According to News4Jax, two female squatters and their pit bulls shacked up in a Florida rental property for more than a month, causing nearly $40,000 in damages — and attacking the landlords by flinging a brick and human poop at them, according to reports.
Patti Peeples and Dawn Tiura, co-owners of a rental home in Jacksonville, learned that their investment property had been overtaken by a couple after a handyman was sent to make repairs for a potential sale.
After the handyman discovered a pit bull with roughly a dozen of its puppies basking on the sunroom porch, Peeples headed over only to find that an unwelcome couple had broken into the property,
According to the owners, the women most likely had moved in in March, after a previous tenant had vacated the home.
Fox news reported that that the squatters, claimed to police that they were victims of a Zillow rental scam, purporting that they had signed a lease agreement and paid rent, a security deposit and a pet deposit to a false landlord. However, according to a police report, one of the squatters had recently been evicted in mid-February from a nearby home following a similar claim she had paid a landlord and used the same address as Peeples’ and Tiura’s property.
This has been a 40-plus day process that we have been unable to take repossession of a home that we own by squatters who broke in and inhabited our home and then destroyed it,” Peeples told News4Jax. An irate Peeples called on Gov. Ron DeSantis and other politicians to amend the state law to make it easier for landlords to oust squatters.
Only after giving the squatters the boot did the landlords see how badly the couple had destroyed their home. Among the wreckage were ripped-out cabinets, holes punched in the wall, the washer and dryer were missing, and dog poop was spread through the property.
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