Apparently you don't need a license to carry swords in California, which is surprising. Maybe Ken-Sama was onto something.

From what I can gather from the article, it does seem to be entirely legal. He never forcibly removes the squatters, just makes their life annoying and difficult, and they usually choose to leave. He also doesn't attack anyone, and only uses the weapons for self defence.

I think any property owner could do the same, but it's just a risk that they don't want to take. Who wants to get up close to a (potential) knife wielding meth addict?

In the article they interview one of his customers and the guy basically says he is just a finance nerd that likes to ride his bike and hug his wife and he has no experience with potentially violent situations. So, I'm imagining a lot of customers are like that.

It really doesn't go far enough. There ought to be a legal requirement for the service industry to check their hires are fully paid up on their rent before they can be allowed to hire them.

That way, people who can't compete in the Californian housing market will stop being babied and finally be allowed to get the message and then redirect their energy on migrating to somewhere with cheaper rent like Idaho or Guatemala.

Kinda just seems insane. Also reading the article, he just cited NDAs when asked to provide evidence that he actually successfully evicted anyone

Honestly I think there are too few evictions.

The working homeless are worse at contributing to natalism than the working housed and there are too many Americans for the global aquifer budget to support. A mass fertility reduction can only really happen through a decline in prosperity. Ideally, the American housing policy framework should be exported globally as much as possible, too.

https://www.footprintnetwork.org/

> People unlawfully squat

My understanding of CA tenancy law is that it's so tilted in favor of the tenant, that if someone just claims to be one, the police have to shrug.

> Small wonder people are unhappy with the system and there's a market popping up for extra-judicial evictions

Well-intentioned laws, upon contact with the real world, often end up with undesirable secondary and tertiary consequences such as this.

That sounds like a mostly reasonable approach from the police though. Do you want want a police raid just because you did something the landlord doesn't like? Do you want the issue decided on the spot with little actual knowledge? Unless the place is being actually damaged, it's likely better to take the time - there's too much possibility for harassment otherwise.

Police are not in the business of reading contracts and determining who is in the right or wrong.

They'll remove trespassers but these squatters will usually claim that they have a rental agreement, or that they've lived there long enough that there is a de facto agreement.

> The article alleges that squatting is an organized crime activity.

No, it doesn't. It extensively quotes its primary interview subject, who at one point makes a (fairly vague) insinuation along those lines. His words were "more like organized crime", and they're rendered in the article within quotation marks.

> Do gangs really do this, or is it just renaming the activities of homeless individuals as organized crime?

My guess would be the latter.

Idk about America but at least in Spain squatting is in fact a very lucrative activity for squatters that target investors. They track and buy information of houses owned by banks/investors or are “summer” homes.

Once they break in they ask just bellow of what hiring a lawyer and doing the legal process would cost. Or worse they rent illegally the home in the secondary black market.

The reason it works is because kicking them legally can take months or years plus lawyers and proceedings cost. It also drops the value of the surroundings if they are not kicked fast enough.

Now theres an entire sector around it.

If they will be treated as organized criminals anyway, why not just say fuck it and organize?

Everybody pitch in and get some melee experience. Let the civil disobedience commence.

He could even pocket half and hire a guy to do the evictions for him.

Some rule of law would be nice, so that we don't have to resort to private security forces.

Not building enough housing? It seems like they've built 164,121 housing units too many. I think that the more correct explanation is that speculative investors are holding onto property indefinitely rather than selling or renting at a loss, preventing housing from falling back to its true equilibrium value.