Squatting in the United States
Squatting in the United States describes the legal and practical aspects of squatting (the unauthorized use of real estate) in the United States of America.
Squatting laws vary from state to state and city to city. For the most part, however, squatting is rarely tolerated to any degree for long, particularly in cities. There have been a few exceptions, notably in 2002 when the New York City administration agreed to turn over eleven squatted buildings in the Lower East Side to an established non-profit group, on the condition that the apartments would later be turned over to the tenants as low-income housing cooperatives.
Squatters can be young people living in punk houses or low-income or homeless people. Recently there have been increasing numbers of people squatting foreclosed homes. There are also reports of people squatting in their own foreclosed homes and Michael Feroli (chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase) has commented on the boon to the economy of "squatter rent" or the extra income made available for spending by people not fulfilling their mortgage repayments.
In January 1848, two weeks after California was ceded to the United States, gold was discovered in California, resulting in a flood of fortune seekers gravitating to the state in the following months and years. Due to the ambiguity of existing laws regarding squatting on federal land, individual mining camps developed squatting laws to fill the legal void. Policies relating to abandonment and work requirements were established on a camp-by-camp basis. As extraction became more capital-intensive, the share of mining camps that allowed a company to own land increased significantly.
Squatting was used by American settlers to establish a claim that could be used to challenge the land grants of the ranchos of the Californios before the Public Land Commission and the United States courts.
The United States Homestead Acts legally recognized the concept of the homestead principle and distinguished it from squatting, since the law gave homesteaders a legal way to occupy unclaimed lands. Additionally, US states that have a shortage of housing tend to tolerate squatters in property awaiting redevelopment until the developer is ready to begin work. However, at that point, the laws tend to be enforced. The Homestead Act of 1862 was signed by Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, and was enacted to foster the reallocation of unsettled land in the West. The law applied to U.S. citizens and prospective citizens that had never borne arms against the U.S. government. It required a five-year commitment, during which time the land owner had to build a twelve-by-fourteen foot dwelling, develop the 160-acre (0.65 km2) plot of land allocated, and generally better the condition of the unsettled property. After five years of positively contributing to the homestead, the applicant could file a request for the deed to the property, which entailed sending paperwork to the General Land Office in Washington, D.C. and, from there, "valid claims were granted patent free and clear". Moreover, there were loopholes to this law, including provisions made for those serving in the U.S. military. After the Civil War, Union veterans could deduct time served in the army from the five-year homesteader requirement.
...
Wikipedia