Want a mansion? Just take one'Luxury squatters' take over vacant houses and declare themselves owners. In Seattle, one family moved into a $3.3 million place.
Posted by Teresa Mears on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 5:47 PM
For years, the 8,000-square-foot mansion in suburban Seattle sat vacant and for sale, the price gradually coming down from $5.8 million to $3.3 million. One day in June, a 30-year-old woman, a man and two children took down the for-sale signs, changed the locks, moved in and declared it their home.
They didn't actually buy the house, or even rent it. They just moved in and declared it their house.
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Jill Lane, who was arrested on a charge of trespassing after two weeks in the house, is not contrite, The Seattle Times' Danny Westneat reports. Not only did she try to take over the mansion, with its wine cellar, home theater, six bedrooms and nine baths, she has staked a claim to 10 other bank-owned houses in the Seattle area.
"Banks do whatever they want and nobody holds them accountable," Lane told Westneat by phone from Disneyland, where she went on vacation after she was released by the police. She and her partner ran a company that pledged to "eliminate mortgages" and help others move into empty foreclosed homes.
"It makes me ill to see what the banks are doing. They aren't using their bailout money to help anyone. So I'm standing up for the people who are being brutalized by banks every day."
And we thought we were making a political statement against the banks by abandoning credit cards and paying cash.
