It depends on your legal guidance, but perhaps the most widely accepted definition involves a person moving into a home they do not own and claiming it as their own.The practice of squatting can be traced back to Medieval England.
“After ten years, Farmer A could actually make a claim to make that patch of land that was Farmer B’s as their own,” said Zlotnick. “He had called me frantically complaining about how his electric bill quadrupled,” she said. “They saw an electric cord from his power outlet outside in the back of his church over the fence into a vacant home with squatters in it stealing his electricity.”and determined that the people staying there had no right to live there and the house was deemed a safety hazard.
The person who owned the East Side home on Morningview St. before Bexar County had passed away before squatters moved in.“The individuals were not able to produce a lease and said that they were just temporarily staying there,” she said. “And so being that we saw the electricity, you know, being over the church’s fence into the vacant home, we issued them no trespassing documents and got them out of the home.”The problem is there are no squatting laws in Texas.
“I think a lot of these depend on the facts, the specific facts. And for how long someone has been staying there,” said Zlotnick.