1070: Squatters | Skeptical Sunday

1070: Squatters | Skeptical Sunday

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with writer and researcher Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday Co-host Nick Pell on the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

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I. Alright guys, I want you to imagine something, you went on vacation for two weeks. Maybe you have a rental property that's been sitting empty for a couple months. When you come home or go buy your rental property to check on a couple minor maintenance issues, you find some schmo living there. This isn't a tenant, it's a squatter.

That is somebody who's just living rent free, but instead of living in your head, maybe with six or seven of their closest friends. The worst part is you can't just call the cops to boot 'em out. No, that would be too simple. In fact, you might have to drop a serious chunk of change to get them outta your house while they continue to live rent free for weeks or even months as the wheels of justice slowly turn.

So how big of an issue is this really? I mean, is this just some total non-issue blown up by the media, or do you really need to worry. Every time you go on vacation or leave a rental property unintended for a couple of weeks. Well, professional Panda Fluffer, Nick Pell is here to help us pop a squat. Did I use that term correctly?

Pop a squat? I'm not sure about that one.

[00:02:06] Nick Pell: Not at all. What's up, Jordan? Do

[00:02:08] Jordan Harbinger: you own any rental properties, by the way? I. I do not normally I would lament something like that, but I'm kind of glad about it. After reading all these articles that you sent me about squatting and I wanna know what the deal is with all this.

So what, first of all, what the heck is squatting? Because up until now, this was something I did in the gym so I can get them cakes. Well, the important

[00:02:27] Nick Pell: part for that is that you go as your grass on every rep. You're just not gonna grow your glutes without hitting proper depth. Noted, I will set up my home gym accordingly.

So basically, squatting in a nutshell is when people find these houses that aren't being rented or in. You know, absolute nightmare scenarios when people go on extended vacations or something and the squatters move in, set up shop and start living there like you and I do in the houses we own or the apartments we live in.

And sometimes they start selling the furniture or whatever's there. Other times they might make moves to start literally taking your home from you, like paying the property tax. Well, that certainly sounds illegal. It does sound illegal and it probably is, but that in five bucks is gonna get you a gallon of gas.

Yeah, well, maybe not where I live, pal. That's what you get for living in California.

[00:03:19] Jordan Harbinger: So for those who don't know, this is my arch, right wing libertarian friend who lives in Florida, but somehow still maintains a thin veneer of sanity. I live in Arizona. Like I say, it's the same thing.

[00:03:32] Nick Pell: We've got better beaches, they just don't have as much water.

But anyway, the issue is that, say you call the cops and this person comes out and they've got a lease that looks all official and water bills and electric bills in their name. Like realistically, what do you expect the cops are gonna do about it?

[00:03:49] Jordan Harbinger: Well, I expect them

[00:03:52] Nick Pell: to throw out fake tenants. Okay, so I'm gonna call the cops and tell 'em that your house is my house and that you're squatting in it.

Do you want them to throw you out on my say so? No. Okay. That now,

[00:04:04] Jordan Harbinger: I suppose you're right, but like it just sounds absolutely crazy that the cops won't do anything

[00:04:10] Nick Pell: about it. How can that be the case? Well, they do something about it. They treat it like a civil matter, and that means you have to go to court and court costs money.

But here's the thing, there's all these misconceptions about squatting floating around right now, and I really wanna put them to rest because I seriously cannot stand fake outrage as I think you know.

[00:04:28] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I agree. That stuff is the worst. I mean, that's social media in a nutshell. People get into all these issues and I'm like, Hey, slow down.

Let's pick this apart a little. And half the time it all, the outrage is nothing more than a headline that some editor at Newsweek pulled out of their ass. So what actually is the law about somebody moving into your house, setting up shop and just calling it their own?

[00:04:51] Nick Pell: Like everything else in America, it's super complicated.

I mean, there's 50 states. There's thousands of counties and municipal governments, and they all have their own laws, so there's not really an easy answer to What does the law say? I mean, obviously the federal government isn't getting involved in this yet.

[00:05:08] Jordan Harbinger: Are there plans for that that we know of?

[00:05:11] Nick Pell: None that I could find, but, you know, give it time.

Right. So the law varies, but how the law responds to it doesn't really, in most places, you know, these squatters are not stupid. They're doing stuff so that when the cops show up, they have some kind of protection. Like, what, what could suffice? Usually they drop a, a fake lease, and once they have that, they can start getting utility bills in their name.

Why? I mean, what? Okay, hear

[00:05:35] Jordan Harbinger: me out here. You're stealing somebody's house. Why not steal the electricity in the water while they're at it? What? Why bother making a fake lease that's not gonna pass muster in court at all? Right? You print it out on some inkjet at Kinko's, but you're paying my electric bills.

It make it make sense.

[00:05:49] Nick Pell: The short version is they have something to show the cops when they, when they show up, when you call them, you know they want something, the cops are gonna check their utilities. Yeah. That's usually how it goes. Hey, we got a report that you're squatting. Well, no I'm not. Here's my lease.

You know, in giant screaming air quotes. 'cause the lease is totally fake, but here's a very real electric bill. And then the cops tell you to take them, take the squatter to court, which that costs a lot of money. Uh, last I checked, lawyers are pretty expensive, right?

[00:06:18] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I used to be one. Technically still am one.

So I know a little bit about that. I mean, I. I shouldn't admit this, but I remember billing a client something like 75 bucks. 'cause I was talking about a case to another attorney while I was taking a piss and it would've been 135. But I didn't wash my hands afterwards.

[00:06:33] Nick Pell: I. Gross, but typical 2007 Jordan, if I'm not mistaken.

That's true. I, yeah. So basically the property owners are then put in this horrible position where in extreme cases they have to spend months and thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars getting these guys out the hard, but super legal way. Uh, sometimes they just offer 'em cash for keys and pay 'em to take a hike.

[00:06:56] Jordan Harbinger: So essentially, I'm willingly getting extorted at that point where it's like, okay, I could get you out. The super legal way, but here's 800 bucks. I never wanna see you and your three dumb friends again, and please move my couch back into the house kind of thing. Yes,

[00:07:10] Nick Pell: exactly.

[00:07:10] Jordan Harbinger: Gosh. Okay, so I have to ask the obvious question.

Actually. There are a lot of obvious questions here, but the one that really stands out is I. How is this all legal? Like I get the idea that you can't just throw a tenant out or shut their utilities off, but that is somebody who is in a house legally who has a lease or a rental agreement and has been paying rent.

