LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Boycott of Pinter, Recorder

I realize you are of a like mind as the coward of the county and have every right to publish whatever you want. It would be nice if you would ask him to come up with a new subject. Every column for the last 5 years has been Obama great, Thump bad. Just for your info there is a movement afoot to have a date in the future for a mass cancellation of subscriptions and a boycott of your advertisers. I can be contacted at “jrhoward51440@sbcglobal.net”.

Don Howard Porterville

What is squatters rights?

One of the hardest circumstances we face in life is losing someone that we love. What makes this situation even more difficult my family and I found out is when strangers who are not family move into the deceased relative’s home and destroy it, leaving nothing for the next generation to possess, remember or prosper from. That is what happened to my grandma Glenda Callahan’s home at 248 N. Larson Street. Some might ask how could strangers take over a property and destroy it without going to jail for vandalism or traspassing? The answer is simple and yet complex, the strangers claimed a squatter’s right to the property and became bold enough in the presence of law enforcement to proclaim ownership of my deceased grandmother’s residence.

This letter may sound crazy to some as it has to as many as I’ve share this situation with. However, I can assure you this unlawful claim became an ongoing problem that has created a tremendous amount of stress for my elderly mother as she had to sit back basically helpless and witness her mother’s last asset being destroyed by complete strangers. All the while in the midst of this disappointing situation having to comtemplate raising my nephew (her grandson) after his mom and dad (her son) passed away six months between each other in 2020, further causing her stress and financial difficulties amongst other emotional turmoil as one can imagine.

Now making this matter even worse on top of this extreme aggravation, the city needs the house boarded up which will cost even more money that my mother doesn’t have. Just because some strangers decided my grandmother’s home was theirs by using some ridiculous right to land and property that local law enforcement had to adhere to.

So what I hope to do in the purpose of writing this letter is to thank those strangers first of all for the emotional duress and irreplacable damage that they caused my family. Secondly, I’d like to let the citizens of Porterville know that this unfortunate situation could happen to them as well. The circumstance of squatters destroying homes is not an isolated situation and can happen to anyone who fails to know the law and rights of a homeowner. I can assure you my family and I never could imagine that something like this was possible when my grandma Glenda passed away but it did.

Please protect yourself and know your rights. Because unfortunately if you don’t someone may stake claim to your beloved family member’s property, sticking you with the bill and leaving you with tremendous heartache, despair and disgust topped with a lot of helplessness in the presence of a long outdated right like my family. A right that originated to do good in the colonial days to help cut down on vigilante justice and taking advantage of homesteaders. A right that criminals have found a way to distort like all criminal think patterns leading to unlawful behavior. A distortion I clearly understand as an ex-criminal myself serving a life sentence in prison.

It is my hope and prayers that by bringing awareness to this situation that I may help deter this problem from happening to somebody else. Either through awareness of the criminal mindset to hopefully create empathy to your unlawful behavior to the ones we harm or to the law abiding citizen towards the importance of protecting one’s assets from those that should have no rights to them.

Even though it may be too late for my family and with great disappointment I might add to keep my grandmother’s home this same sadness doesn’t have to happen to anybody else. It is hard enough dealing with the grief and loss of your loved ones much less having to watch what they worked so hard in their life to own be destroyed by people who could never appreciate how important my grandmother’s home was to my family. Because if they did they never would have started tearing it up in the first place.