Imagine this scenario: You inherit a home from your parents and put it up for sale. But then, shockingly, you learn that in your absence, squatters have begun living in your house and won’t leave. But then one day you have an opportunity to change the locks and be rid of the freeloading invaders for good, you think.
Only, one of the squatters reports you to the police for doing so — and you get arrested.
Unfortunately for one New York City resident, this scenario isn’t at all hypothetical. In fact, not only did 47-year-old Adele Andaloro end up in cuffs after locking horns with the invading miscreants recently, but she must now worry about their long-term occupation of her home. Why?
Because in NYC, “a person can claim ‘squatter’s rights’ after just 30 days of living at a property,” reports the New York Post.
Moreover, Andaloro is far from alone. In February, for example, the Post wrote about different squatters who lived in a Queens home rent-free for almost four years — and trashed and booby-trapped the residence upon finally departing.
This type of criminality may become more common, too, if a reputed Venezuelan migrant has his way: The individual, TikTok “influencer” Leonel Moreno, has advised illegal aliens to squat in Americans’ homes, stating on social media that, under U.S. law, “if a house is not inhabited, we can seize it,” relates the Daily Mail.
ABC 7 reported Monday on Andaloro’s travails, informing that she
inherited her family’s home in Flushing, Queens after her parents passed away. She was in the process of selling it when she noticed a problem. Someone changed the entire front door and lock of her home.
“I’m really fearful that these people are going to get away with stealing my home,” she said.
She says squatters moved into her home in February and refused to leave.
“By the time someone does their investigation, their work, and their job, it will be over 30 days and this man will still be in my home,” she said.
… When Andaloro recently went to her property, Eyewitness News was there when a woman walked up to the house, unlocked the door, and left. Andaloro decided to enter the property with her daughter and her property deed in hand.
“This is proving everything I said, this is my furniture, these are my curtains,” Andaloro said as she entered the main room of her home.
She didn’t just find her belongings inside the home. She found two people.
“Who are you sir, get out of my house,” she said to one of them sleeping in a bedroom.
Eyewitness News asked one of the men how long he’d been there. He responded by saying, “I moved in two days ago.”
The second man refused to answer questions.
When the men couldn’t provide documentation showing they’d occupied the house for more than 30 days, the police escorted them off the premises. The cops also, however, cautioned Andaloro about changing the locks of her own home.
So her problems were far from over. In fact, it was reportedly no more than 10 minutes after the police left and the locks had been changed that, the New York Post writes,
a man who said he was [leasing] the property — identified … as Brian Rodriguez — returned and barged through the front door.
“You shouldn’t be trying to steal my house,” a furious Andaloro yelled at him during the caught-on-camera ordeal.
Following a flurry of 911 calls, responding cops told Andaloro she had to sort the saga out in housing court because it was considered a “landlord-tenant issue.”
Andaloro was ultimately given an unlawful eviction charge because she had changed the locks and hadn’t provided a new key to the person staying there, the NYPD confirmed to The Post.
She was slapped with a criminal court summons, cops added.
… Andaloro said she is now being forced to start an eviction filing in court to settle the landlord-tenant dispute.
Below is an ABC video of the confrontation, which reportedly occurred February 29.
Though hard to imagine, however, the story gets even worse. The squatters were so brazen that they’d been “doing construction on the house all night long,” the Daily Mail quoted a neighbor, a 24-year-old college student named Kosta, as saying. The paper continues:
“I heard a drill and saw through my window that they were drilling holes into the wall and putting up boards.”
He said one of those boards was placed over the window. Kosta added: “I don’t know if the board is still there, but it looked like they were trying to hide what was inside.”
Many of the residents have lived on the tight-knit block for more than 30 years.
“We all know what they are up to, so we’re all kind of p[****]d about it,” Kosta said.
Since Monday, however, there has been more news. “Vigilantes” showed up Tuesday, but apparently did nothing to eject the invading lowlifes. More effective was the viral national news coverage. For on Wednesday, two of three squatters left the home in “disgrace,” though a third remains. That man, identified by the Mail as Kevin Balletsy, claims he’s on the property legally and wants his “deposit” back.
The aforementioned Rodriguez had been even more brazen, mind you. He’d previously said that he’d leave Andaloro’s home only if “she pays me my money that I put in the house” — or prevails in court.
Oh, and remember the Venezuelan migrant “influencer” who was encouraging squatting? He has 501,000 followers on TikTok and says that his “next business” will likely be “invading abandoned houses.”
So apparently the immigrationists are right after all: Illegals really do just come here for opportunity.