In what world does that apply to people who just break into a house and start living there with some crappy lease scribbled on the back of a Chili's napkin?

[00:07:38] Nick Pell: Well, the legal, legal term for this is adverse possession. This doesn't apply to everyone who sets up shop on someone's property. You have to meet some key requirements to have any kind of leg to stand on legally.

First, you need to be living in the place as if it were your own. That means you use the front door, things like that. You're not hiding in somebody's house that's not gonna cut it.

[00:07:59] Jordan Harbinger: Remember that gal that was living in the sign of a grocery store for a year? Did you hear about that one? She just, nobody noticed she was in there.

[00:08:05] Nick Pell: Yeah, I remember that story. That was, of all the stuff I read about before this, that was honestly the most like actual squatting that I heard about. I mean, it's hard to say what's what with any of this, because you just get these little blurbs that focus on the most lurid aspect of the story.

[00:08:22] Jordan Harbinger: So for those of you who do not know about this, some woman in Michigan was living inside of a grocery store sign.

I mean like a big sign on the roof of a big building that's the size of a warehouse. And apparently you could get into the sign. I don't really know how that works, but she had a remote job. I guess she was using wifi or tethering to her phone. She had a standing desk. Good for her. Sitting is bad for you.

She had a Keurig coffee maker, a printer, the whole nine, just on the roof of a random grocery store. And she was there for a long time. This was her home.

[00:08:55] Nick Pell: Yeah. So other than her willingness to drink the abomination, known as Keurig Coffee. Her setup was pretty much like mine when I lived in the middle of the desert.

So this is like bonafide squatting in that she was making improvements and actually living there where it's not like actual squatting is that the property wasn't abandoned. I see. And depending on the state, you might need some kind of legal paperwork that says that you're entitled to be there. Some states you don't even need that.

Some states require a good faith claim. Uh, that's known as the main doctrine, but that's kind of a weird name for it. 'cause it's not the law in Maine anymore. You also have to be improving the structure of land, like the homesteaders in the old West. So, uh, and obviously, you know, government property is off limits.

[00:09:42] Jordan Harbinger: Of course, of course. The government figured out how to protect themselves. I assume this is because of, well, actually it makes sense, right? Because of government housing, it wouldn't make. Any sense at all of people who are given government housing could suddenly claim like, Hey, I've lived here for five years.

This whole building is mine now.

[00:09:58] Nick Pell: Yeah, of course. Uh, the main thing is adverse possession doesn't apply in any of these cases you're reading about in the news. Um, the woman who got arrested for trying to evict squatters or the woman living in a sign. Adverse possession cases take years to build. Weirdly, my home state, Arizona is probably the easiest state to take Adverse possession.

You only need to pay the property tax for like two years, but most places you're talking about the better part of a decade and you need to be making improvements and whatnot.

[00:10:29] Jordan Harbinger: When you lived in the middle of the desert, and I know you kind of still do, but when you were living in the middle, middle, did you just park your trailer in like a plot of land and be like, I guess I'll just stay here.

It doesn't look like anybody else is here.

[00:10:41] Nick Pell: No, I, I owned five acres of land.

[00:10:44] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. You may, you indicated earlier like, ah, when I was just doing, I was living in the middle of nowhere, I thought you just kind of went like, well, it doesn't look like anybody is out here. I'm parking this sucker right here and I'm gonna dig a hole in the back.

I don't know. That's what it sounded like. Okay. That makes sense because I. I figured land out there, the demand can't be that high for land in the middle of the desert in the first place. You might as well own it and have a deed that is not printed up on your inkjet printer, just in case anybody asks. Uh, especially in a place where a lot of gun toting folks are around.

You don't want somebody knocking on your door. I. And telling you that you're on their land at four o'clock in the morning.

[00:11:17] Nick Pell: Alright, so I'm still kinda lost. I would strongly advise you against squatting out where I used to live because of the Yeah. Gun towing maniacs '

[00:11:25] Jordan Harbinger: cause of the guard towers that people build on their property.

You told me about that. People with literal gun towers on their property. Yeah. And the trailer, like, that's not a

[00:11:32] Nick Pell: neighbor you wanna screw with. People have guard towers and a hundred yard markers like. Don't, don't squat where I used to live.

[00:11:38] Jordan Harbinger: That's insane. But also, what's that good fences make good neighbors kind of thing.

You don't have to worry about somebody trespassing too much. I mean, they would be dead by now, so, all right. I'm kind of lost as to how people are squatting and vacation houses and Airbnbs and stuff like that and, and just these unoccupied rental properties. And this is somehow all legal.

[00:11:58] Nick Pell: I mean, the short version is, it's not, it's not legal and it's also a totally different thing from squatting.

Um, it's not even the same law. It's what's known as defrauding an inkeeper. Okay. For, for those

[00:12:10] Jordan Harbinger: who think we are just making this up, explain to us why in 2024 we still have a crime called defrauding an inkeeper, which sounds like something from Game of Thrones.

[00:12:20] Nick Pell: Yeah. So I know it sounds like something out of Harry Potter or whatever, but it's a felony.

It's punishable by jail time. This is the same crime they hit you

[00:12:28] Jordan Harbinger: with when you run out on a restaurant tab. So, alright, how are bros then squatting or not squatting, Airbnbs for Coachella Then.

[00:12:36] Nick Pell: That's theft of services when you do it at a restaurant, but sure, it's, it's basically the same thing. Uh, remember what I said to you earlier, and maybe some of our listeners know all too well, lawyers in courts are expensive, and in many jurisdictions, the cops either don't care or they're too overwhelmed to do anything about it.

And to a certain extent, the cops have to, and I think frankly, should give squatters or whatever you wanna call 'em, the benefit of the doubt. Okay? Why? What do you mean? Well, think of it this way. You're sitting in your own house or your apartment or whatever, and somebody calls the cops and says that you're not legally allowed to be there.

You're a squatter on their property. They want you thrown out. Don't you want the benefit of the doubt so you can stay in your house while everything shakes out? Yeah, absolutely. That does make sense when you frame it that way. Right. So things become super complicated in these cases. 'cause the urban squatters are like getting the heat and the power and the water turned on in their names.

I mean, there's entire websites dedicated to teaching people how to make it extremely hard to throw them out of these homes. So you own a property, you find a squatter, you call the cops, cops show up. The person has a fake lease, they printed up, they have utility bills that maybe they've been paying, maybe they haven't.

