California has failed to protect private property from squatters. Desperate owners are turning to katana-wielding enforcers to reclaim their homes.

Christian Britschgi | 5.18.2026

"We're probably not going to use grenades on this one, right? Because I got 'em."

James Jacobs had hired a motley crew of toughs online to help him clear squatters out of an Oakland, California, apartment building. None of the hired muscle accept the offer of smoke grenades. They intend to complete this job with the baseball bats and firearms they brought from home.

"All right, let's do this," says Jacobs. He grabs his katana and sets off in his long black leather jacket toward the apartment. His improvised militia follows single-file behind him. Half a minute later, they confidently walk through the front door of a two-story building off of Oakland's busy International Boulevard.

From across the street, I watch them enter and wait anxiously for the sound of gunshots.

It was another battle in California's low-burning turf war between the squatters who invade homes and the enforcers hired to reclaim them.

Across the Golden State, uninvited occupants have taken over countless residential properties and then refused to vacate. Homes undergoing renovations, vacant rental units, and even whole apartment buildings have fallen prey to squatters. Once they move in squatters are very difficult to dislodge. The legal process to remove them is expensive and can take months or years.

In their desperation, owners are increasingly turning to a rising crop of private rights enforcers to solve the problem. That includes Jacobs and his company, ASAP Squatter Removal.

Jacobs claims to have developed a long list of tools and tactics that enable him to remove squatters far faster than the court system, all while staying within the bounds of the law. Chief among them is a weapon he carries on every job: a katana, a curved Japanese sword that's more synonymous with samurai warriors than clearing squatters.

"In most industries, swords just don't make any damn sense," Jacobs says. "In this particular one, it actually does." The lightly regulated katana, he explains, is an ideal weapon for indoor self-defense and intimidation.

It's also an ingenious marketing ploy in the competitive world of squatter removal services. Jacobs' company has received a healthy amount of media attention from local and international outlets that never fail to mention his sword in the headline.

According to Jacobs, his company has had a near-perfect success rate of removing squatters.

If they were Jacobs' only adversary, his katana might be the only weapon he needs. But ASAP Squatter Removal is engaged in a two-front war. His main competition comes from law enforcement agencies that are none too keen on ceding their monopoly on the use of force to people like Jacobs.

Every job that ASAP Squatter Removal performs requires it to dodge criminal charges. The company has had only mixed success on the latter front. In January, Jacobs and two associates were charged with a long list of felonies stemming from one of their jobs.

The legal and physical risks inherent in anti-squatter work are why California's landlords have called for more systemic reforms that would make Jacobs' business obsolete.

But with reforms stalled in the state legislature, many property owners feel they have no choice but to turn to gray market services and the unique set of characters, with a very particular set of skills, willing to take on this dangerous work.

On the streets, it's samurai versus squatters.
Why Won't California Police Remove Squatters? 'It's a Civil Matter.'

Though aggregate numbers are hard to come by, squatting appears to be on the rise in California. The state's housing cost crisis has helped produce the nation's largest population of homeless and housing-insecure people—many of whom are willing to take on the risks of squatting.

High home prices and an arduous eviction system have also helped make squatting a lucrative scam. Owners will often pay squatters exorbitant sums in "cash-for-keys" agreements to reclaim their valuable real estate.

Meanwhile, property owners who call the police about a squatting situation will receive a near-universal response from law enforcement: "It's a civil matter," meaning, "It's not our problem."

Responding officers often feel they lack the competence to tell on the spot whether someone is an illegal squatter or a lawful occupant. They are thus eager to avoid the legal liability that would come from charging a lawful occupant with a misdemeanor trespassing offense.

Police "have been told in training: If somebody says, 'I live here,' leave them alone. Why risk the lawsuit of removing somebody from a house that they may lawfully occupy?" says Sidharda Lakireddy, who manages a few hundred units in the Bay Area and has dealt with multiple squatting situations.

Even in seemingly clear-cut cases, the first instinct of many police officers is to avoid getting involved.

Devlin Creighton tells the story of a squatter who moved into a rental unit he owns in San Jose just a few hours after he managed to convince the previous squatting occupant to leave in a cash-for-keys arrangement.

When the police showed up at the property, they initially told Creighton he'd have to follow the months-long civil eviction process to get his squatter out.

"I'm like, 'She's not going to live here for three months for free. She got here today!'" Creighton recalls telling the officers. "The police, these new guys, were like, 'Well, you know, it's not our job. We're crime. This is civil.'"

