door open would count as the use of force. Think more like "breaking a seal", rather than breaking a window.

> I love my country, but the brain-dead idiots who passed these laws should be publicly pointed to

They are not idiots. They are passing the issue (inability of some people to access housing) from them (the government) to some other individuals.

It's some form of unorganized taxation.

"Surprise wealth redistribution"

Honestly this sounds like a good way to keep real estate values in check.

I've a hard time slamming poor people demanding a ransom for a rich mans holiday home left largely unoccupied throughout the year in a country with fifteen percent unemployment

I have a hard time with people who do not publish their home address for the squatters to come in when they are on vacation.

Please live with your beliefs and get the squatters in your house. You would solve that problem of poverty at once.

Can you squat where the squatters are since it's your property and then invite another 100 of your friends to squat and out-squat them?

Can you trick them? Fake a fire alarm and change locks meanwhile.

Could you resquat the apartment while the squatters were out?

Yes you could, but they are never out.

You trying to get in is violence and they will call the police to protect them. And the police will protect them as the lawful inhabitants of your house.

how about you also move in with them?

Maybe invite all your friends too?

So the ones who are for this kind of approach should publicly invite the squatters to their house, and live under a bridge.

It is always simple to make other people do what you claim is right.

You yourself distinguished in your first post between squatters occupying someone's primary residence vs a rental or otherwise unoccupied property. Here you are eliding that distinction in order to make an emotional argument. There is no need to be so angry about the existence of other points of view besides your own.

No, both are equally despicable. The distinction was to show that ain France you are more or less screwed depending in the house.

I am glad that you don not get emotional when you are robbed of your property, good for you. Well, except if you were never robbed - which can explain this.

No, I would rather them kick out the family, child and all.

To do otherwise incentivizes bad behavior. Worse, it externalizes the problem from a societal one (building more housing) to an individual.

In that case, nobody would ever build a new apartment complex because they would be not be allowed to own it after they build it.

Where do people live that can’t afford to buy a house? There will be nothing to rent.