Ex-Owners Turning Aggressive in Efforts to Resist Leaving

By Derek Kravitz (Contact)

Sunday, May 3, 2009

One former homeowner rigged his front door with coffeepots filled with boiling water. Another left piles of ferret feces. Hidden compartments have been used as living spaces, with people hiding in attics, tool sheds and garages to elude police.

In the D.C. suburbs, a new class of squatter has emerged, as people illegally remain in homes after they have lost them to the bank. Some have become aggressive in their efforts to stay, setting booby traps to ward off police.

"People got in over their heads, and they don't want to leave," said Loudoun County sheriff's Capt. Chuck Wyant, who oversees the department's five-person eviction unit.

The problem seems especially acute outside the Capital Beltway. Initially viewed as an unusual symptom of the economic downturn, squatting has grown into something closer to an epidemic in Loudoun. Court-ordered evictions in the county have more than doubled over the past three years, and a six-month backlog of cases at the Loudoun courthouse is a dire reminder that things might only get worse, Wyant said. A docket at the courthouse has been created for the approximately 2,300 in the county facing evictions.

"It's hit us hard, worse than other counties, because we grew so quickly," he said.

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Squatters in Sterling

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This foreclosure property is located on North Sterling Boulevard in Sterling that had squatters move in and were later arrested. The home was foreclosed on before the squatters took over. (Tracy A. Woodward)

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Stephanie Jackson lives across the street from a foreclosure property on 700 West Maple Avenue, which is reflected in her door. She said she noticed a couple of people were living in the home and just assumed someone had purchased the property. Another neighbor reported the incident. The squatters were later removed by Louduon County Sheriffs. (Tracy A. Woodward)

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Nathan Fisher has lived on West Maple Avenue in Sterling since 1999. He noticed this property across the street from him has been vacant for about a year. The property that had squatter removed from it three weeks ago. Fisher said for the first time his property value was assessed at a lower value this year. (Tracy A. Woodward)

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Squatters were removed from this vacant home located on West Maple Ave. in Sterling. (Tracy A. Woodward)

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The squatters represent two distinct groups: victims of the foreclosure crisis, who have lost homes to the banks and refuse to leave, and homeless people who see in the growing number of vacant houses an opportunity to upgrade their standard of living.

Steve Whetzel has increasingly been dealing with the first group. He runs KNK Home Preservation in Warrenton, a company banks hire to clear out newly foreclosed homes. It was never unusual to find rotting food, broken appliances and less-than-sightly bathrooms left behind by disgruntled residents.

But in recent weeks, Whetzel said, he's responded to cases in which homeowners have threatened to harm themselves or others. About six weeks ago, at a house north of Frederick, a man threatened to kill members of Whetzel's crew, and county SWAT team members were called in. In a case outside Baltimore, a father tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills as he was being evicted. His two children were still inside the house.

"It's definitely intensified," Whetzel said. "Most people know we're coming."

A national survey released last month showing the impact of widespread foreclosures found that an estimated 42 percent of those who have lost their homes in the housing crisis now have no fixed address. People being forced out of foreclosed homes represent a quarter of those facing evictions in Loudoun; the others are renters who have stopped paying their landlords. The number of writ of possession procedures, a civil eviction process that can take months, more than doubled since 2005, from 639 to 1,310 last year.

"All of a sudden, a lot of longtime renters, a lot of families, are being evicted, with little or no notice," said Vickie Koth, executive director of the Good Shepherd Alliance, an Ashburn-based homelessness nonprofit group. "It's overwhelming."

Wyant said calls about squatters aren't just coming from the low- and middle-income neighborhoods of Sterling and Sterling Park anymore. Take the two-story house on West Maple Avenue in middle-class Sterling. It looks simple enough from the outside, but there are signs of trouble.

The front and back yards are unkempt. A rear glass door, which overlooks the city's public golf course, is broken. Beer bottles and old clothing litter the wooden deck. They are indications, neighbors said, that the $430,000, four-bedroom house has turned into a haven for squatters.

"It was sort of weird," said a next-door neighbor, Nicholas J. White. "One day, after it was foreclosed upon, I just saw a lot of people coming and going. You could tell something was up."

Jose Huvy Hernandez, 32, of Ashburn and Bertha Olinda Bonilla, 37, of Sterling, two longtime Loudoun residents — one of whom is believed to be a relative of the home's former owner — were arrested there three weeks ago for allegedly living and partying at the house.

Squatters have become an unlikely but increasingly common nuisance in Loudoun, which is among the wealthiest regions of Northern Virginia.

Loudoun sheriff's deputies have been sent to several multimillion-dollar houses in affluent western Loudoun in recent weeks.

Those trend lines are mirrored in every other Northern Virginia county and across the nation, as once-wealthy communities report a surge in the number of cases of people illegally living in cordoned-off and condemned homes.

In Prince William County, the number of court-ordered evictions has shot up 40 percent since 2006. In nearby Arlington County, the number has increased by 33.5 percent since last year. In Fairfax County, it's up by 13 percent over the past year.

"It's put a lot of extra work on our desks, and it's not an easy job," said Arlington sheriff's Maj. Mike Pinson.

Squatting has long been a barometer of economic health in urban areas. During down times in the District and New York in the 1970s and 1980s, squatting was a way of life for many low-income city dwellers. In some areas hit hard by the spike in foreclosures, including Cleveland, Detroit and Miami, some agencies for the homeless have even resorted to finding abandoned and foreclosed homes to break into.

The majority of those facing eviction in the Washington region are low- and middle-income renters, county social services agencies say. A number of the cases involve families who have lost their homes and struggled to transition into rental units that they also cannot afford.

"People are getting desperate," said Cheryl Tillman, who manages rental assistance programs at the nonprofit Northern Virginia Family Service in Oakton. "Renters have a harder time because their situations, oftentimes, are just so precarious."

Wyant, the Loudoun sheriff's captain, said the desperation has given rise to determined squatters who refuse to leave their homes.

"It's difficult for some of our guys to handle," Wyant said. "But I always tell them, 'You're taking something back from someone that was illegally taken.' "

Tagged: crime, foreclosure, homelessness, Loudoun Sheriff's Office, police, Sterling, Sterling Park

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