Atlanta’s squatter problem is vexing Wall Street landlords

Atlanta | In the biggest US market for institutional landlords, squatting in vacant rental homes has reached such extremes that owners offer intruders money to leave, and many property managers won’t check on suspect houses alone.

A squatter last northern hemisphere spring shot one of Matt Urbanski’s employees in the leg during a 6.5km car chase through the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia. Urbanski, who runs a home cleaning and construction firm, had been trying to remove the man’s belongings from a house owned by rental industry giant Starwood Capital Group. They got into a scuffle, which escalated into a pursuit and gunfire.

Bloomberg