There are so many different kinds of people who you deal with on the show. What do the squatters tend to have in common?
Generally a squatter is somebody who, if they know what their rights are and what they're doing, they typically have done it before. They have legal representation. They're not people of need, in general. They're people who take advantage of systems or government assistance because they can. It's a mentality. They don't all have a lot of money, but they all figure out ways around certain things. Occasionally, I run into someone who is in a situation not by choice, either they lost their job or they are just in a troubled time of their lives. Those are people [where] I really try to raise money to help rehouse them. I don't ever want to go into a situation where there's somebody that needs help without me being able to help them. I still need to get the home back, but if I can help them move forward with their lives, that's my goal.
How do you still have so much empathy for these people when they're coming at you with violence and anger?
In that situation, I can't take anything personally. You have to have a goal in mind. I can match whatever energy I'm given and if it does become physical, I'm physically trained to be able to deal with the situation. However, what I find is that it's a lot easier to get my goal accomplished doing it [with empathy]. There are situations where I will literally build a rapport with them and have them believe that I'm on their side to get them to do something I need them to do. Anyone can go in and break down the door and get aggressive, and they end up getting arrested. I'm a true believer that somebody who can control their emotions is the stronger person, and if I take a situation where they start out aggressive, there's nowhere it goes other than up, and then law enforcement's there, and odds are it's not the squatters that are being removed. It's not worth getting emotional or taking it personally.
There's a lot of stuff that you don't see on the screen, like the insults and things they're throwing at me. The camera guys are like, "Dude, that was a stressful day, and you're [acting] like it's nothing." I've just been in crisis situations for a long time as a bouncer, and growing up with a part of my life being homeless helps me have empathy and to be able to decipher between somebody who's in need or somebody who is taking advantage, so I always enter with empathy because I want to hear both sides. Sometimes landlords lie, so I have to go into it completely neutral.
I was really affected by the episode where the woman thought she was paying $100 rent to a landlord who was allegedly scamming her.
Yeah, and that's pretty common. That was heartbreaking for a lot of people. There was a part of that that didn't make it into the episode, but I had a hundred dollar bill in my phone case. When I was 18 years old, my grandfather said to me to always have a $100 bill in your wallet because if you're ever in a bind and need a hotel room or a tow, you've got emergency money. I don't carry a traditional wallet, but I pulled it out of my phone and gave it to the woman and said, "Here, I want to give you your rent back." I want to be able to help in those situations where they're not the actual squatter and they've been taken advantage of.
This also happens with Airbnb. A squatter will get an account and make an income off of a property. There was a woman in one episode that was renting out rooms, so we took advantage of that and that's how we got into the house.
How do the tenant rights work, and why do they prevent law enforcement from doing anything?
It's about contracts. A lease is a contract, but only by name. It's not a contract in the courts. A lease does not have a strict end date like other contracts. If you enter into a [lawyer-approved] contract with fraud, the contract is immediately null and void and everybody goes their separate ways. If two parties enter into a lease with fraud, it doesn't make the lease null and void. Those are the laws that specifically have opened the doors for squatters, and squatters know that if they can manage to create any kind of reasonable doubt and get an officer to think, “well, they might be a tenant,” then it's a civil matter, and law enforcement can't do anything about it.
Squatters' rights seem so counterintuitive. What's your take on them after years of doing this?
When I first started digging into squatters, I was reading about the 1800s and people going from property to property, land to land, and it all came down to abandoned property. It was people seeking ownership. Now, we're calling them squatters but they're not really squatters. I really want to come up with another name, because what I found is that the modern day squatter is not looking for ownership. They're looking for free rent, which means they're trying to gain tenant rights. Tenant rights are written so that they favor tenants over landlords so much that it opened the door for squatters to go in and gain rights with just a few little steps.
What made you realize you could just get a lease and combat squatters by becoming a tenant yourself?
When I was originally looking into squatters [for my mom], I was looking at how they gain their tenant rights. Typically an attorney files a piece of paper and right then they gain those rights because they're putting their name on that address and saying they live there. I started backtracking. I thought I could figure out a way to switch places with them and become their squatter, and I just had this epiphany. Like, if they can take a house, I can take a house, and if I do it before they have any tenant rights, then it's a civil matter, and now they have to prove I'm not the tenant. As soon as you start reading about squatters, you'll read about how they have fake leases. So I had my mom write me a lease so that if they had a fake lease, I would have a real lease. It all just kind of worked out.
Your mother's squatters moved in after your dad died. Is that common?
It's very common after someone dies, because a lot of times, ownership is not really clear, so squatters take advantage of homes that are in probate. Probate laws, unless you're already living at the residence, prohibit a new occupant [without the executor’s permission], but only the occupants that are fighting for ownership. So if somebody unrelated to the case moves in, there's no clear owner, there's nothing they can do, so no one's getting them out. And you have families doing it to themselves. They know that it's going into probate. They move in with Uncle John, he passes away, and then they refuse to leave.
Did any moments hit you really hard when you were filming?
I really appreciated the horse one [Episode 13, "Hostile Horseplay”]. I try to find inspiration in every case, whether it's someone who reminds me of my mom, or I'm putting myself in the place of the people going through it, and I can relate to it. When I saw the condition of those horses, that was my No. 1 goal. I told her, "I'm getting your house back even though there's a lot of layers to that, but if I can get your horses back, this will be a successful day for me." I've gotten things back, like hope chests and trumpets and things that families say are important to them, but that was the first time I've ever retrieved something living. That was something that hit me and gave me a lot of inspiration. There are more important things than houses.
