The owners fight to recover their property

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Thursday, July 31, police intervened in a house in Dijon (Côte-d’Or). The police come to notify a man a formal notice. He has seven days to leave thedwelling that he has been occupying illegally for almost three weeks. A relief for Sylvie Edouard. With her brother, she is the owner of the house. They inherited it on the death of their parents. They do not inhabit it and had to sell it. It was the neighbors who warned them that the house was squatted.

“It is something that takes me in the guts because it is my parents’ house, it is a house to which we are very attached. All my mom’s affairs are inside, there is still her clothes in the cupboard. I am revolted to know that this person is inside in all illegality”she deplores.

With the knowledge of the owners, the locks of the house were changed and their electricity contract terminated. The French Televisions teams tried to meet the illegal occupier. He presents himself as a father of three young children and claims to be a victim of a scam. The house, he says he found it on a classified ads site. He called the number at the bottom of the offer. “I come across a guy, who offers a small house for rent. He gives me the keys and I come back. I gave him a deposit of 3000 euros and then he said to me: ‘In a week I am preparing the lease’. Three weeks after the number no longer works”explains the man. And add: “I paid money. The electricity water bill is in my name. I feel at home.”

After the intervention of a justice commissioner to note the squat and the complaint of the owners, the prefecture decided to formal notice the illegal occupier. If he does not start from himself, in seven days, the police will proceed to his evacuation by force.