But they have utility bills. What exactly are the cops supposed to do? Because at that point. They kind of have to assume that the person is there legitimately, and now you have to go to court to get them out. And that's where it becomes

[00:14:03] Jordan Harbinger: hard, right? Because you have the law on your side. But the process of getting them to actually enforce the law is a whole other thing.

You gotta file papers, you probably gotta hire a lawyer, and at that point. This person is already probably looking for a new place to stay. The second they get wind of the fact that you even know about it, they're just running down the clock and even letting you win by default judgment. They're not fighting you.

They just know that they've got like 90 days before the sheriff shows up.

[00:14:27] Nick Pell: Right. Why do they care? You're trying to get them outta the house. They know you're going to eventually, but they also know it could take weeks or even months to get them evicted. Okay, so they are gaming the system. That's the idea here.

[00:14:39] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's correct. Is this a new thing? People can't have just figured this out recently. This is, it sounds like something that's been going on for a hundred years and is just recently in the news cycle because of some, again, twisted headlines.

[00:14:52] Nick Pell: Squatting is a a very proud American tradition. I mean, think about how the west was settled.

You had all this sparsely populated land. The aid of Americans didn't have. The same concept of ownership as the settlers and the government wanted people living on this land and developing it. So they set up a bunch of rules about what counted as owning it, and there were limits on how much you could own.

You had to be improving the land. They called it homesteading to differentiate it from people just kind of hanging out, you know, on the land. But the basic idea is the same. So more recently than that, you have actual bonafide squatters, kind of like we have now, but it was more of a community thing and it was mostly anarchists, moving to dangerous neighborhoods, stealing utilities, that kind of thing.

They are actually using adverse possession claims. Uh, a friend of mine visited a couple of these squats in Philly and described the occupants as being straight from central casting.

[00:15:49] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. I am so curious what he meant by straight from central casting.

[00:15:53] Nick Pell: You know, Mohawks spiked leather jackets, ass flaps, that kind of thing.

[00:15:57] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Yeah. Ass flaps. What is an ass flap? I know I'm gonna regret asking this question, or at least I think I will.

[00:16:04] Nick Pell: So no word of a lie. These kinds of dudes used to cut T-shirts into these little flaps that they would like hang off the back of their pants and. I think it started as a way to protect their pants from sitting on the pavement and begging for change all day.

I'm not really sure, but it was a fashion statement at a, in a certain circle at a certain time.

[00:16:25] Jordan Harbinger: You gotta be making that up. That's so weird. I.

[00:16:28] Nick Pell: Yeah, I'm totally not making this up. Me and my friends from the nineties hardcore scene joke about it constantly.

[00:16:34] Jordan Harbinger: It's like, how, it's like homeless people fa inspired fashion.

It, it, I guess it does seem better than what I thought it kind of was, which is cutting the ass out of your pants and just having a flap there. I. Like a, you know, those pajamas that people wear in, in cartoons of old where there's buttons and you can unbutton it to go to the bathroom, the little onesies.

Anyway, I don't know how we get on this subject ass flaps.

[00:16:53] Nick Pell: Well, you know, punk pants are expensive. You gotta keep 'em in, in top shape. The, and the irony of punk clothes being expensive is ridiculous. It's a topic for another, uh, another skeptical Sunday, but that's right. Anyway, in, in New York especially, but there were other cities too.

Philly being one of 'em, you had all these buildings that had basically been abandoned by the owners, and so people started living in them. I. The difference between that and what we're talking about today is this wasn't a game of whack-a-mole for these people. They would live there for years. Uh, they usually made very extensive improvements to the property.

And so when Giuliani started cleaning up New York in the late nineties, these people were understandably very, very unhappy when the cops came and threw them out of places that, you know, in some cases they've been living in for a decade or maybe more. There were riots over this.

[00:17:43] Jordan Harbinger: Alright, now it's time for us to pop a squat again.

I'm not sure I used that correctly. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Silver Linings Handbook. If you're into podcasts with real meaningful conversations, check out the Silver Linings Handbook hosted by Jason Blair at Futures Interviews with fascinating people from all walks of life.

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[00:19:50] Jordan Harbinger: If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers and creators and Nick Pell on the show every single week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust.

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So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Skeptical Sunday. Man, it's kind of funny to think about because. I would imagine these people were occupying buildings that were worth jack squat, right? They were abandoned.

The owner didn't even care about it. They didn't maintain it, and then suddenly Giuliani cleans up New York and they're like, this is worth $28 million. This warehouse. Oh, I better go check on that. I think I own that. Why are there 48 people living in here that have built bunk beds and a sound stage? And then they just have to throw everybody out and they're like, what are you talking about?

I've been here for 12 years. You're gonna throw me out. I got no place to go. I've never heard about any of this, but it, it actually sounds like a lot of fun. If you're in your twenties and you don't have maybe a ton of career ambitions, you're just hanging out with a bunch of people in one of the greatest cities in the world, and you've got kind of like your own little anarchist community,

[00:21:22] Nick Pell: well.

Greatest cities in the world. You know, pre Giuliani, New York was pretty rough and tumble. Well,

[00:21:28] Jordan Harbinger: it, it was a little mad maxey. Yeah,

[00:21:30] Nick Pell: for sure. Yeah. I experienced it with my own eyes and it, it was a little mad maxey, but I. You know, we don't have the time to get into it here, but if you're curious, what about that story?

Just Google C Squad, like the letter C in New York City. That was the, that was the biggest one. And you can kind of like go down the rabbit hole from there. I remember reading about this in anarchist punk scenes in the nineties, like profane existence and you know, tell my parents I'm gonna drop outta school and go live off the land in the lower East side.

[00:21:58] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, they must have loved that.

[00:22:00] Nick Pell: Yeah, they definitely did not encourage that plan. Uh, I remember my old man saying to me, you know, you can't do that. Nobody does that. Well, guess what, pop I was. Right.

[00:22:09] Jordan Harbinger: So why are people doing that? I mean, again, I can see how that would appeal to a certain type of sociopathic deadbeat who just wants to take advantage of how slow the system works.

But there, there's gotta be some. Other reason that we're hearing about this is a lot right now.

[00:22:24] Nick Pell: Well, you know, you live in one of the most expensive rental markets in the country. I think you of all people would understand why we're hearing about this right now.

