A Victorian woman has been left shaken by a “bizarre” break-in at her vacant property, after the address was published online by a senate candidate who called on followers to squat there.
The intruders changed the locks and removed her belongings, leaving the Melbourne woman about $70,000 out-of-pocket after her insurance claim was denied.
The person who posted the address, Victorian Socialists senate candidate Jordan van den Lamb, said he would consider an apology to Carol and did not “want her to feel bad”.
The aspiring politician’s posts only call for squatting and do not advocate for theft or damage to property.
Mr van den Lamb said he would continue to help people in a housing crisis use vacant homes for shelter.
Carol, who asked for her surname to be withheld, told the ABC that when she turned up to her late father’s home last year, she struggled to get her key in the lock.
At first she thought it just needed some elbow grease.
Then she noticed someone had installed CCTV over the carport and a new heating system down the side of the house.
“At that point I think my heart was in my throat and I was panicking,” she said.
When police forced entry to inspect the house, Carol was horrified to see nearly all her dad’s belongings were gone.
The things she’ll miss the most include a set of cane armchairs, a favourite painting and an antique radio — some of the last links Carol had to her late father.
An antique radio complete with storage for records, which Carol remembers her dad listening to when she was young. (Supplied)
Furniture belonging to Carol’s late dad, which she fears she will never see again. (Supplied)
Carol has been scouring pawn shops and second-hand stores searching for her dad’s painting. (Supplied)
“It made me feel very unsafe, even in my home, and scared of what might happen,” she said.
“That it might happen again, that they might come back.”
That night, Carol learnt that months before the home was broken into, the address had been published online.
Renters advocate encouraged followers to squat in vacant house
Dubbed a “renters advocate”, Mr van den Lamb first went viral for videos calling out dodgy landlords.
Now he is the leading voice in a growing squatting movement in Australia.
He maintains a database of seemingly vacant properties, and shares the addresses with people who need emergency accommodation.
He told the ABC he had received roughly 2,000 submissions to the database since early last year, the majority of which were in Victoria.
“There are so many empty homes while people don’t have homes and I think that’s disgusting,” he said.
“If you’ve got a house empty for 10 years and it’s a spare house and you don’t intend to live in it, you should sell it or you should let someone live in it.”
He said the database had helped dozens of people in need find a place to sleep.
“Someone who didn’t have a house gets a place to live and have their needs met,” he said.
In the post published last year with Carol’s address, seen by more than 40,000 people, Mr van den Lamb had encouraged his followers to squat in wealthy property owners’ vacant homes.
The ABC cannot verify whether the trespassers entered Carol’s property after seeing it posted it on social media.
But she believes it is unlikely to be a coincidence.
“I believe it’s a direct result of that, and I really would like people to think about that,” she said.
“It’s not a game.”
The ABC asked Mr van den Lamb if he wanted to apologise to Carol.
“I guess so,” he said.
“I don’t want her to feel bad.”
But Mr van den Lamb said he would like to have “a bigger conversation” with Carol about the housing crisis.
“For every story like hers there are hundreds of stories of people sleeping rough,” he said.
Speaking to ABC Radio Melbourne on Wednesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the ordeal Carol had experienced was “outrageous” and Mr van den Lamb was a “disgrace”.
“The idea of having to deal with the loss of a loved one, I think, would have been traumatic enough without finding someone essentially taking over what was her late father’s property,” Mr Albanese said.
In a post on X, Victorian Socialists said the party took the prime minister’s criticism of its candidate as a “badge of honour”.
“The disgraceful thing isn’t that people like [Mr van den Lamb] are trying to do something about this — encouraging squatting, in part, to try force action — but that no major party in Australia is actually proposing to help the situation in any way, and instead making it worse!” the party’s post said.
‘I’m not rich’, says victim of break-in
Carol said she had inherited the property in Melbourne’s outer suburbs after her father died in 2007.
Carol’s father bought the three-bedroom house in the 1980s and lived in it until old age.
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She said the property was in poor condition when she took ownership and had remained vacant ever since.
“I got three real estate agents to evaluate it during probate and they said it would be a knock-down,” she said.
At the time of her father’s passing, Carol was living with her mum and working as a researcher at a technical college.
She spent four years spending “basically every penny” she had to renovate the house, which she had hoped to live in one day.
“I’m not rich”, she said.
Carol said she empathised with Australians affected by the housing shortage.
“Right now if I didn’t inherit a home I wouldn’t be able to afford to rent, I would end up in a share house, or possibly homeless,” she said.