Fortunately for Creighton, a more seasoned police sergeant soon arrived who was more willing to hear his side of the story. Creighton's new squatter couldn't answer the sergeant's basic questions, such as "What is your address?" and "When's trash day?" So he forced her to leave. But if the sergeant hadn't been willing to hear Creighton out, the property owner would have had no choice but to go to civil court.

Having to go through a court process to remove a squatter isn't inherently unreasonable. Most states treat squatting as a civil matter to be handled by the courts. California's civil courts move slowly, however. The civil eviction process also enables squatters to claim a long list of procedural rights granted to legal tenants (which they are not) that can stretch a case out for months or longer.

Some lawyers openly sell themselves to potential clients based on their ability to stretch out the eviction process in court. "When it comes to you, the landlord is not stepping on a cockroach; he is stepping on a landmine," reads one eviction defense attorney's website which claims that fighting an eviction in court can prolong one's occupancy for years. "All during the [civil eviction process], you are paying no rent," it says.

The experience some landlords have removing squatters shows this landmine claim is not a bluff.
How Long Does It Take to Remove a Squatter in California?

Zachary, a landlord who owns seven units in the Los Angeles area and who asked only to be referred to by his first name because he fears retaliation from squatters, learned just how lengthy and expensive the civil court process can be when a longtime tenant died in January 2025.

When Zachary went to reclaim the unit, he found four strangers already inside.

"They definitely looked disheveled," he says. "They were people who lived out of suitcases. Their clothes weren't well-kept."

The men showed Zachary a letter claiming they were subtenants of the deceased. They claimed they had a legal right to take over the unit after that person's death.

Zachary's lease with his deceased tenant explicitly forbade subletting, making this claim a legal nonstarter. But when the squatters refused to leave and police refused to eject them, Zachary was forced to file for an eviction in Superior Court of Los Angeles County in February 2025.

Zachary describes the following months as a nightmare. In response to his eviction filing, the new occupants of his home countersued him. They produced phony documents purporting to show they were legal tenants being harassed after they raised habitability issues with the unit. While Zachary waited for a court hearing on the case, his squatters also allegedly moved in several more occupants who proceeded to trash his units, do drugs on the property, and menace his legitimate tenants—some of whom moved out.

The squatters also demanded $50,000 in compensation for the emotional and financial toll that Zachary's "illegal" eviction efforts had caused them.

When a hearing on Zachary's eviction complaint and his squatters' counterclaims was finally held in late March 2025, the judge ruled in his favor in a matter of minutes. Through appeals and hardship claims, however, the squatters managed to delay their actual eviction for another two months.

When Zachary finally reclaimed the apartment in late May, "It was really in disarray. They had left needles and rotting food. They had a cat that had made a mess in there. It was really a terrible scene."

After they'd left, Zachary found out more about who his squatters were. In the papers of his deceased tenant, there was a request for a restraining order against the squatters. That request described how his former tenant had met the squatters on a dating app and agreed to let them stay in his spare bedroom for a week when they claimed to have nowhere else to go.

When his former tenant finally asked them to leave, the document said, they blackmailed him: The squatters said they'd accuse him of rape if he called the cops to kick them out.

Per the restraining order statement, Zachary's former tenant did eventually call the cops on the squatters. The police did not believe their claims of being raped, but they also told Zachary's former tenant that they couldn't remove the squatters without a court order. An officer encouraged the former tenant to file for a restraining order instead.

California's tenants' rights advocates, who uniformly oppose any efforts to expedite the removal of squatters, would describe Zachary's experience as an example of the system working as intended: A property dispute was raised, and after a few months of process, the legal owner was able to reclaim his unit.

But during the time it took for that process to play out, the squatters were able to exploit procedural protections designed to safeguard tenants' rights to menace actual tenants and destroy Zachary's property.

Zachary estimates he spent $14,000 on fees to lawyers and to Squatter Squad, a Los Angeles–based outfit that handled direct negotiations with the squatters, served them legal documents, and helped secure the unit when it was finally vacated. He had to pay another $43,000 to fix the damage the squatters had done to the unit. He also lost rent on both the squatter-occupied unit and on those neighboring units that were vacated because of the squatters' disruption.

Given the costs and ordeal, it's unsurprising other property owners in desperate situations would turn to solutions outside of the court system, such as katana-wielding men in black leather coats.
How James Jacobs Became a Squatter Removal Enforcer and more @

https://reason.com/2026/05/18/samurai-vs-squatters-i-rode-along-with-the-armed-enforcers-handling-californias-squatter-crisis/