A couple have spoken out after discovering they couldn’t move their family into their dream home because a ‘squatter’ lived there.

Picture this, despite a crippling economy and cost of living crisis, you’ve somehow managed to save up enough to buy your dream property.

You splash out a hefty $2 million and get ready to make the move, but find out you can’t actually up sticks into the new house because someone is already living there – a squatter to be exact.

Well, this was apparently the reality for one family, who claim their dream home has quickly turned into a nightmare.

Buying the house

In a bid to settle down into retirement, Susana and Joseph Landa bought a $2 million house in their neighborhood in Douglaston in Queens, New York.

They purchased the house not only to live out their retirement in, but also to ‘provide’ for son Alex, who has Down Syndrome – the house right next door to family members who could help look after him.

The couple bought the property back in October 2023, however, fourth months on, the family say they are no closer to being able to complete the move into their new home.

The issue

A man named Brett Flores allegedly remains living in the property, according to court documents.

The docs claim Flores acted as the caretaker of the house for the former homeowner who resided at the property as well as a carer for the elderly man – the former homeowner having since passed away.

According to records, Flores claims he is allowed to stay at the property because he has a ‘license’ given to him by the previous homeowner, who allegedly paid him $3,000 a week to take care of him and the house.

And whether or not he has any sort of license doesn’t really matter, given in New York City, if squatters live on a premise for 30 consecutive days or more, they then have certain rights.

Flores has been living there since the previous homeowner passed away in January earlier this year.

ABC7NY

The legal battle

The Landa family have taken Flores to court in a bid to get him evicted from the property, already having gone through five hearings in civil court.

They allege the squatter has ‘no lease’ and is ‘not paying rent’ and that they’ve had to cough up thousands to pay for the utility bills as a result of owning the property.

The family have also accused Flores of trying to rent out some of the rooms in the house online.

Flores has since reportedly filed for bankruptcy which has ‘prevent[ed] everything from going forward,’ Joseph says.

Susana tells ABC7 New York: “I wake up and I go to sleep about the same thing, when is this guy going to come out?

“It’s very crazy, our system is broken. I never would imagine we have no rights, no rights at all, nothing, zero.”

When contacted for comment, Flores’ attorney told 7 On Your Side investigators he had ‘no comment’.

The next court date is scheduled for April.

An online series has looked into a family described as the ‘most inbred family’ in America.

The Whittaker Clan live in a small hamlet called Odd in rural Virginia in the US, and a YouTube series revealed the conditions they live in.

YouTuber and photographer, Mark Laita, started the series on the social media platform, calling it Soft White Underbelly.

The series is aimed at gaining insight into the lives of people in the US whose lives might otherwise go undocumented.

In a description of the channel on YouTube, it was described as speaking to ‘people who are frequently invisible in society—the unhoused, the sex worker, the chronic drug user, the runaway, the gang member, the poor and the sick.’

Among those spoken to by Laita was the Whittaker Clan, many of whom live with genetic conditions which are connected to inbreeding.

After seeing the family on Laita’s series, many people were moved to try and offer them some support.

This resulted in thousands of dollars being raised to help lift the family out of poverty.

Pictures showed inside the home (Christmas Season With The Whittakers)

However, a further YouTube video left some people questioning what had happened to the money which had been raised.

When YouTuber Tyler Oliveira visited the family again he found that they were still living in squalid conditions despite the money being raised to help them.

Some $100,000 was raised for the family, but images showed the house still in an awful state.

The video showed that the family did not have a shower, instead using a bath with a bucket.

There was also trash on floor and the countertops.

While there was a lot of food in the fridge and freezer, but swarms of flies came buzzing out of the appliances when they were opened.

Oliveira asked the family ‘what happened to the money?’

Betty Whittaker told him: “I don’t know”.

However, Mark Whittaker was left furious on hearing this and said: “Come on, Betty knows exactly where the money went. Look at the Whittakers, their lives have improved greatly since I came into it and the reason for that is because I came through for them every time.”

Laita since confirmed that he had stopped the GoFundMe page, writing: “I’m actually going to discontinue my GoFundMe for the Whittakers I probably won’t even do videos with them anymore, it’s just left such a bad taste in my mouth after all this.