“I know my demographic is the fastest growing cohort of homeless people.”
By 2012, the house was in much better shape, she said — but there were still structural issues.
“An engineer came in and they said it needed substantial work,” she said.
The house needed underpinning, the garage was at risk of collapse and the house still had no heating or cooling.
Meanwhile, her mum’s health was deteriorating and Carol became her carer. Her mum’s mobility issues meant the house wasn’t suitable for them to live in.
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“I considered renting dad’s house out … But the big ticket items needed to be done first,” Carol said.
She couldn’t afford that yet. So she visited the house every eight weeks to spend a few nights, for well over a decade.
“The years slip by,” she said.
Carol said she “couldn’t function” after her mum died in May 2024, and fell out of her routine of visiting the house that had belonged to her dad.
She remembers collecting the mail from that house in late June 2024, and it wasn’t until September that she discovered it had been taken over by trespassers.
Suspicion that trespassers planned to rent out home
Carol described the events that unfolded at her house as “bizarre”.
Neighbours said they saw people visiting the house during the day, but Carol found no indication they were sleeping overnight.
There was a new bed, but no bedding. New towels still had their tags on.
The trespassers’ new fridge was turned off, although they had transferred electricity, gas and water accounts into a new name.
“If they were living here there would have been signs of occupation and there weren’t,” Carol said.
“I think they were setting it up as an Airbnb, or they were going to rent it to some poor, unsuspecting person.”
A Victoria Police spokesperson told the ABC they were aware of the “property-related complaint” and it would be inappropriate to comment while the investigation was ongoing.
Mr van den Lamb said if Carol’s theory was true, the incident was an “outlier”.
He said he didn’t want to encourage use of “an empty home to someone who has a home already”.
“That’s not the point [of the squatting campaign],” he said.
Vacant home database verification has improved, advocate says
Mr van den Lamb said he selectively posted a limited number of addresses on social media, including the home of Carol’s late father.
He said those publicly posted were often in disrepair and highlighted the issue of vacant homes across Australia in the midst of a housing crisis.
“They’re generally the worst ones, that people probably shouldn’t live in, just to demonstrate that these exist,” he said.
He said he “usually” visited properties in Melbourne personally, but did not attend Carol’s.
“The person who submitted it said it was empty for at least 10 years and I looked at it on street view, it looked to be in poor condition,” he said.
Mr van den Lamb said he did worry about unintended consequences of his approach, and he had improved his verification process over time.
To check if a property is genuinely vacant, Mr van den Lamb said he conducted a title search, looked at real estate websites and databases, as well as development applications.
“I wouldn’t want to post a house someone lives in,” he said.
This has happened once before and Mr van den Lamb said it was the only other mishap that had come to his attention.
Lawyer warns against encouraging trespass in online posts
Melbourne solicitor David Whiting said squatting was trespassing, and therefore illegal.
He said anyone advocating for more people to squat vacant homes in Australia could be “encouraging people to break the law”.
“Trespassing turns into squatting by the function of time,” Mr Whiting said.
“I see squatting as the intent to exercise your control of a space.”
But Mr van den Lamb argued it was legal until a trespasser is asked to leave.
“You can technically be asked to leave, and be prosecuted for that if you don’t,” he said.
“But the thing is with all these empty homes, most people don’t know that they [squatters] are there.”
Insurance nightmare ‘most traumatising’ chapter of ordeal
Carol said if she had been notified when her utilities were transferred to a new name, she might have been able to intervene before the squatters disposed of her dad’s belongings.
She wants energy providers to improve their processes.
“There’s more security on my grocery account than there is on all your utility accounts,” she said.
Carol was disappointed by her insurer GIO’s response to her claim.
She said after an initial conversation with her insurance company, she was investigated by a review officer from fraud and intelligence before they could make a decision about her claim.
She said this was the “most traumatising part” of the whole ordeal.
A letter from GIO seen by the ABC said she was denied because “there was no evidence of forced entry, nor damage to the property” and Carol did not have cover for “loss or damage caused by squatters or trespassers occupying the insured address”.
“We sympathise with [Carol’s] situation but unfortunately we were unable to find damage or evidence of forced entry to the home that we could cover under her policy,” a GIO spokesperson told the ABC.
Carol said she was worried other home owners were unaware of the limitations of their policies.
“It can happen to you,” she said.
“Take photos of everything in your home, and don’t be loyal to your insurer — they won’t be loyal to you.”
Carol said she now planned to sell the home so she could move on with her life.
“It was a pipe dream that I would ever live here.”
