SEATTLE _ Police entered the Kent home with their guns drawn. Angela Simmons panicked and held up her hands.
Crisis and opportunity had collided to bring Simmons into the Kent home in 2013. In the aftermath of the recession, when foreclosed houses around King County sat empty, Simmons was introduced to an ancient legal principle called adverse possession that resulted in her living in one such abandoned home that she hoped one day would be hers.
Some may think of it as "squatter's rights," but adverse possession, enshrined in 19th-century Washington law and common law going back centuries, theoretically can provide a path to property ownership through moving into an abandoned home without permission, paying taxes on the property and maintaining the place as an owner would. The challenge is to avoid getting caught.
But Simmons never thought that what she was doing could be considered criminal.
She wasn't the only one.
A man named Naziyr YishmaEl taught a program in south King County on financial self-empowerment, including a course on adverse possession. At that time, several people, including Simmons, had signed onto YishmaEl's program, paid to become members of what he called the Association of Autonomous People. Then, some moved into foreclosed or otherwise vacant homes.
It was a perfect storm of factors: after the housing bubble burst, mortgages became harder to get for some. At the same time, homelessness also started to rise in King County beginning in 2012.
But adverse possession also often attracts attention from law enforcement and prosecutors, and both forces came down hard on YishmaEl. For his business advising people on financial empowerment and how to use the adverse possession law, YishmaEl was charged with theft and conspiracy but acquitted by a jury for all but one misdemeanor _ the unlawful practice of law _ which the state Supreme Court upheld last month.
Back in 2013, Simmons exchanged emails with YishmaEl, who sent her information on Washington's adverse possession process and a spreadsheet of vacant homes.
So Simmons, then working in city government, looked up the laws and even asked the attorneys she knew about adverse possession. It was real, they told her, though they didn't know how anybody might actually go about it.
For Simmons, the prospect of owning her own home in the area _ the ultimate stability for her kids _ looked very far away, even on a government salary. So she took the plunge. She settled on a four-bedroom home in a suburban Kent cul-de-sac.
The home was in dire need of repair, so Simmons labored for weeks to fix up the house, remodeling the kitchen and roof. She hired a landscaper, installed an alarm and painted an eggplant accent wall.
It didn't last long. Shortly after Simmons moved in, a neighbor called the police.