“The Whittaker one has generated like $130,000 (£102,000) between the $77k and the $55k it is right now so it’s roughly $130k I think. They’ve received according to the list that I put on screen earlier, it’s $100,000 right there and then I’ve given them $25,000 cash when I’ve seen them giving them five here, five there, four there, three there.”

The relationships between a family described as the ‘most inbred’ in America have been explained with complex and revealing links.

The moniker of ‘America’s most inbred family’ has been attributed to the Whittaker family from West Virginia, whose complex history has resulted in genetic mutations and disabilities within its members.

The family members sparked the curiosity of filmmaker Mark Laita, who released a documentary on YouTube about them in July 2020.

As part of his research, Laita spoke with grandsons Brandon and Luis about what it was like to grow up in their family, as well as gaining insight into inbreeding that went on.

Laita unveiled a complex family tree stretching back decades and beginning with identical twin brothers, Henry and John Whittaker.

The brothers each welcomed children into the world, but the family tree revealed how those children got married to each other and had seven kids of their own, including John Isom Whittaker who was born in 1882.

John Isom then married his first cousin, Ada Rigg, and together they had nine children of their own.

The Whittaker family have experienced health issues due to inbreeding. (YouTube/Soft White Underbelly)

One of their kids was Gracie Irene Whittaker, born in 1920, who married John Emory Whittaker, despite him being her double cousin – cousins who share the same level of consanguinity as half-siblings, due to two common ancestors.

Gracie and John Emory had 15 children, but as the impacts of the inbreeding took hold, health issues began to arise and children suffered severe physical and mental impairments.

Some members of the family are unable to use words or sign language, and instead communicate through grunts and barks.

Many members of the family also have children who are not inbred, and live separate lives away from the farm where many members of the family still reside.

In the interview with Laita, Brandon described being raised by his aunt for the first seven years of his life as his mom moved away.

With children of his own, Brandon expressed his fears about his kids growing up in the same environment as the rest of his family.

“I worry about them [growing up here],” he said. “It’s one of my biggest worries. I honestly don’t think I’m going to stick around here too much longer. I’m working on getting a place. As soon as I can get enough saved up, I’ll probably get away from here. There isn’t anything here for me, really, except for them [the Whittakers].”

With the massive amounts of money being pumped into modernizing local communities across the country, there are some people that can get left behind.

Residents can sometimes be paid large sums to leave their homes so developments can take place in the surrounding area.

However, one family in Australia went against that tradition after they refused a AUD$50 million offer from developers who then constructed a suburb around their entire property.

The Zammit family had lived on the plot of land in Sydney for years, and that’s the way they wanted things to stay.

The impressive Windsor Castle-style home is decked out with a 650-foot driveway surrounded by lush green gardens with a panoramic view of the Blue Mountains.

On top of that, the property is just 40 mins away from the centre of Sydney, so what is not to love?

The house, located on Hambledon Road, stretches across five acres of land which equates to two-hectares of area and became a symbol of the family’s determination to stay in their neighborhood.

And a 30-second time-lapse video shows how developers completely restructured the area around the house, creating a very odd-looking neighborhood in the process.

Before the developers got to work, the property was surrounded by lots of open green space, but now there are rows of regular, suburban homes.

And, to the surprise of no one, the humongous mansion and its lengthy garden could have essentially become an entire street if developers could have had their way.

When the majority of the neighboring houses were sold in 2012 to make way for developers, the house that stayed would have been valued at approximately AUD$4.75 million.

However, in May last year, experts said that the house could be worth a whopping AUD$50 million.

Amid the bustling new-build development in The Ponds area near Quakers Hill, Taylor Bredin, a real estate agent with Ray White Quakers Hill, told 7News: “The fact that most people sold out years and years ago, these guys have held on. All credit to them.”

Bredin also suggested that the land has the capacity to accommodate around 50 houses, and if subdivided into 3,200-square-foot blocks, each could potentially be valued at a whopping one million dollars.

However, the homeowners denied revealing their plans about selling the property, 7News reported.

While you expect the majority of people to just up roots and leave when properly developers come calling, this story is a perfect example of standing your ground – despite the money that may be on offer.