Inside the squatting hysteria

On March 17, a provocateur named Leonel Moreno posted a video on TikTok where he purports to give instructions on how people can successfully "squat" in other people's houses. It was one of many videos he made about how to exploit American law. Moreno, an undocumented immigrant who describes himself as an "artist," appears to post deliberately inflammatory content to grow his online following. Moreno frequently films himself screaming in Spanish and previously posted a video encouraging people to support a teenager who allegedly shot a tourist in the leg in Times Square. 

In the case of the squatting video, Moreno's tactics worked. It prompted a flood of coverage about squatting by undocumented immigrants, particularly by right-wing outlets. 

But the conversation quickly shifted from Moreno's video to an alleged squatting crisis, fueled by migrants. On Fox News, host Jesse Watters claimed that Biden was letting migrants “break into the country and then break into your bedroom.” Fox News anchor Sandra Smith warned viewers they may "have to worry about losing your home." On Fox News' Outnumbered, Emily Compagno described squatting as an "epidemic." 

This kind of alarmist coverage was not limited to Fox News. Inside Edition, an infotainment show that appeals to a general audience, declared that there has "been an explosion of squatting cases." The program cited a study by the National Rental Home Council (NRHC) which found "that an estimated 1,200 homes had been taken over by squatters in Atlanta." NRHC's CEO, David Howard, said that the number of homes occupied by squatters in Atlanta "far surpasses other markets." Critically, the NRHC survey was the first one it ever conducted, "so no historical numbers are available to indicate whether the figure represents an increase or decrease."

Moreover, the study was based on a survey of NRHC members, which is comprised of companies that rent single-family homes. According to NRHC's own data, all such companies control just 0.19% of all housing in the United States. Since rentals are much more likely to be vacant than a typical home, it's unclear how the organization would extrapolate a survey only of its members to an entire metro area. NRHC has not released the survey and did not respond to a request for details about the survey.

The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, ran this headline: "Could America's squatting crisis spill over into bloody violence? Cases surge by A THIRD in worst hit cities as homeowners turn to vigilantes to turf out armed occupiers." The claim that squatting cases have surged "by a third" across the United States is based on a "local attorney" in Dallas named Craig Novak, who "says he has seen cases surge by around a third in the last year."

Squatting was the topic of a segment on the March 23 edition of the Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the United States. Rogan called the situation "bananas" and said the country is "basically allowing people to steal people's houses." 

But after lamenting the scope of the problem, Rogan decided it might be helpful to have some data to back up his concern. "What is the number of people squatting currently, Jamie, in the United States?" Rogan asked his producer Jamie Vernon. His producer responded that he didn't know "how to find that." Rogan suggested "trying Google." When that didn't work, Rogan told Vernon to "ask Chat GPT" and "see what that bitch says." Chat GPT responded that "it didn't have access to statistics on squatting in housing in the US." Rogan then dropped the issue and resumed discussing various anecdotes reported in the media.

Vernon had problems finding the data Rogan was seeking because, according to experts, it does not exist. "Squatting is an extremely rare issue, and there is zero evidence in our data or in any other publications that we know of that the eviction crisis is driven by the presence of non-native renters," Juan Pablo Garnham, researcher and communications manager at the Eviction Lab, told Popular Information. 

One reason that squatting is rare is that, almost everywhere, it is extremely difficult to establish a valid property claim by occupying someone else's home. In 16 states, a squatter would have to openly and notoriously occupy a home for 20 years or more. In most other states, it takes 10 or more years for a squatter to establish adverse possession, or a legal property right. Absent this kind of extended stay, a squatter is simply a tresspasser. 

One notable exception to this dynamic is New York City, where a squatter is considered a tenant after 30 days. (For the rest of New York state, squatters do not obtain rights for 10 years.) This doesn't mean the squatter can stay in the home indefinitely, only that a landlord would need to go through an eviction process, rather than simply call the police to arrest the squatter for trespassing. That process can take months. This was a decision made by New York City, as some landlords abandoned less desirable properties, to help keep people off the streets. But there is no evidence that squatting is a bigger problem in New York City now than in the past. 

