Here is a Great Article in a recent edition of the Backwoods Home Magazine. It is
a Great Article and is entitled:
' Living The Outlaw Life' ' Squatter: Living In The Woods Like It Was Nobody's Business '
The Link is:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe0211.html
This is an excellent article and is spot on in its timing. The increasing numbers of evictions and foreclosures have put countless thousands in positions such as the gentleman described in this article. The portion of the article which caught my eye was this:
I got to wondering whether a squatter’s life could be combined with that other dream life of impoverished rural wannabes, caretaking. Would timberland owners—who are plagued by illegal dumping, theft of wood, and other unauthorized and sometimes dangerous activities—be willing to trade space on their lands in exchange for “watchdog” services on the part of someone like Davie?
I cannot speak for timberland owners but they are really no different from other owners of large tracts of land. Many factors come into play when one owns a large piece of unoccupied property. Improvements of any kind are always subject to vandalism and theft. If one puts in electrical service to provide power for some use the high price of copper makes the improvement subject to theft. Additionally, the construction of any buildings may result in the landowner one day visiting a burned out area where his improvement was destroyed by roving vandals.
The most aggravating and dangerous threat to owners of remote land is idiot conceived legislation related to confiscation of property by local authorities associated with the discovery of marijuana or other drug activity on the property. It is common for those raising marijuana to plant their crops on adjoining or remote properties to prevent the potential of police presence on their own property with eventual confiscation of their personal property (real estate). The result is that non present land owners can easily lose their property to local authorities because some SOB has planted a crop on the property without the land owner’s knowledge. The sagging economy has caused a spike in the number of enterprising dope farmers seeking remote lands for the production of their income. Consequently it is now necessary to patrol your remote properties on a regular basis to intervene in these activities. The land owner (present or non present) has to police his own property because failure to do so may lead to forfeiture of the property to the real police if they discover a plot of “left handed tobacco” on his land.
It is a sad situation that could possibly be mitigated by a continually present and active squatter.
