Woman says judge refused to evict squatters in her house to avoid them being homeless over Christmas — while she was homeless

A woman says that squatters moved into her home while she left the state and when she tried to have them evicted, a judge allowed them to stay at the house in order to keep them from being homeless over the holidays.

Terri Boyette told NewsNation that she had left her home in Texas in order to go take care of her sick mother in Florida when her neighbor called her and asked her if she knew that someone was living in her home.

Boyette called police, but they told her that since the squatters had potentially been at the home for more than ten days that she would need to start the process of eviction.

That process took eight months, and when she regained access to the home, she said it was thoroughly trashed and her appliances had been stolen. She also realized that the culprits were people she had previously hired.

“I hired them to do some painting and renovating. I was gonna be gone for about three weeks, so I told them to stop work. Apparently one of them broke in and decided to rent it out to other people using drugs,” Boyette told NewsNation.

“They stole all of my items, from the dining table to the entertainment center,” she added.

“It’s insanity.”

Even worse, when the time came to evict the squatters, Boyette said a judge refused to do so ahead of Christmas to avoid them being homeless over the holidays, even though it meant Boyette, the owner of the house, was without a home.

“She extended the appeal to January because she didn’t want anyone to be homeless over the holidays, and I’m like — I’m homeless over the holidays,” she said to the New York Post.

Boyette said that she found crack pipes in her oven and hypodermic needles in a drawer.

“This is the craziest thing I’ve ever been through,” she added. “It’s insanity.”

In an update on her TikTok account, Boyette said that her insurance company was trying to avoid paying out the claim because she had not filed a police report. She said she had the police tell the company that they would not file a report over a civil matter.

Here’s more about the bizarre episode: