The Number of Squatters Nationwide is Rising

These are just people without homes. Not to be confused with the Obama-endorsed Occupy freaks expropriating property for the revolution.

At Los Angeles Times, "Squatters say foreclosed homes beat homeless shelters":

Slips of paper are pasted to the broken door of the corner row house, violations for the garbage piled near the front steps. The stench of trash wafts up the dark interior stairway, where an ashtray filled with cigarette butts sits like an abandoned potted plant on the second-floor landing.

Nobody lives here, at least not officially.

But as you climb the narrow stairs to the top floor, a door opens into an airy apartment that is home to Tasha Glasgow, who is part of a largely invisible population of squatters occupying vacant homes across America. Given their clandestine lives, it's impossible to say how many people are squatting in this country, but with more than 1.3 million homes in foreclosure and hundreds of thousands of people homeless, advocates say it's safe to assume the number is growing.

"You have these abandoned dwellings that are sitting there vacant, sometimes for many months," said Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York, where shelters are reporting record numbers of residents. "It's not an issue of whether squatting is right or wrong. The fact is that people are desperate for places to live, and they're going to do what they need to do."

RTWT.

Thank the Obama-Dems for the Depression-like conditions in this country. Squatting is illegal, but the administration doesn't give a Flying V one way or the other. For example, "Taxpayers Will Pay for President’s Hawaiian Vacation Whether He Goes or Not."