He must pay 100,000 euros in water bills after recovering his squatted home for 4 years

Every year in France, countless stories of squatted private property unfortunately make the headlines. But the one you are about to discover today is particularly crazy.

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The latter concerns an 86-year-old retired merchant who saw his home, located in the Arago housing estate of Saint-Ouen, illegally occupied for at least 4 years before he could finally recover it. After so many years of legal battle to assert his rights, Selim (name changed for reasons of anonymity) could have thought that it was the end of the galleys, however, one more bad surprise awaited him.

Indeed, on May 24, the owner received a registered letter. This is the Veolia company which asks it to pay the sum of 97,852 euros, corresponding to bills unpaid water between 2018 and 2022. 'It's not a shock, it's an earthquake' confided Selim, and one can easily understand his dismay. As if that were not enough, his insurance refuses to cover the damage caused by the occupants. Today, he may have recovered his property, his ordeal is not over, quite the contrary.

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A heavy bill to pay

And for good reason, Veolia offers him a debt spread but does not seem open to paying them off completely. There is therefore a good chance that Selim will have to go through the payment box, while his property, a 180 m² pavilion on two floors acquired in 1977, had been illegally occupied since 2018. By learning this revolting story, one can legitimately ask why a property declared squatted for 4 years still has running water. This is explained by human rights, which prohibit a supplier from turning off the water to a main residence.

Today, when he has just come out of a long legal battle, the octogenarian has no other choice than to engage in a new standoff that could well last many years..