But the current media frenzy about squatting is distracting attention from America's actual housing crisis. 

How landlords exploit tenants 

The right’s “squatters” outrage also ignores the asymmetrical power between landlords and tenants. The ACLU reports that 81% of landlords are represented in eviction court proceedings, compared to 3% of renters. Studies show that “between 51 percent and 75 percent of tenants without legal representation lost their case in court.” 

In many cases, landlords are able to exploit tenants without filing any paperwork at all. In an interview, Marie Claire Tran Leung, a senior staff attorney with the National Housing Law Project, explained that landlords can often pressure tenants to leave merely by threatening to initiate eviction proceedings — even if the eviction is not legally justified. Tenants frequently feel like their only option is to leave because a record of an eviction could make it virtually impossible to find another place to live. In other cases, landlords force legal tenants to leave by making their homes uninhabitable.

Tran Leung said that, in her experience, illegal evictions are a far more common problem than "squatting." The idea that landlord-tenant law makes it easy for tenants to exploit landlords — a claim that underlies many of the "squatting" stories — is completely backward. 

The power dynamic was especially apparent in 2020, when numerous corporate landlords violated the CDC’s federal eviction ban and continued evicting tenants across the country. Renters said “their landlords tried to skirt COVID-19 eviction moratoriums by changing locks, removing trash containers so waste piled up and – in one case – attempting to unbolt the front door right off an apartment,” according to USA Today. A year-long congressional probe found that four corporate landlords, in particular, engaged in “abusive tactics” and “evicted aggressively to pad their profits.” 

Aside from evictions, during the pandemic, experts reported "a decline in services and repairs, an increase in monthly fees, and a dramatic rise in rents.” Progress Residential – the largest single-family rental in the U.S. and one of the four companies investigated by Congress in 2021 – has been accused of neglecting basic home maintenance. A 2023 study by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project and Center for Popular Democracy found Progress Residential’s “[t]enants have reportedly experienced broken AC units in the middle of summer, sewage backing into their yards, severe mold, electrical hazards, lack of smoke detectors, broken locks, and more – often in violation of the law.” 

The real housing crisis

Nationwide, rising housing costs coupled with stagnant wages has left millions of Americans homeless or on the brink of losing their homes. Today, a full-time worker would need to make more than three times the federal minimum wage –  $23.67 – to afford a “modest one-bedroom rental home,” the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) found. According to the group’s report, “[i]n no state, metropolitan area, or county in the U.S. can a worker earning the federal or prevailing state or local minimum wage afford a modest two-bedroom rental home at fair market rent by working a standard 40-hour work week.” 

There is also not enough affordable housing. A study, released this month by the NLIHC, showed that there is a “shortage of 7.3 million rental homes affordable and available to renters with extremely low incomes,” with only 34 affordable rental homes available for every 100 low-income renter households. This shortage – which the group describes as a “systemic failure” of the private housing market – is part of a long-term trend. Between 2019 and 2021, “the supply of rental units affordable to renters with annual household incomes below $30,000…declined by nearly 4 million,” the group wrote. 

The shortage also forces extremely low-income renters to spend more of their income on rent and utilities. Today, “more renter households are cost burdened than ever before,” the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University finds. In 2022, a record-setting 12.1 million renter households spent more than 50% of their income on housing and utilities. 

Much of this burden falls on Black, Latino, and Indigenous households. “Nineteen percent of Black non-Latino households, 16% of American Indian or Alaska Native households, and 13% of Latino households are extremely low-income renters,” the report says, compared to only 6% of White households.

Ultimately, as the affordable housing crisis worsens, homelessness will continue to grow. Between 2022 and 2023, homelessness spiked 12%, according to federal officials. In December 2023, there were more than 650,000 people experiencing homelessness on a given night – the highest number recorded since reporting began in 2007.