[00:22:32] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, right. There are houses and apartments for rent, and the jobs pay more here because the cost of living is higher.

[00:22:37] Nick Pell: That's the thing though, people talk about the standard of living in America being better because you can get an alarm clock for 10 bucks at Walmart or whatever, but the problem is we're experiencing a massive inflation right now. That doesn't even take into account energy costs and food and housing among other things that people need to live.

These are all things that are clearly more important than being able to get. A 4K big screen for 500 bucks. Won a crappy little cathode rate tube. Used to be a thousand bucks in the seventies, which was obviously, you know, a ton of money back then. I lived in Portland in the late two thousands, and one reason I lived there was it was so ridiculously cheap.

My first apartment was 250 bucks a month. People who lived there since the nineties used to complain constantly about how expensive the city had gotten since they moved there. And I think it was maybe five years or so after I left that my old friends from the city started telling me that they were getting notices that their, you know, rent was tripling or whatever.

[00:23:34] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Tripling. That's crazy.

[00:23:37] Nick Pell: Yeah, I don't remember the exact amount, but as far as I know, Portland's not rent control, that it was more than they could afford anyway. So, I know I

sound

[00:23:45] Jordan Harbinger: like an a-hole saying this, but why not just move to a cheaper city?

[00:23:49] Nick Pell: Well, that's the thing. The cheap cities are becoming few and far between.

The people who are experiencing the biggest issues finding housing, I think it's safe to say, are probably people who don't have some robust skillset that allows them to move clear across the country. And I think, yeah, and in, in many cases, I think a lot of them just refuse to live somewhere as. You know, UNC and day Class A is Topeka or Boise.

[00:24:13] Jordan Harbinger: Uh, poor, poor Boise. I know people expect us to be like Topeka. No, God no.

[00:24:19] Nick Pell: Right, right. Exactly. And Boise's like a really bad example because the red, there's nuts now. Uh, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of tech workers have moved to Boise, but the anecdotes are one thing, but actual statistics are rough. And when you look at the increase in rent, you're looking at an average increase.

Fair Market Ran goes up 13.7% year over year since 1980. Uh, that's according to Door Loop. You can look that up.

[00:24:45] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. We put our sources in the show notes for people.

[00:24:47] Nick Pell: Great. By comparison wages, and this is Harvard Business Review. You know, this is not Jacob and her Mother Jones or some lefty publication.

Harvard Business Review says wages have grown a whopping 0.2% year over year since the early 1970s.

[00:25:04] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yikes. Okay, so why all of a sudden. Is a city like Bozeman, Montana, so expensive. It's not a coastal city. It's not, I can't imagine. It's like Tech Central. I know people who are about to write me emails.

Yes, I'm sure there's a vibrant startup scene, but y'all know what I'm talking about. I.

[00:25:20] Nick Pell: Yeah, Bozeman's a great example of this phenomenon. I call them Silicon Valley colonies, but especially after Covid, there was like 22% of adults moved or knew someone who did or knew someone who did is obviously doing a fair bit of work there.

But you know, so many companies just don't care where people. Live because they don't care if you come into work anymore. So I've worked remote since 2009, but now it's super common, especially in the tech industry. So when all of a sudden little Bozeman, Montana sees its population balloon by 10% in two years.

Um, and I don't know this about Bozeman, but I know it's true. Some other cities, they have zoning laws that preclude quick and easy growth, that massively impacts the supply of available housing as well as what people can pay for it.

[00:26:07] Jordan Harbinger: Ah. So it is seemingly true about us. Californians coming in and just ruining it for everybody else, basically.

[00:26:15] Nick Pell: Yeah, I mean, think about it this way. How is an auto mechanic, which is a decent job by all accounts, how's an auto mechanic supposed to compete with some senior level coder earning a ridiculous salary from a company based in Silicon Valley? But let's get some hard data on this. So it's not just anecdotes and people we're making up.

The average rent in Bozeman went up 20%. Between 2019 and 2022, can you afford a 20% rent increase?

[00:26:41] Jordan Harbinger: Oh gosh. Wow. Even way out in Montana though, that's kind of scary. You know, you come to Silicon Valley, by the way, it's Silicon Valley, silicone Valley is probably someplace in LA and they call it that for a different reason.

Um, but you know, you, you come here going, I'm gonna get ripped off on everything. I'm gonna go to Chipotle and pay $18 for a crappy bowl of beans and rice. Right. But in Montana. I don't know. I kind of have this romantic notion that Michigan and Montana and Ohio still have reasonable prices, and you're not gonna be like, why am I paying this much for a basement apartment with a window that doesn't close and leaks in the winter?

I.

[00:27:15] Nick Pell: Yeah, I mean, I know rents and Grand Rapids have gone nuts. I don't have the numbers. Geez. But yeah, grand Rapids, Bozeman, one city. It's not Austin, it's not Asheville, it's not Portland. It's not any of these cities that have this cache of Oh, I can, you know, take my, take my remote work tech job from a richer coastal city and it's just like San Francisco, but smaller in a fifth of the price.

Yeah,

[00:27:38] Jordan Harbinger: that's fair.

[00:27:38] Nick Pell: Wow.

[00:27:39] Jordan Harbinger: You know, it's Bozeman, it's Grand Rapids. Man, I can see how that could become a big problem pretty quickly because now there's almost no refuge for people that sort of make normal amounts of money.

[00:27:51] Nick Pell: I. Yeah, and to be clear, I'm not justifying squatting. I think property rights are the absolute bedrock of any functioning free society.

People are not gonna have the kind of skin in the game. They need to be functioning, engaged, concerned citizens. If they have to worry about some random Portland anarchists showing up and claiming that, you know, I own your house now, it's just not gonna work.

[00:28:13] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's hard to run a business if I've got a stand on the roof of my house with a rifle to protect my house all day.

First of all, the acoustics are not great for podcasting and the gunshots are really hard to remove and post. But the view That's true.

[00:28:27] Nick Pell: Yeah. The view, so America is, I, I don't know if I'd say we're in a housing crisis 'cause I didn't really research that. But I will say I think it's pretty clear that a lot of people are getting priced out.

Yeah. And. That comes with a lot of dangers. Like I'm not a socialist, but not

[00:28:43] Jordan Harbinger: anymore.

[00:28:44] Nick Pell: That

[00:28:44] Jordan Harbinger: is,

[00:28:45] Nick Pell: ah, you're gonna ruin my reputation. But the point is that having a bunch of people who are only qualified to do low income jobs that now don't even pay enough to rent a decent place to live, is probably more dangerous than the squatters.

