A Florida landlord is calling on Gov. Ron DeSantis to take action against squatters in the Sunshine State after her property was taken over for more than 34 days.
Patti Peeples and Dawn Tiura spent over $5,000 in court fees after two women broke into their home and illegally occupied it before being removed and leaving $38,000 in damages.
"I want Gov. DeSantis to change the laws," Peeples told Fox News. "Tenants are not the same as squatters."
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Peeples added that she thinks there needs to be a more expedited process to remove squatters from Florida homes.
"There needs to be a far more expedited way that the court system can look at the situation and declare quickly within a couple of days whether or not that is a legitimate individual in that house who might have been defrauded by a sneaky landlord, or if in fact it's the landlord that is being defrauded by a squatter." she said.
Peeples and Tiura discovered their investment property that they listed for sale was occupied by squatters 48 hours after they showed it to an interested buyer.
"We had an interested buyer, but the repairman we sent ahead of an inspection said that when he arrived there was a pitbull with puppies on the sun porch," Tiura said.
Peeples then arrived at the property and found squatters inside the home who claimed they had the lease for the house which they found on Zillow. The squatters told police they were victims of a rental scam by a fraudulent landlord who they paid rent, a security deposit and a pet deposit to.
According to a police report, one of the squatters was removed from a home close by in mid-February, in a nearly identical situation. Her story raised eyebrows due to her last lease listing the same address for the false landlord as the one she claimed to have for Peeple’s property.
Peeples said the police officer responding to the call "indicated that he was pretty sure that this young woman was a serial squatter because she had just been evicted from another house not very far away."
While the squatters occupied her home, Peeples claims she was not allowed to enter the property.
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"I have absolutely no right to go into this house because these squatters have the expectation of privacy, even though the law knows that they're squatters, I know that they're squatters, and they know they're squatters."
In the aftermath of the situation that Peeples claims cost her an enormous amount of emotional energy, she is trying to influence change to prevent other property owners from falling victim.
She told Fox News she is pressuring lawmakers to change the Florida code that gives squatters 20 days to respond to a lawsuit filed by a property owner and allows them to stay on the property until a final judgment is rendered by the court.
"Squatters are nothing more than criminals who are breaking and entering into a house, should not be handled in civil court," Peeples said. "They should be treated within the criminal court system."
State Rep. Angela Nixon told Fox News she is trying to add an amendment about squatters to a bill currently making its way through the Florida legislature regarding landlord-tenant relationships. If she is unable to, she said she will consider filing a bill next session to "tackle this issue."
DeSantis' office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Click here to learn more about the squatters in Jacksonville, Florida.
