If you built a house in a remote part of Canada or USA could you do so without anyone noticing? IE could you squat on government or private land in the middle of nowhere for any significant amount of time?
I’m not too concerned with the feasibility of building the house just curious about how soon or if you’d ever be detected.
My FIL owns a useless chunk of land covered in ash on the side of Mt. Shasta. He goes up there about every 3 years just to look around. In the interim, he has no clue who might be there.
I imagine there are deserts and other remote locations where you could go undetected for much longer than that.
Define “remote.” Some land is still available for posession upon homesteading IIRC.
I didn’t know there was still land available to homestead.
I meant remote as in not too near major roads or roads with significant traffic. Maybe even in an area without passable lanes.
There is the doctrine of “Adverse Possession.” I’m not sure how it works exactly, but the short version I understand is that if one can show that they have lived on a property for ten years, they can petition to take it from the nominal landlord.
There’s actually an adverse possession case locally on the site of one of the Ginna nuclear plant that’s been recently decided against the petitioner. (Which is how I came to learn of the doctrine.)
This goes back to the early 1970s, but someone I know went from the US into British Columbia in Canada to homestead. It was legal at that time. It turns out it was a lot more difficult to be a subsistence farmer than *Mother Earth News * made it appear, and he ended up trying to get a job in Canada. He lacked the proper documents for working as an alien and was deported back to the US. Crossing the border into Alaska the customs agents found the one crop he had been successful in raising, and they confiscated his Jeep and all its contents. Damn hippies.
I am by no means an expert on this but a friend of mine in British Columbia (Canada) has placed mining claims for a laughably small amount (under $50) on certain streams and areas. He does use them for placer mining, but his actual motivation is to have and use land for a rediculously long time (the leases can be up to 99 yrs). There are restrictions on what can be done (no "Permanent"structures (ie on a foundation), and he must respect environmental considerations.
Regards
FML
Just staying on the property isn’t enough - the common law doctrine is that your occupancy must be
- Open & Notorious (such that it would be visible to reasonably observant owner)
- Hostile to the Owner’s interest
- Exclusive (you’re not there with the owner)
- continuous (you live there full time for the statutory period, or to the fullest extent that is typical use of that land)
Some places, like NYC make it harder to achieve Adverse Possession, but that is the basic set of rules.
“Hostile” includes “without permission.”
California also requires the potential adverse possessor to pay all property taxes during the period of possession, and the applicable period is 5 years.
In my home region (northern Ontario, Canada), you can certainly go out into the middle of the boreal forest and just hang out. In fact, you could probably do it within a short walk of a highway and not be noticed. There are cities separated by hundreds of kilometres and joined only by a two-lane highway and/or railroad. Along much of the length of the road, you can walk a hundred metres out into the forest and be more or less lost to society.
As I recall, squatting on ‘crown land’ – land owned by nobody, or the queen, I guess – is allowed for up to about 22 days in Ontario. From the Government of Ontario:
With a little searching, I found the list of crown land management directives, and the specific directive (PDF file) that addresses this issue. It says:
So, yeah. In Ontario, unless specifically restricted, you can take up residence for 21 days. You can obtain ‘occupational authority’ for a longer period, it would seem – the forms of this are listed on page one of the linked document.
It probably is harder to go undetected than in the past—in the U.S. at least. Population growth aside, IIRC the preferred method of growing weed is to do so on a vast public preserve, so the govt can’t seize personal land and assets. I’ve seen on TV where officials hide cameras and wait to see who comes out for cultivation and harvest, however. Then they wait and catch them individually, in town, where they aren’t an armed group.
My sister and her husband live on an island that is Crown land, in the NWT in Canada. As far as I know, it was originally a squatter’s shack on the island, and they built an actual house there. They do not pay property taxes. I guess you could call them squatters.
They’ve been on that same piece of land for ten years and nobody’s bothered them about it.
I was unaware the federeal law had run out entirely, but I vaguely recall some states which alloewd it because they had esentially worthless wasteland no one wanted. It was almost free for the taking or somesuch.
There is some seriously remote land in many parts of the U.S. and, especially northern Canada and Alaska. Even Maine, on the East Coast, has some land you could build on without anyone noticing. There are something like 6000 islands off the coast of Maine and while some of them are inhabited, most are not. You could build a house on some of them without anyone noticing although bringing in the supplies on a small boat might be hard unless it is just a simple cabin. Even if people saw it, I have no idea why they would think something is wrong. The desert southwest would be easy to build something in the middle of it but I have no idea how you would survive there without exotic transportation like a small plane and that is still a problem in lots of ways.