I mean, Jordan Peterson love him or hate him. I'm not a huge fan, but one thing I think he really nails is. If you have too many people who lose the game too hard for too long, they just say, screw the game and flip the board over. And that's dangerous.

[00:29:16] Jordan Harbinger: It, it is dangerous. Uh, Scott Galloway says something similar, right?

The, the most dangerous thing in society is an an excess of young men that have nothing to look forward to. I'm paraphrasing. Yes. Badly. But it's it's true. Yes. And I'm big on this too, right? I see a lot of guys that graduate from college and they're like, wow, I will never own a home. A car is super freaking expensive.

I can't find a place to park it for under 500 bucks a month. My salary, unless you work in tech, hasn't grown since 1970. My dad's yelling at me because I don't own a house, a car, a motorcycle, and have three kids already and I'm 25 like he did with his high school diploma or whatever. Right? So it's like they just look at the comparison and they're like, wow, this totally sucks.

Meanwhile, their neighbor works at Meta. Doing something on Facebook and makes $400,000 a year and his wife makes, you know, $400,000 a year and they've got a boat and two homes. It's just, that's not good. That is a recipe for disaster. So, okay. Is the squatting thing though, even a thing, how prevalent is this really?

Because you know as well as I do that just because there've been two or three, or even a dozen articles about this on M-S-N-B-C or Breitbart or whatever. That just does not mean that this is a huge issue. It could just mean it's a slow news cycle and people need a break from Gaza or whatever.

[00:30:35] Nick Pell: I don't think there's really any evidence that this is a massive issue.

I don't think it's coming to your little suburb anytime soon. Pick whatever state you live in. Google it with the word squatters, and what you're gonna find is a lot of articles about what the law is on squatting a few news articles that have these vague, ominous headlines like. Police warned about the threat of squatters.

Here's how to protect yourself. But like there's not gonna be very many stories about squatters, bonafide squatters. They're gonna be very few and far between, and a lot of the horror stories that make the rounds on social media aren't even what they appear to be at first glance.

[00:31:13] Jordan Harbinger: That somehow checks out.

So let's assume that I've got squatters or people overstaying their welcome in my Airbnb or whatever. How do I go about getting these people out?

[00:31:23] Nick Pell: So you probably should call the cops, not legal advice. Uh, if you need to be told that you have worse problems than needing legal advice, but calling the cops creates the paper trail, and there's a good chance you don't expect the cops to get rid of 'em.

That's especially true if they've ever had a legal right to be there. And that's because again, the cops treat this as a civil matter, not a criminal one. And there's only two states that treat it as a criminal matter, and that's Florida and West Virginia. I.

[00:31:53] Jordan Harbinger: How is that working out for them?

[00:31:55] Nick Pell: We'll get to that in a bit.

Uh, the, the thing with the cops is like, no one wants to stick their neck out and be the guy who evicted some legal occupant from their home. So they're, they're just gonna tell you to go to court.

[00:32:05] Jordan Harbinger: Right. And that costs money, yada, yada. And I wanna clarify something really quick. If you come home from Trader Joe's and there's somebody in your house, they're a burglar and or a trespasser, call the cops and don't, you know, they're, they're going to get that person out.

What we're talking about here is you haven't been to your Lake Tahoe vacation rental in four months and your neighbors, you don't know them, and you come and there's people that seemingly live there and they've like been mowing your lawn. Right? Yeah. The whole time. Yes, exactly. And they thought like, oh crap, I didn't realize anybody lived here.

You can still call the cops, and those people might still leave realizing the jig is up, especially if they're like 21 years old. But it becomes squatting when they're like, here's my fake inkjet lease. You know? I wondered why I hadn't gotten electric bill for this place for a while, because they switched it over to their name.

Now you got a real squatter, right? So. Yeah, but getting 'em out with the courts, that is where you start dropping serious ching,

[00:33:00] Nick Pell: right? And the cost is gonna vary from one jurisdiction to the next. So even here in, in the state of Arizona, there's a different procedure and a different timeframe for every county.

But here where I live, you're looking at paying between 600 and 800 bucks to get them out in three to six weeks. And at that point, they very well may have trashed the place

[00:33:18] Jordan Harbinger: six to 800 bucks to get an intruder outta your home. I'm honestly, that doesn't sound too bad. Where do I sign?

[00:33:25] Nick Pell: Well, that's the low end and that's in Arizona where everything is cheap.

So like anything else involving courts and lawyers, it can get expensive real fast. I think that the thinking in Arizona is, you know, we got a lot of seniors snowbirds, so when people go back to Illinois or Alberta or whatever, once it gets to be. 115 degrees out here, you got all kinds of prime real estate sitting around unoccupied.

And because a lot of these people are seniors, they might not know that this is a danger.

[00:33:54] Jordan Harbinger: But again, it sounds like we have a lot of articles warning people about this and very few news stories about it actually happening.

[00:34:02] Nick Pell: So out here, one thing that you do need to be aware of is somebody filing a quick claim deed or starting to pay the property taxes on a place that's where you can get screwed.

But it's pretty specific to Arizona. The downside of living in Arizona, other than you know, it's 115 degrees out half the year. Is that it's also one of the places where you have a lot of people willing to do stuff like that. Why? Why is that? There's no statistics on this, but I'm sure it's even, you know, I'm sure it's even less of a thing than, uh, other types of squatting, but anecdotally, we do have a lot of sovereign citizens out here.

[00:34:40] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay. So those kooks who think they don't have to obey the law because the USA secretly signed a treaty with Morocco in 1779 or whatever. Nonsense. So these folks, and correct me if I'm wrong, they refuse to obey a lot of laws and regulations because their claim, their assertion is that they are not citizens of the United States, but are, as it says in the label.

Sovereign and so they don't need to, I don't know, pay taxes. They don't need valid license plates or documents or whatever am am I getting it

[00:35:08] Nick Pell: right? Yeah, that's, that's pretty much the gist of it. It's anecdotal, but I've met a couple, especially when I lived out in the desert and I have seen, I think two license plates that were self-made, are bought online, that said Republic of Texas not driving, traveling, these bogus self-made license plates.

