Squatters...

I found squatters in a SFH today, my first true squatters in 11 years. Walked into the house, heard voices and thought perhaps a contractor left a radio behind. Walk into the living room and there is a young couple... sitting in my living room. Surrounded by cockroaches, I might add. "Who are you?" I ask. "Who are you?" they reply. I explain I'm the owner and they need to leave. They apologize sweetly and say that they just wanted to get out of the rain. There is some convoluted story of an eviction. I tell them the bug guy is coming for the roaches and no one can be in the house. They ask if they can leave their stuff in my garage for a few days. No. They carry the trash from last week's trash-out to the curb, empty some more trash out of the garage, including their stuff (the wheelie suitcase almost did me in) and I give them $20 and tell them to go to the local homeless shelter, lock the house up and leave.

Check back in an hour. They've moved their stuff back into the garage. I call the police. Police come out and explain that they don't have to go home but they can't stay there... Ask me if I want to press charges. Not really, I just want them to leave. Police say the kids have an exit strategy (REI joke - get it?) and should be gone in 20 minutes. If not, call the police again.

I come back in about two hours. They're still there but not in the garage, now they're out on the street. The young lady is sitting on the curb by their pile of stuff, using an umbrella as a parasol against the sun. The young man is riding a kid's bike in circles. And now there's another guy, an older gentleman. He goes to the corner store and comes out with a bag of Gatorade (guess they're not using the $20 to get to the homeless shelter) and sees me... says they're waiting for a ride.

I call the police again. A nice sergeant comes out, clears the house, we figure out where they probably got in (hint, the house wasn't open). We check the garage, no stuff. Lock up the garage. In the interim, the two guys have gone off on the bicycles, leaving parasol girl by the curb, guarding the stuff. The sergeant walks across the street to speak with the young lady. Before he gets there, her sweet clear voice comes across the lawn... "did we do something wrong?" Once more the police describe how many wrong things they have done. They still don't particularly want to arrest anyone and with the guys gone, there's not much point. The sergeant mentions the girl keeps saying how nice I was. *sigh*...

I leave for tools, come back in about an hour. They're gone. Their stuff is gone. I install 3" construction screws to secure the windows, place "No Trespassing" signs on front and back and leave again, hoping for the best.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.