People in Alaska build remote cabins like crazy but they aren’t meant to be permanent shelter but I guess they could be for a die-hard types. If you had a ton of money you could have Bush pilots deliver supplies. It seems like every other person in Alaska has a pilot’s license because that is the only way to travel around the state fully. Alaska is underpopulated and it is over twice the size of Texas. Open land is extremely vast so no one is going to care with a small cabin. Pilots need those types of cabins to store fuel, food, and supplies when they have to land for whatever reason. It would be like a frigid version of Gilligan’s island except people like the Mosquito rock band is less likely to just show up.
In the American West, we call those lands national parks, national forests and other federal lands, because at the time they had no economic, exploitive benefit for business.
Times have changed.
Gradual elimination of Squatter’s rights in Ontario:
Ontario uses both the older land registry system, under which squatter’s rights (adverse occupation / adverse possession) exist, and the newer land titles system, under which title is absolute such that squatter’s rights do not exist. Land Titles Act s.51.
Ontario counties/districts are gradually converting all their property registrations into electronic form. When something is registered in electronic form concerning a property (e.g. electronic registration of a title transfer or a mortgage), the property is administratively brought over into the land titles system. Beyond this, Ontario counties/districts are gradually converting their existing registrations into electronic form, including bringing the existing registrations into the land titles system. This means that in the next few years all property in Ontario will be under the land titles system. Squatter’s rights in Ontario will soon be a thing of the past.
Private land in Ontario not registered under the land titles system:
In Ontario, for privately owned land not registered under the land titles system, squatter’s rights kick in after ten years. Land Titles Act, s. 4.
Crown (gubm’nt) land in Ontario not registered under the land titles system:
In Ontario, squatter’s rights do not apply to Crown land that is vacant, waste, or road allowance. In other words, you can never claim squatter’s rights for that camp you have on Crown land up on Trout Lake. Land Titles Act s.16.
If, however, the land is owned by the Crown but is developed and is not registered in the land titles system, then squatter’s rights kick in after 60 years. Land Titles Act, s.3.
Tests for adverse occupation/ adverse possession / squatter’s rights in Ontario:
In Canada, the test for squatter’s rights is:
- Had actual possession;
- Had the intention of excluding the true owner from possession; and
- Effectively excluded the true owner from possession.
Madison Investments Ltd. v. Ham (1984), 45 O.R. (2d) 563 (Ont. C.A.); leave to appeal refused (26 July 1984), S.C.C. No. 18799.
However, in Ontario, adverse possession is not a mechanism whereby someone can convert to his or her own use property belonging to his or her neighbour through fraudulent, wilful and represensible conduct. Lehal v. Murray, [2001] O.J. No 4861 Ont. Sup. Ct.; affirmed [2002] O.J. No 4443 Ont. C.A.
As set out above, property registered under the land titles system is not subject to squatter’s rights. Land Titles Act s.51.
Interesting thread. Many years ago, my uncle bought a parcel of land, in Sandwich, MA. It was a lot which was adjacent to a small tidal river, probably it was used as a woodlot. At any rate, there was an old squatter’s cabin on the land-whoever had lived in it had kept the cabin quite tidy-it contained a single bed, and basic kitchen, with a hand operated water pump. As I recall, there was still useful stuff inside-I remember seeing a cast iron skillet, and a few very old cans of beans. According to the man who sold my uncle the land, the cabin had been lived in up until the early 1950’s. I always wondered about who had lived there and why. As others have said, you could probably build a shack in a remote area, and never be bothered by anyone. The problem is, unless you are a confirmed hermit, it is probably a very lonely life. I have hiked in remote forested areas of New England, and frequently you will come across an old cellar hole in the woods-it is kind of sad to see a place where people once lived, and now abandoned.
North Dakota, Kansas, and I believe one or two other states were running a “homesteading” type deal in certain towns. Usually small towns, with a collapsing economy.
Then you would be granted the deed to this acreage you had built your house on. If not, you became liable for a bill.
GingeroftheNorth:
Well, now you’ve done it…here come the Mounties and back-tax collectors!