I mean, it's enough of an issue that I. I do know that the local sheriff's department is trained on how to deescalate interactions with these people. They're generally not threatening or anything like that, but they don't really know how to quit when they're ahead. Uh, I asked a, a sheriff's deputy at my gym about sovereign citizens and he just kind of laughed and I.

Told me a couple stories about dealing with them that were more humorous than anything.

[00:35:53] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. These are the folks where you, you see them on, if you ever watch true crime court cases or something, they say things like, the American flag in this courtroom has a gold frill around the edges, so it's a maritime court, therefore you do not have jurisdiction over me.

Or some like, and the judge is just like, yeah, no, you're going to prison. And then the bailiffs take them out while they're, while they're screaming about how it's illegal and they're like, yeah, whatever. You know what's cheaper than ammunition for your rooftop Gun and placement slash podcast studio define products and services that support this show.

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So, okay, so I know what a quick claim deed is from my property law class in Eon ago, but can you explain this for people who have never heard of it?

[00:38:46] Nick Pell: This is a thing among sovereign citizens. I mean, a thing is like a relative term, but basically they just, they file deeds on the basis of quit claim, which means they're just claiming no one has a right to the property.

And the clerks have to file these as if they're legit, but once they do that, you're gonna be able to get them out eventually. But this is where it gets really expensive. Really time consuming. 'cause once they're filing stuff with the county, the county is absolutely gonna step in and say, hold on a second.

We need to figure out what's what, who actually owns this place.

[00:39:15] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And that's absolutely crazy that somebody can just do this to your property and then you've gotta go, you've gotta jump through all the hoops because somebody who's like insane or has two brain cells just was like, no, I'm a Moroccan citizen so I can own this property because I like it.

[00:39:30] Nick Pell: Yeah, you wanna hear something really crazy about that and about all, all of this is, you know, say you get somebody outta your house, are you allowed to remove their belongings from your home? Again, depends on where you live. In many states, you can't even clear the place out once you're rid of these, you know, unwanted house guests, and if you have a rental property.

That means it could be several months before you're gonna start earning income on it again, as usual.

[00:39:54] Jordan Harbinger: So why aren't there stronger laws against these types of bad faith shenanigans, which is all this seems like it is.

[00:40:01] Nick Pell: I think one reason is forget about not being at the top. It's on the list of priorities.

Uh, the city with the most squatters as of 2024 is Atlanta. That's according to the National Rental Home Council. So I'd say maybe be a little more conservative in estimating numbers because. They might be including people who are, were getting evicted anyway and are just waiting for the sheriff to show up and boot them out.

But anyway, take a guess. Atlanta is a city of about 500,000 people. How many squatters do you think it has? I don't know. Number one, squatting city in America. Half a million people. Uh, I don't know, 10,000. 1400. Okay. Wow. 1400 in a city of 500,000 people, 0.2% of the people are squatting. After that, it's Dallas.

They've got 475 squatters in a city of 1.3 million. Bringing in the bronze is Orlando that's got 125 squatters in a city of 316,000. So this obviously raises the question about the degree to which this is a moral panic and the degree to which this is a serious concern. I.

[00:41:07] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I mean, when you're telling me that a city of 1.3 million has 475 people squatting, that just does not seem like a huge issue.

I don't get me wrong. I, if I'm one of the people whose house is getting squatted, I'd be super pissed. But this is not like a, an epidemic that needs to be addressed immediately by the highest echelons of the government.

[00:41:29] Nick Pell: Right. It's annoying and it's annoying if you're one of the people that are affected, but it's just not a lot of people doing it, at least not in big cities.

Now, out where I live in the Wild West, I've heard about squatters. They tend to be really nasty. So tweakers will take over your home. When you go on vacation, you come home, your pipes are gone, your cop are pipes have been stripped outta your house, and that's anecdotal, but I really don't doubt that it happened.

So. I think in some sense it's easier to ignore in a city than it is out here in the countryside.

[00:41:59] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Tweakers selling your pipes is somehow peak Arizona Desert dweller behavior, present company excluded. But I will say in Detroit there's a lot of, I. Stealing of pipes and abandoned properties. I don't even know if that's a bad thing.

'cause the property's uninhabited and unusable anyways. But you hear about it around here, there'll be a construction site. They'll go put in all the wiring and the piping, and then like over the 4th of July weekend, all that stuff gets ripped out and sold. I. That's not squatting, that's just straight up theft.

Yeah.

[00:42:27] Nick Pell: Yeah. Right. That's burglary. People call the cops about that, but you know, I can see how the impact could be a lot greater in some little desert town, especially like, you know, if it has a reputation like, hey, the cops don't come here, which is definitely true. I used to live like the cops are not coming out unless there's shots fired.

And basically that little area then is like, if it gets that reputation, it's a magnet for squatters. So if you've got a city of 500,000 people and you got 1400 squatters, it's not that big of a deal. You got a city or a town of, you know, 325 people are squatting, that's almost 10% of the population of that town, and it's gonna make people feel really uneasy.

They're gonna be afraid to go on vacation, they're gonna be afraid to shop for groceries. So. You know, people think I'm nuts out there because I used to leave my trailer unlocked all the time, but like if a tweaker wants to break into my fifth wheel, the locks on that thing. We're not gonna stop them.

[00:43:24] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You living alone in a trailer in the middle of the Arizona desert is wild, man. You're like a walking, talking billboard for the Second Amendment at that rate. Well, like my bumper sticker says, who needs a lock when you got a Glock? Does it, it does not surprise me at all that you would have that bumper sticker, but I should know this.

But where would you even buy a bumper sticker like that at the gun range?

[00:43:45] Nick Pell: Uh, gun shows, you know? Yeah. Gun, gun shows. Have you ever been to a gun show? I strongly recommend it because it's like, oh, I, I

[00:43:51] Jordan Harbinger: have, I just didn't, uh uh, I didn't get a good appraisal of the bumper sticker. Offering bumper stickers

[00:43:57] Nick Pell: are the best part.

Man, you thought, you thought Calvin peeing on stuff went away. He's alive and well in America's gun shows.

[00:44:04] Jordan Harbinger: What kind of Glock do you have? Or is that sort of top secret not to be advertised? Uh, I've got a Glock 20. Oh, what is, what is that? I don't know if I know what that is.

[00:44:13] Nick Pell: It's basically a Howitzer that you can hold in your hand.

Okay. So something like 10 states are looking into making, squatting a crime, but like so many things these days. Now it's like, well, I want people outta my house that are there illegally. And it's like, oh, that's a Republican issue. And you know, Democrats respond by taking some stupid contrarian position.

