This Isn't Vigilantism

Had been wondering when vigilantism was going to make a comeback in LA

Should have guessed some enterprising former gangsters would step in to fill the void left by city government

(Am a new subscriber to L.A. Material, which is great.) https://t.co/41i6qOx36Q pic.twitter.com/1GMeVPEFXz

— Moses Kagan (@moseskagan) July 28, 2026

Leave it to Instapundit to get things wrong. If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you're a libertarian, everyone looks like a vigilante. The post refers to a new site, LA Material, which has a detailed story on what might be called a security services provider, Ghost Town in Venice, a beachfront part of Los Angeles that has a big homeless problem.

What I think is happening here is that entrepreneurs are recognizing that there are innovative legal ways to address problems like squatting and homelessness that don't directly involve law enforcement, which may be prevented by state laws or department policies from intervening over squatters, for instance. Typically if a property owner calls the police over a squatter, the police will sympathize, but they'll explain it's a civll matter and refer the reporting party to the courts.

Tenant law in many states heavily favors squatters, who invoke tenants' rights and prolong eviction proceedings for months and years. A company called Squatter Hunters offers to bypass eviction proceedings to make life legally unpleasant enough for squatters that they'll simply agree to move out, or they can be moved out via mechanisms like building code or health department enforcement that don't involve the police.

A recent series on A&E, Squatters, documents the efforts of the company's founder, Flash Shelton, at evicting squatters, some of which have been occupying property and charging tenants rent for years. His most typical method is to get the legal owner to give him a lease on the property, which entitles him to enter the property for inspection. Once he enters the property, which he's legally entitled to do, he simply turns the squatter's tactics against the squatter and refuses to leave, announcing that the squatter has a new roommate.

Sometimes the squatters will call the police themselves, but when Shelton shows the police the lease from the owner, the police recognize there's nothing they can do and leave. At this point, some squatters will simply give up and move out. If they're still stubborn, as the new roommate, Shelton and his staff will do things like play loud music all day and all night, and eventually even the stubbornest squatters will recognize they're better off simply leaving. This is all legal, but Shelton's staff need to be pretty burly as well and able to protect themselves if they need to.

This isn't the only strategy. Often, if a building has no utilities, the local health department can declare it uninhabitable and get it cleared that way. If Shelton's inspection shows pest infestations or building code violations, the building can be cleared that way, too. All of this costs money -- Squatter Hunters lists various services and prices on their site -- but it's cheaper and faster than lawyers and the courts, and it's just as legal. There's no vigilantism involved.

From the piece at LA Material, Ghost Town appears to operate following a similar paradigm, providing paid services that conventional law enforcement can't provide due either to legal constraints or lack of resources, but that an independent service provider can legally -- or at least, not illegally -- provide at additional cost:

IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE PANDEMIC, as local government and nonprofits left a void in the increasingly high-demand encampment resolution market, Ghost Town stepped in to fill it. In my early conversations with Venice locals, I heard that the firm built much of their reputation with their work on a large encampment outside the Whole Foods on Lincoln.

In Google Street View photos, a tent can be seen on the sidewalk outside the store’s parking lot as early as September of 2022. By December 2023, the encampment’s footprint had grown larger: five tents or makeshift shelters, along with baby carriages, bikes, shopping carts, and at least one dog.

In early 2024, Whole Foods hired Ghost Town to provide property management services. Shortly thereafter, team members began engaging directly with encampment residents. Some of that work was documented by a blog, Santa Monica Closeup, which followed a Ghost Town employee in the aftermath of a city cleanup in March of 2024.

In the video, a burly man in a black Ghost Town hoodie paces the newly-cleared sidewalk, watching city sanitation workers as they throw items into a garbage truck and chatting up lingering residents of the encampment.

“You find a spot?” the man in the hoodie asks a man wheeling a bike loaded up with possessions, a dog sitting patiently in the basket.

The man with the bike replies something inaudible over the cars whizzing by.

“Yeah, well, regardless what he says, you can’t come back here,” the man in the hoodie replies. “It’s not gonna work out. This is my spot now.”

It's plain from both the Squatters series and the Ghost Town story that staff, while they don't use violence to entice squatters or homeless people to relocate, must be able, and appear to be able, to defend themselves if necessary.

I asked [founder Bobby] Luna about the rumor that his staff members were former members of Venice gangs. He confirmed it. Some of his employees had come to him after being released from prison, looking for work and a way to keep themselves on track. He is proud of those hires, but also says they’re careful not to bring on anyone who maintains ties to gang life. “It works for us because we're using people that are locals, but also people who have lived that life,” he said. “But no longer live that life.”

. . . I asked Luna about a video testimonial on Ghost Town’s Instagram page, where a business owner says he’d called the company for help with an encampment “that the cops have been here ten times to try and solve, and they can’t do anything or they won’t do anything.” Did Luna see his firm as acting as a secondary police force?

“I think a lot of people see us like that. We don't see ourselves as filling the gap,” he told me. He agreed that his company would take on jobs that LAPD wouldn’t — but that the police wouldn’t do them because they were too menial, rather than too extreme.

“Most of the time it's just talking to people, and I don't think the LAPD has time for that.”

Yes, it's just talking to people, but it involves a unique skill set to be able to talk to people while sending the message that you aren't going away. If people like Luna and Shelton can keep their businesses focused on that particular mission, more power to them -- but the intellectual welterweights at Instapundit are wrong to confuse that with vigilantism.

Maybe I could start a business negotiating with Instpundit people by offering them free memberships to MENSA if they'll just stop posting.