'I had no control': Squatting victim calls for legislation change

(NewsNation) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to sign a new law eliminating squatters’ rights in the state as squatting becomes a growing problem across the country.

Now, homeowners in other states are hoping Florida’s bill will serve as the blueprint for similar legislation across the country.

Darthula Young, an Illinois resident whose home was taken over by a professional squatter, joined “NewsNation Now” on Tuesday to share her experience dealing with the situation.

“I had to go through the courts and going through the courts can be a long process, because you have to go through the tenants’ courts and the squatters actually have rights. So you just can’t evict him; the judge has to get the order,” Young said.

Young discovered a squatter had taken over her late mother’s home when she arrived there to clean out her things. She told NewsNation that one of the first things the squatters did was change the locks so she could no longer enter the home. She then called the police, but they weren’t able to help, either.

“Once the police get there, if you can’t have entry into the property, there’s really nothing they’ll do, because in the state of Illinois, squatting is a civil matter and not a criminal matter. So you have to go through the courts in order to get squatters off your property,” Young explained.

Squatting has been in the spotlight recently as many homeowners report incidents of discovering people living on their properties without their knowledge or consent.

“You do feel violated,” Young told NewsNation. “While they were there, they did give us access, and I went in and it was very disturbing to look at her things because her personal property was still in the apartment, and to look at it and then have no control … I had no control over what was going on in the house.”

Young is continuing to fight to get the squatter evicted from her mother’s home, as well as urging a local state representative to introduce legislation that would govern squatter’s rights and give tenants or landlords more power over their properties.