Portland property manager Ron Garcia had at least four run-ins with squatters in the first three months of the year.
In North Portland, a woman moved out of a rental home his company manages after she said her ex-boyfriend was abusing her. That boyfriend, who was not on the lease, stayed in the home for several months, racking up tens of thousands of dollars in damages, Garcia told lawmakers at a hearing in Salem last month.
A father and son rented a home on Fairview Lake, but when the father died his son moved out. But the son’s ex-girlfriend stayed in the house for months, throwing wild parties. The neighbors feared prostitution and drug use but were too afraid to call the police, Garcia said.
When a Beaverton tenant moved out of his rental and returned the keys, a person claiming to be an ex-roommate stayed without paying, an ordeal that escalated into an armed standoff with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office nearly six months later, Garcia said.
And in another case, a woman moved out of her North Portland home, but her adult son decided to stay. He invited friends who stayed in the attic and the basement, and burned down the home’s garage. It took months for Garcia to recover the keys and get the squatters to move out, he said.
“You know how helpless and outraged we all feel when we see a video from a doorbell camera recording a porch pirate, taking our packages and brazenly robbing us?” Garcia told lawmakers. “Imagine the horror of watching that same doorbell and a stranger walking in and out of your house for months … They’ve become a house pirate.”
In Oregon, squatters have “greater protections than legitimate tenants,” Rep. Annessa Hartman, a Gladstone Democrat said last month. That’s why she is co-sponsoring a bill that would make it much easier for landlords to evict squatters.
She’s won widespread support for the proposal to close legal loopholes by allowing landlords and homeowners to launch eviction proceedings against squatters, instead of winding through what Hartman says is a much slower process called ejectment. Her bill passed the House of Representatives unanimously earlier this month and has drawn support from property owners and tenants rights advocates.
Squatters occupy a gray area under Oregon law. In order to evict someone, a landlord must have proof that they have forcibly entered a property or they have to have established a landlord-tenant relationship Hartman said – basically having their name on a lease.
Squatters who may have been invited onto a property by then-legal tenants but who have no relationship with the property owner – like those in Garcia’s example – are more challenging to remove.
Hartman became aware of this problem when residents near Gladstone’s Max Patterson park raised concerns about a property that had been occupied by squatters, she said. The home was sold at auction but occupants who knew the previous owner didn’t want to move out, Hartman said. They hung a flag with a swastika on it in the window, like a curtain, Gladstone Police Chief John Schmerber said.
“What should have been a milestone moment for this new homeowner turned into a drawn-out and expensive ejectment lawsuit,” Hartman said. The new owners spent thousands of dollars and waited months to get access to their home, she said, “all because these individuals hadn’t forcibly entered and there was no landlord-tenant relationship.”
John VanLandingham, a tenants rights advocate and attorney at the Oregon Law Center, which provides free legal aid for low-income Oregonians, testified in favor of the bill. Squatters are not covered by Oregon’s protections for tenants, he said, and the bill clarifies that landlords can use a quicker process to seek a court order for eviction. Without that clarity, law enforcement officers have to wade through the question of whether someone has permission to be in the home or not when deciding whether to take action, he and Schmerber said.
“We really don’t want the police spending time trying to figure that out,” VanLandingham said.
Squatter disputes are not only expensive for landlords, they can also put neighbors at risk, displace legal tenants and discourage property owners from continuing to rent, Jonathan Clay of housing provider association Multifamily NW told lawmakers.
“At a time when Oregon is facing a housing supply crisis it is essential that existing rental homes remain viable for lawful occupancy,” Clay said. The bill, he said, “helps restore confidence in Oregon’s rental housing system by reinforcing property rights and improving access to stable housing for those who need it most.”
Brian Boys, who lives near Eugene, has rented several properties. But he had his first dispute with squatters last fall, when the childhood home he co-owns with his siblings was taken over by strangers, he said.
For the last several years, Boys and his siblings have rented the five-bedroom home their parents owned in Southwest Portland. The last renters, a woman and her daughter, moved out in August, Boys said. But neighbors texted to tell them there were still people in the home coming and going at all hours of the night.
The property management company confirmed that squatters occupied the home, Boys said. He suspects they knew the former tenants. Police said that short of any criminal action, there was little they could do, Boys said.
“What’s particularly distressing is they’re people who have no contract with. You don’t know who they are,” he said. “It would be like strangers breaking into your house, except at least now - the way the law has been - the law is on their side, so there’s nothing we can do.”
Boys and his siblings worked through the property management company to start court proceedings. They paid for a lawyer and were on the hook for the monthly $400 to $500 electric bills the occupants were racking up, Boys said. Court documents show that Boys’ lawyer alleged that the mother, daughter and “all other occupants” of the home had not paid for rent, landscaping or a lease break fee. In November, the occupants agreed to pay the family $3,300 and to leave the home by Jan. 2. But they never paid, the Boys’ lawyer alleged in court filings. So a circuit court judge gave the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office a green light to remove the squatters.
Deputies carried out the eviction in February, court documents show. Nobody was in the house when law enforcement arrived, Boys said, but it was full of trash and the carpets unsalvageable. The squatters cut out copper piping and stole light fixtures and the water heater, he said. They also cut a hole in the 100-year-old front door to install their own keypad and damaged the air conditioning, he said.
Boys estimates the whole ordeal set his family back $20,000 in rent and another $20,000 in repairs.
“It’s extremely upsetting. There’s this thing of trust with renters, you know, it has to go both ways,” Boys said. “Then the idea that there’s nothing you can do … there’s no way of recouping our loss.”
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