(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) Squatters ravaged a picturesque town, leaving behind a wake of property destruction and 500 pounds of human feces at a local motel, prompting the mayor of Wyoming’s second largest city to call it a “third-world country.”
Casper’s local Econo Lodge motel, which was foreclosed due to flooding, validated the mayor’s point-of-view as squatters destroyed the property that would cost millions to fix, worse than any damage caused by water.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Mayor Bruce Knell told the Cowboy State Daily. “They destroyed everything. It’s horrible. You cannot wrap your head around what happened to that hotel.”
Approximately 200 homeless people ruined other properties in the second-largest city in Wyoming. People defecated on the streets, private property, parks and bike paths –costing the city thousands of dollars to clean up the waste.
City officials, tasked with resolving the issue, claimed they had run out of ideas. Fines and arrests were not enough.
“We know very well we cannot litigate our way or arrest our way out of the problem, but our police need some teeth to start dealing with the squatting,” Knell said. “They’re just causing so many problems.”
The mayor acknowledged many homeless arrived in Casper for the homeless shelter. “Not everyone is approved, others get kicked out, and many of those homeless people who are rejected by the shelter never leave the city,” he said.
And yet, there’s a certain group of the homeless population, whether it’s from substance abuse or mental illness, who “don’t want to conform to society’s rules,” Knell said. “When they do that, they’re not allowed to go in the shelter, which means they’re just out and about in our community raising hell.”
