A nice second home in Lake Arrowhead. Rental of the nice second home providing extra income. Numerous successful rentals through a rental agency. Then bam! Bad guys, They paid rent for several months and seemed like good renters, but they definitely were not. This is a cautionary tale.
By the time the renters were finally evicted after a daunting legal battle, the home had to be stripped down to the studs, fumigated for bed bugs, and all the kitchen appliances and cabinetry had to be removed—at the owner’s expense. The contractor tasked with the grizzly assignment of stripping the interior of the house to a point of restart said it is easiest to just roll up the rugs with all the nastiness inside, strip off the paneling and sheetrock and then begin the rebuild. “We like to wrap everything up in the carpet and take it out—and besides we have our hazmat suits!” Who were these unsavory characters, and what were they up to? Allegedly the renters who moved in were a grandfather and some grandchildren. The sheriff’s report, when law enforcement gained access to the home after the squatters had vacated, said that the house “contained enough drugs to light up the mountain.” They left the drugs behind along with a lot of trash and the ruined furniture, appliances, and floor coverings they had destroyed. The concern is that grandpa is a local and is probably looking for another place to trash or may have already found one. The Talk of the Mountain social media site recently contained a report of another episode of squatters in Valley of the Moon. How common is this?
The San Bernardino County Annual Crime Report online does not include reports on squatters, and in fact does not list any crime reports for Lake Arrowhead in 2021, the latest data available. Sheriffs are the law enforcement agents on the mountain, but sheriffs from down the mountain are the ones who carry out evictions, not the local deputies.
The squatters started out as just another rental. In 2022 three months of rent were paid in the off season. When the renter requested to extend his rental into the prime season, the owner raised the rent slightly and agreed to one more month. Claiming a family event that the renter wanted to attend, he asked for yet one more month’s extension and promised to pay. The owner agreed but the rent was not paid. Since the owner had plans to house her own guests who were coming during the month after that extension, she said no to a request for yet another extension. A Pay or Quit Notice was issued. This is “a legal document a landlord provides to a tenant stating that rent is past-due and that the tenant will need to either pay the amount or move out within a certain number of days,” according to propertymanagement.com. The squatter’s lack of response and inaction indicated this was not his first rodeo. He had worked the system before and knew that California’s lengthy but insipid eviction laws favor the squatter, not the property owner.
Almost a full year after the initiation of the ill-fated rental agreement, the owner “won her property” back from the squatters. About this time hackers won control of the San Bernardino County Sheriffs’ phones and computer system, and progress ground to a halt. Debbie Murray, the owner’s daughter, showed up in person at the Sheriff’s Department to request that someone find the writ, a physical document that validates homeowners’ rights to reclaim their property. It was located the next day and provided to her for $145 cash (for which the sheriff’s office later reimbursed her when the ransom had been paid to the hackers and the systems were back in operation).
Meanwhile back at the rental property, neighbors were disposing of trash left by the squatters. Four months after the homeowner had finally won back her property, the squatters beat a hasty retreat just hours before the San Bernardino County Sheriff who handles evictions showed up to finally remove them. They had hung on for 10 months of playing the system and avoiding rental payments.
What advice do the veterans of this battle have for others who would seek to rent out their homes for some extra income? “I have no grand illusion of getting money out of this guy, but there has to be a reform of the system,” one of them said. “If I were do this again, Debbie noted, “after the Pay or Quit, I would rent the house for a dollar to my scariest friends and their scary friends and have them move in with a dated and signed rental document (which would give them legal authority to be there) and force the squatters to evacuate or at least have them see what is going on.”
1. Pick a good rental agent who will do their due diligence, and remember they only make money when they complete a rental contract, so they may be tempted to skimp on background checks of renters. A complete inventory with a checklist and signoff document for the contents of the home would establish a safety net. “How does a sheriff know if that’s his TV or my TV when he moves out?” Debbie’s husband Joe asked.
2. Research the potential renter. Run a credit check. Serial squatters usually leave a trail, although they may request to have their record expunged after losing an eviction case in court.
3. Eviction laws in California are very much in need of changing.
4. FYI: Life-sustaining utilities like water, gas, and electricity cannot be turned off by the homeowner while someone is living (albeit illegally) in their house.
5. If you do rent out your home, don’t peg the rent on the low end of the spectrum. It attracts con artists, Joe advised.
6. A No Trespassing sign on your house will mean that people who walk on the property to snoop through the windows or move in and change the locks without any legal contract are violating the law and may be evicted and prosecuted.
