What is squatting? Attorney battling the phenomenon plaguing American housing explains how to fight back

Daniel Phillips, who specializes in landlord and tenant disputes, said squatting legal battles are prompting long and costly legal battles for tenants.

Kendall Tietz is a Production Assistant with Fox News Digital. 

Phillips described squatting as the unlawful possession of premises, which is seen in two primary situations. The first is in a foreclosure instance where people discover an abandoned property, especially if they know that an owner or a landlord has abandoned it, and they come in and take possession. The second way is through fraud, where people take on another person's identity to fraudulently lease out an apartment or a home. Oftentimes, they pay the security deposit and first month's rent before they completely stop paying, and the landlord is then stuck with someone in possession of their property who signed a lease agreement using a fake identity.

"I've seen squatting under the two scenarios that I've described," Phillips told Fox News Digital. "Under the foreclosure proceedings, you have people who are actually professionals at finding these foreclosed upon homes and taking over, gutting them, living there and then trying to extort the situation when the landlord or the bank is trying to have them removed. They drag out the process because they're very familiar with it, it's usually not their first time."