And by the way, I think this works both ways, like on, on a variety of D, different issues. Like I'm a hundred percent not trying to beat up on Democrats at all. I think Republicans absolutely do the same thing on different issues where something becomes a, you know, a quote unquote Democrat issue and.

Republicans take some idiotic contrarian position against it. And the the final, you know, analysis, what ends up happening is nothing. And so that said, I think that both sides of the aisle have some decent points, but mostly I want to highlight the fact that they're pretty solid and compelling reasons to be cautious about changing the law to be harder on squatters.

[00:45:11] Jordan Harbinger: So why, why would we not wanna change the law to be harder on squatters?

[00:45:15] Nick Pell: Well, first of all, I am a, as I think, you know, I'm a big believer in fewer laws rather than more. And if we're gonna change the laws, there has to be a good reason and not just some moral panic because of talkers. State legislatures have limited time.

State governments have limited resources. It does not strike me as a wise use of taxpayer dollars to radically change our laws because the news picked up on this as the conservative outrage of the week.

[00:45:42] Jordan Harbinger: But hear me out. Why shouldn't there be stronger laws against squatting?

[00:45:48] Nick Pell: Look, I am such a believer in property rights.

I think it's, I think it is literally the basis of every other right that we have is, is property rights. Your home is your home, is your home. People who have no right being there shouldn't be there, and I absolutely think that it should be completely legal for you to use any means. Necessary to get them off of your land.

That's in my perfect world where I'm king. But we had a thing out here in Arizona where our overwhelmingly Republican state legislature passed some tough antis squatter legislation and it got vetoed. Katie Holmes, our governor. She's pretty far out on the left for Arizona, which ya hasn't saying much, but her stated reasons for wanting to veto the bill are pretty sound from my perspective.

She framed it as protection for domestic abuse victims.

[00:46:35] Jordan Harbinger: Right. Okay. I actually, I, I understand. I can see this getting weaponized against abuse victims. Like if you got a couple and one of them has their name on the lease for the deed and the other person doesn't, now they can just suddenly get the boot.

[00:46:48] Nick Pell: Right, exactly. And the issue with the law that they wanted to pass in Arizona was that all you needed was an affidavit to get the, the other person up out of the house. And I'm just not okay with making it that easy. For cops to throw people outta their homes. I think there's way more people who are gonna use that in petty arguments with ex-partners or roommates than there are people squatting.

So, fair point. Okay. What should we do here in, in your opinion? I don't think we need to do anything. I'm sure there's some nipping around the edges to tighten up the process, increase penalties that can act as a deterrent or something. But for the most part, it seems to me like barring a few. Really egregious examples that obviously make headlines.

The system works. There's a thing called due process in this country, and if we start throwing that out the window because we feel inconvenienced, it's just, it opens a whole can of worms. I.

[00:47:44] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that tracks. I mean, what are people complaining about? Oh, it takes too long, and that's not an issue with a law as such.

It's an issue with how clogged up our courts are, and you can't really legislate that away, and in fact, tightening up these laws and making them more strict, it could have the unintended consequence of clogging up the courts more. As you see people starting to engage in these frivolous claims of squatters when it's really like their roommate who is a week late with the rent and you don't like him because he smells bad or whatever.

[00:48:13] Nick Pell: Yeah, you need, you absolutely need to think in those terms because this is basically what the law boils down to is answering questions like, do we tolerate more frivolous claims of squatting in the name of getting squatters out, or do we tolerate more squatting because we want to protect people who might be targeted by tougher laws?

And answering these questions is literally the entire project of civilization.

[00:48:36] Jordan Harbinger: It sounds like the hype about this is all just outage. Clickbait is kind of we were hinting at earlier.

[00:48:40] Nick Pell: Yeah. So when a b, C News in New York picks up a story about a woman getting arrested for confronting squatters, it blows up on a slow news day.

'cause people are tired of reading about the election or the warrant Gaza, or the Trump trials or whatever. I.

[00:48:53] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so I, I did hear about that. What exactly happened there? Why did this woman get arrested? She did something like the, it was her house. So why did she get arrested?

[00:49:02] Nick Pell: Unlawful eviction. She changed the locks.

[00:49:05] Jordan Harbinger: You're not

[00:49:05] Nick Pell: allowed to do

[00:49:05] Jordan Harbinger: that. Okay. She changed the locks and, and even though they were squatting, she changed the locks, so, okay, I get it. That's the constructive eviction right there.

[00:49:12] Nick Pell: I think that, if I recall correctly, they weren't squatting, they overstayed their lease. Uh, oh. I, I think, but I, I could be wrong about that.

Like, but either way, like. Yeah, you can't just change the locks. I mean, I get it on one level, it's totally insane. But for the reasons we've talked about, I'm not really hearing any convincing reasons for why you should be able to just change the locks on the door when there's people living there who don't have the keys to the new locks.

[00:49:38] Jordan Harbinger: I. That's true. So I've heard a bit about this happening at people's Airbnbs. Like someone will check in and then they refuse to check out and stay there forever, and then the person has to get them evicted. And how, how common is that? Because that seems ridiculous, but I can imagine it, it's gotta happen at some point.

There's gotta be people who've figured out they can abuse this.

[00:49:57] Nick Pell: I looked high and low for stats on this and I couldn't find any hard data, but given what I've learned about squatting in general, I, I'm guessing it's pretty rare.

[00:50:05] Jordan Harbinger: Do you remember the story about that lady who was living in this like super high-end luxury house for two years or something?

She probably rented it for a couple weeks and, and just wouldn't, wouldn't leave. I.

[00:50:15] Nick Pell: Yes, yes. In fact, I read about it again when I was researching for the podcast. But here's the thing though, this has zero to do with laws about squatting. I mean, absolutely nothing at all. This was a huge court battle over whether or not she had paid him rent, and they had a long-term lease.

She claimed that they came to an agreement for a long-term lease, and she paid it. What's the truth? Who knows? But it's a great example of how the media seizes on these stories and makes them into something that they're not and makes this huge moral panic around squatting. Man, I'm not like. Super into conspiracy theories here, but like, oh, well,

[00:50:52] Jordan Harbinger: I, I, yes you are.

Yes you are.

[00:50:56] Nick Pell: I'm really not, but I will say this. If I were Airbnb, I would love these stories about squatting because they take the heat off Airbnb getting blamed for the housing crisis. Which I think is also a false narrative that often gets brought up with squatting.

