After taking back her property without the help of justice, she had to compensate its illegal occupants for having evicted them.
By Valentin Dechambre for Le Point
Published on
Subscriber-only audio playback
Dsquatters compensated. Settled illegally since July 2021 in a building on rue des Tuileries in Lyon, two young squatters won their case before the administrative court of Lyon. After recovering her property by her own means, Anne Gagneux, the owner of the occupied building, was sentenced by the courts to pay them 2,000 euros each “in compensation for the damage suffered”. The two squatters had attacked the owner, demanding to “return to their home without delay”, as well as a “rehabilitation”, according to Le Figaro.
READ ALSOSquats: the heartbreaking history of the French Triathlon Federation “These squatters carry out commercial activities: mechanic, locksmith, prostitution, drugs… They completely ransacked my building. I find myself with a building in a catastrophic state. I have more than 500,000 euros. It’s all tagged, all rotten, ”lamented Anne Gagneux, with Actu Lyon. In total, about twenty people lived in the building and an above-ground swimming pool had even been illegally installed on the roof.
Eighteen months of squatting
After discovering the squat, the owner had initiated legal proceedings. But the squatters, who will have illegally occupied the premises for eighteen months, obtain the right to stay until the end of the winter break on March 31. Except that, on January 23, the owner, taking advantage of their absence, condemns the entrance by changing the locks.
The two squatters then took legal action for “home invasion”. And the court agreed with them. The law provides that “the fact of forcing a third party to leave the place where he lives without having obtained the assistance of the State […], using maneuvers, threats, assault or coercion, is punished by three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros. On the other hand, the judges did not grant them their case on their request to return to the building.