Your home is where you find peace and where you rest your head at night, but for some homeowners, it can become a nightmare filled with terror and anxiety.
IOL Business spoke to Francesca Lucia, a property developer from Italy who has a number of homes in Cape Town and who has dealt with the agony, turmoil and financial loss that comes with a squatter.
Her story started in 2021 when she found a beautiful run-down four-bedroom house in Vredehoek, Cape Town, that needed a bit of TLC but had all the fine points of a dream guest house.
Lucia was inspired by hostels all around the world and wanted to bring a low-cost high quality guest house to Vredehoek.
A serial entrepreneur she wanted to provide guests with moderately priced rooms for South Africans and international guests in the sought-after suburb.
The house took three to four months to be processed and when she finally received her keys she was devastated to discover that she inherited a squatter from the previous owner.
At first, her real estate agent and the owner said that the guy living in her store room was one of the tenants that lived in the house and had not vacated as yet but he would leave as soon as he found a new living space.
They asked if she was willing to keep him on, in return for free work around the property.
He was from Malawi and had lived on the property for 13 years. He lived rent-free and would do garden work one-day a week in return for free accommodation.
The offer for him to stay was declined by Lucia who had her own plans for the store room and said she wanted to renovate the room as it was in disrepair.
She was concerned about his safety and could not sleep at night knowing that he could die if the building collapsed.
To her dismay, it became clear that he was not going to leave and she had found herself in a precarious situation.
Being from Italy she knew that while she was a permanent resident the law protected the squatter and not the homeowner and that not being a South African meant she had to do everything by the book.
Many friends wanted to help her forcibly remove the squatter but her morals and her fear of government retribution made her want to go through a negotiation process.
“When you come to this country as a visitor, you have a different sort of humbleness and you want to abide by the country’s laws that you live in,” she explained.
What made her even more terrified was that the squatter had a network that would show up at the property. They had access to the property via the squatter and would intimidate her.
“One of the men came to the house one day and said he was ‘packing’ denoting that he carried a gun with him at all times,” she said.
“He would ask if I am intimidating the squatter to leave when in fact I was the one who was intimidated and scared.”
It was almost four months of hell and Lucia said that after contacting lawyers and finding out her rights she was advised that she should offer the squatter a financial incentive to leave.
Lucia offered him initially R12,000 to find a rental property. She hoped that he could use the money to secure a place by paying for his deposit and a few month's worth of rent.
“He declined the offer and one of his friends came to the house and said they want double (R24,000) for him to leave”.
Having spent an extensive amount of money (her life savings) on the deposit for the house, lawyers fees for the transfer costs and still the renovation costs that would ensue, she was in no space to just pay someone R24,000 without just cause.
She was also paying exorbitant fees to her lawyer to deal with this issue, taking into consideration that the law needed to be followed.
Lucia said that all in all she paid around R40,000 just to her lawyer. Luckily the law firm allowed her to pay off her fees over a period of time.
She recounts that during the height of the whole ordeal, the squatter took her to court.
“I was renovating the house during this process and I remember while we were still negotiating him leaving, I received a notice order by the court pinned to my door informing me that I was being sued by my squatter for encroaching on his quality of life.”
“He sued me for the disturbance the renovation had caused to his day-to-day life.”
“Can you believe that audacity,” Lucia exclaimed.
“I realised that I needed to remove him from my life as soon as possible and decided to just acquiesce to his demands. I could see that this was just going to cost me more and more money and I needed to end it as soon as possible or end up being bankrupt”.
After months of negotiations, with him constantly increasing the price, she was forced to give him R38,000 at the end.
In total, the entire ordeal cost her R78,000 with lawyers' costs.
Even recounting this story, you can see that it was extremely traumatic for her and bringing it up again during this interview made her emotional.
“The point of doing this interview is to teach others the impact of having someone squatting,” she explained.
“It was the first time in my life that I needed to seek out medication to help me and my anxiety,” Lucia said.
When asked why she wants to relive this story she said that she hopes someone will learn from her journey.
She hopes that the law can also change to help protect homeowners.
“Hopefully someone will read this article and learn something. I hope some lawmakers will read this and realise that the law has to change.
What the law says
Lucia’s statement on the inadequacies evident in our legal system and the lack of recourse for homeowners is reiterated by Dominic Steyn, an attorney at Cowan-Harper-Madikizela Attorneys.
He said that many owners that face the squatter issue have a long and drawn-out process.
Home owners have to rely on the Prevention of Illegal Eviction From and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act (PIE Act) to evict unlawful occupiers.
He said that this is a lengthy process that can take years and incurs excessive legal costs.
“In the meantime, the owner remains responsible for rates and taxes and the utility services consumed,” Steyn noted.
He argued the PIE Act has not been amended to keep up with syndicates.
Steyn also added that these criminals rely on the Act’s onerous provisions and the inaction, and sometimes collusion, with these syndicates by members of SAPS.
“In our experience, a property owner will be lucky to have the unlawful occupiers evicted within a period of 10 months from the date of the eviction application being instituted, and far longer where there are multiple occupiers,” he said.
He concluded that legal costs for the property owner can easily exceed R800,000, and they are seldom recoverable.
*Lucia has chosen to use a pseudonym out of fear of retaliation.
IOL BUSINESS