[gottorf]

> People unlawfully squat

My understanding of CA tenancy law is that it's so tilted in favor of the tenant, that if someone just claims to be one, the police have to shrug.

> Small wonder people are unhappy with the system and there's a market popping up for extra-judicial evictions

Well-intentioned laws, upon contact with the real world, often end up with undesirable secondary and tertiary consequences such as this.

[thereisnospork]

Broadly agree.

Would probably be much cleaner all around if in such cases the law dictated possession back to the property owner with ~ treble damages/attorney's fees/statutory damages/reversion of possession in the cases where the alleged squatter was lawfully occupying. Basically enough to entice a lawyer to take the case on contingency and make it unequivocally in the favor of a hypothetically wronged tenant, while not allowing squatters to abuse the existing legal process.

[lotsofpulp]

Treble damages don’t matter when the opposing party has nothing to lose. The arbitrage exists because one party has nothing to lose and the other party has a lot to lose.