Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

COMMENTARY:

Frustration and fear: What it’s like to live near a Las Vegas squatter house

Squatter

Submitted

This Las Vegas house has been a draw for squatters since it was vacated two years ago.

Squatter homes speckle the Las Vegas Valley like a rash, but few stick out as badly as this one.

It’s a white rancher in an older neighborhood, surrounded by properties with such features as water gardens, yard sculptures, mature shade trees and lush expanses of grass.

The ranch home's grass, by contrast, has been scalped and scorched to a dark khaki color and crunches underfoot. A partially empty can of spray deodorant lies near a brick wall where a makeshift ladder has been placed to make it easier to get out of the backyard. A peek through the kitchen window shows bedrolls in the living room, trash and other signs that squatters have been inside.

It’s been two years since the home’s owners vanished and intruders started showing up, and the neighbors are tired of dealing with it.

They take an abundance of pride in ownership and are close-knit — so much so that when they found out the Sun was planning on spotlighting the home, they were grateful but asked that the name of the neighborhood not be disclosed so as not to damage its reputation.

But in hopes it might spark dialogue about how to solve the valleywide squatter problem, they do want others to know what it’s like to live near a squatter home.

The upshot: It’s occasionally scary and relentlessly frustrating.

For two years, the neighbors have been trying to secure the home and reverse its slide. They’ve contacted Metro Police numerous times, but the squatters keep coming back. They’ve contacted the property management company that is supposed to maintain the home, but the place remains an eyesore.

They’ve lost contact with the last owner, who is believed to have moved out of state.

There have been victories — plywood has been placed over the back door of the house, the bushes were trimmed and a tattered awning was finally removed — but there seems to be no end in sight.

More aggravating yet, it seems there’s not much anyone can do about the problem.

Metro has been responsive to the neighbors’ calls, but for every time they find evidence of a crime — like two stolen cars in the driveway, which has happened — there are more instances when squatters leave before officers show up.

And even when intruders are still on the scene, arresting or citing them isn’t an open-and-shut matter. Officers must determine probable cause of a crime, which in the case of trespassing, unlawful occupancy or housebreaking involves finding out whether the individuals have permission to be in the home. Doing so means tracking down the owners or dealing with the management company, which can be a major headache.

To make matters worse, squatters have increasingly been showing up with fake leases, which authorities must prove to be bogus in order to take action.

To their credit, Nevada lawmakers have been working to give officers the tools they need to run out squatters, including a bill introduced this legislative session by Assemblyman Edgar Flores, D-Las Vegas, that would require property leases to be notarized. Proponents say it would make things easier on law enforcement authorities by allowing them to call the notary instead of having to locate the owners or property managers.

But it isn’t likely to solve the problem. Notary signatures and stamps can be faked, and even legitimate notaries might be unreachable after-hours — meaning the law may only help during 40 hours of every 168-hour week.

Another legislative measure, approved in 2015, created stiffer penalties for squatters arrested multiple times.

But as the white rancher vividly shows, the problem persists. Squatters have been spotted on the property in the last two months, including a man who claimed he was a grandson of the owners and was trying to remove appliances from the home. After being approached by a neighbor, he left. At other times, carloads of people have shown up in the middle of the night to party at the residence.

The neighbor across the street, a former business owner and health care consultant who has taken an active interest in the valley’s squatter problem, says the issue is systematic. There’s not enough coordination among various entities empowered to deal with abandoned properties — including Metro, constable’s offices (which process evictions), municipal and county code enforcers and utility companies.

“It’s a puzzle with about eight pieces, and nobody’s putting them together,” says the neighbor.

He sees the key to progress as an interjurisdictional discussion involving county and city officials, law enforcement and utility companies — sort of a squatter summit — to develop a comprehensive strategy. He’s lobbying a county official in hopes of generating support for the discussion.

In the meantime, he and his neighbors are doing what they can. They call Metro and take photos to document problems — like on a recent day when the gate to the backyard was unlocked and ajar. They pester the asset protection company whose phone number is taped to the house to secure it and turn on the irrigation system.

The rancher isn’t the worst squatter home in the valley. Far from it. Metro receives thousands of squatter calls a year, some involving violent criminals, some involving fires, others involving homes full of trash and pests.

But it’s one thing for a squatter home to exist in neighborhoods full of abandoned houses or where there’s high turnover of residents; it’s another for one to exist for two years in a well-established and well-maintained neighborhood. As the rancher shows, Las Vegas has a long way to go to get its arms around the problem.

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