As homes foreclose in U.S., squatters move in

by Dollars and Sense

By Jason Szep

BROCKTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) - They enter through a broken first-floor window each night to sleep on a moldy bed in the abandoned four-family house at 827 Main Street, part of a new generation of squatters emboldened by America's housing foreclosure crisis.

"For squatters, foreclosed homes like this are like a camp-ground with free camping," says real-estate broker Marc Charney, a foreclosure specialist, as he enters the home in Brockton, Massachusetts, and shines a flash-light at a mattress where homeless people have been sleeping each night.

Squatting is on the rise across the United States as foreclosures surge, eviction notices mount and homes go unsold for months, complicating the worst U.S. housing slump in a quarter century and forcing real-estate brokers to enlist the help of law enforcement and courts to sell empty houses.

In some regions, squatting is taking on new twists to include real-estate scams in which thieves "rent out" abandoned homes they don't own. Others involve "professional squatters" who move from one abandoned home to another posing as tenants who seek cash from banks as a condition to leave the premises -- a process known by real-estate brokers as "cash for key." Read the rest of this Reuters article.

Labels: affordable housing, foreclosures, homelessness

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6/05/2008 10:54:00 AM