[00:51:10] Jordan Harbinger: I concede that there's an issue of affordable housing in America, but does it have anything to do with Airbnb?

I'm always getting these emails like, this company is ruining everything, and I'm like, is it really that or is it just like a symptom of a greater issue that's not gonna be solved by not letting people rent out their spare bedroom?

[00:51:27] Nick Pell: Look, it's like every other problem. It's super complex. People want easy answers.

People want a simple villain to point to. It's, it's not, uh, it does not have an easy answer. It involves the housing market, supply, private equity firms, zoning laws, supply chain issues, and yes, immigration. It doesn't matter if we're talking about California moving to Texas, or people moving from one country to another.

Uh, Airbnb is not the reason your rent went up. It is a very complex problem.

[00:51:56] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, we could probably do a whole episode on that. But anyway, back to this lady who occupied that large home. Wasn't she kind of using some Covid era laws against the landlord or something? Remember, remember when it was basically impossible to evict somebody because of Covid?

I.

[00:52:10] Nick Pell: I didn't see anything about Covid in the articles that I read. Uh, there actually, there were some articles that said she didn't wanna leave because she was afraid of Covid, but I didn't see any direct quotes from her about that. So who knows? But the Covid thing is great to talk about because it's another example of people conflating things with squatting that have absolutely nothing to do with squatting.

People who were staying in apartments for years without paying rent during Covid were not squatters. They were people who were leveraging covid laws. About eviction against their landlords. I'm not saying it's good, I don't think that it is, but it's not squatting. If you have an issue with people who abuse the system during Covid, your issue is with Covid Madness.

It's not

[00:52:53] Jordan Harbinger: with squatting. So talk to me about these online squatting guides. I've heard them come up in some of the news articles in general discourse around squatting. I mean, is there, is there really like somebody out there who's like, I will teach you to squat on other people's properties. That's. Crazy.

I know there's one on TikTok. Every trending evil seems to come from TikTok originally.

[00:53:13] Nick Pell: Yeah. Like the guy's getting perms again. Trend.

[00:53:15] Jordan Harbinger: No, our guys getting perms again. Say it ain't so. That is awful. That's awful. I can

[00:53:20] Nick Pell: definitely tell that you have not been to a gym after the local high school. Lets out anytime soon.

No.

[00:53:26] Jordan Harbinger: Oh man. Broccoli head. That's what's going on. Yeah,

[00:53:29] Nick Pell: I'm not, not a fan of it. But it's what the kids are doing. So yeah, there's this guy on TikTok. Uh, he's a Venezuelan migrant influencer, which is a migrant influencer is apparently a thing. But he was teaching people how to squat and that's unfortunate.

I don't really believe in shutting people down for legal speech. And the guy, he's a bastard for spreading the info, but speech of speech, he has every right to do. So I don't think that this is a genie that's gonna get. Uh, put back in the bottle. So again, the question is, should I care about this? Uh, as far as I could tell the answer was no.

This just is not an issue deserving of the press attention it's gotten.

[00:54:09] Jordan Harbinger: So how do you even begin talking about this with somebody who's convinced that houses are being squatted all over the place and that this is some huge issue?

[00:54:17] Nick Pell: Well, first of all, ask 'em if they live in New York. Because so many of these horror stories come from New York, which notoriously has some of the weakest property rights protections in the country.

Other than that, I don't know. I don't think people are really convinced by facts and logic, sadly. Um, I think you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make 'em drink.

[00:54:37] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Amen. I mean, leading a horse to water is basically my secondary show tagline at this point.

[00:54:42] Nick Pell: Obviously I, I think your listeners are a little more sophisticated than that and they're probably listening to this because they want some truth.

[00:54:49] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Well, nice save, and I'm glad that we, we don't actually have to worry about this. My plans for a Rooftop Studio slash Gun nest. We're starting to get costly real quick. So thank you Nick, for putting our fears to rest on this one, and thanks everyone for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday toJordan@jordanharbinger.com.

Show notes@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. I am at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram, and you can connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Thanks to Nick Pell for joining me today. This show is created in association with Podcast one.

My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. I forgot what a quick claim deed was, so you don't wanna hire me for anything, do your own research before implementing things that you hear on the show.

Also, we may get a few things wrong here and there, especially on Skeptical Sunday, and if you think we really dropped the ball on something, definitely let us know. We're usually pretty receptive to that. And you all know how to reach me, jordan@jordanharbinger.com. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

Share the show with those you love. And if you found the episode useful, definitely share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. Maybe somebody who thinks that squatting is the next epidemic and we're not gonna have homes in five years.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with an undercover a TF agent that infiltrated the infamous Pagans biker gang.

[00:56:21] Clip: Everyone was saying, Hey. Motorcycle enthusiasts.

Bikers are all bad. So they did this whole study and basically had a study. It came back and said, Hey, listen, 99% of 'em aren't, you know, 1% of these bikers might be problematic or gang members or what have you, but the rest aren't. Well, then the bikers, the real bikers, the outlaw bikers we're like, Hey, this is great.

We are the 1%. We're proud of being the 1%. I mean, you know, people think that these are just a bunch of morons running around partying, and they're not. They're very sophisticated in how they move their money. They're very sophisticated in their structure, and they're also very sophisticated in what they do.

People are always like, oh, whatever made you decide to do a two year undercover. Listen, I didn't sign up for a two year undercover deal. That's just what it turned into. Very few of these run for two years. You're always kind of just seeing how it's going to play out, and that's where, you know, some of this dumb luck comes into it.

They assign me to this hit squad inside the game. Most of the gang members don't even know that this group exists, but it's selected by mother club members of what they consider to be their heavy hitters. You know, the ones that can do the real down dirty work. And so Hellboy, he had approached me. He's like, Hey, they want you to be a part of this.

We were gonna be targeting Hell's Angels and we were gonna be killing them. You have to be very quick in thinking the reason why to go undercover is from the outside you can deal with, you know, maybe some low level members. You're never getting anywhere near the leadership. The only way to do that is to go undercover in the club and go up into the ranks.

I would've failed if I didn't have some dumb luck on my side and I had, I. Plenty of dumb luck throughout this case

[00:57:53] Jordan Harbinger: to hear how Ken Crow spent two years risking his life going through initiation in one of the most ruthless biker gangs in the world. Check out episode 6 73 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.