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After two years working and living in Germany, Carrie and Scott Packard were itching to move back into their four-bed, two-bath Carlsbad home. They just couldn’t wait.

But they had to.

Their tenants, a young professional couple, had trashed the house. Dogs had ripped carpeting and urinated on floors. Garbage was strewn inside and outside. The yard had gone to seed. Although the tenants had signed a lease and passed a credit check, their payments were late, then partial and then, for the last six months, nonexistent.

Worse, they were still living in the Packards’ home and entitled to stay there, unless the Packards could get a court judgment against them.

“We didn’t actually have the legal right to our own home,” Carrie Packard said. “If we moved in, they could sue us for unlawful eviction.”

Squatters made headlines earlier this year, when it was reported that an unauthorized person had quietly moved into a vacant Poway home that was in foreclosure. The story captured attention in large part because the house had been owned by the family of Tony Gwynn, the late Padres outfielder and Baseball Hall of Fame inductee.

Yet people live in homes without the owner’s permission all the time. Happens so often, one courtroom in the San Diego Superior Court — Department 60 — is devoted almost exclusively to these cases.

“We deal with true squatters at a crazy rate,” said Rachael Callahan, a lawyer and owner of San Diego Evictions, a law firm that specializes in representing landlords. “Department 60 will have a morning calendar and an afternoon calendar with 30 to 60 cases, and that’s daily.”

Some cases are settled in the hallway outside the courtroom, often with a quick exchange lawyers have dubbed “cash for keys.” Carrie Packard’s lawyer, for instance, suggested she write a $1,500 check to ensure her tenants’ departure.

“I’m not going to pay them,” she said. “They owe me money.”

The whole process rankled Packard. “There’s no other crime where you could steal this amount of money from people,” she said, “and just walk away.”

Read the full story: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/sd-me-squatters-living-high-life-20190303-story.html

In other news: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/real-estate/sd-fi-rent-increases-20190305-story.html

The affidavits filed by federal agents to secure search warrants for San Diego jeweler Leo Hamel and others have been sealed by a judge, along with any inventory of what was seized earlier this month. But court records show that Hamel and his former wife stored many firearms at their Jamul estate.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/sd-me-hamel-gun-collection-20190226-story.html

The city of San Diego and San Diego State University have signaled that they are serious about making a deal on the Mission Valley property where the university plans to build a new football stadium and a satellite campus.

Friday, the city and the university published for the first time the extensive roster of professionals who will be going to bat for each side when negotiating the price of 132 acres of prime, city-owned real estate. The parties also said they were prepared to sign off on what’s called a memorandum of agreement, or a legally binding document that will dictate the terms of land sale talks going forward.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/growth-development/sd-fi-sdsu-mission-valley-land-sale-negotiations-20190301-story.html

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/growth-development/sd-fi-sdsu-mission-valley-stadium-clark-construction-20190228-story.html

While the president’s former attorney Michael Cohen made headlines testifying before Congress Wednesday, a few senior defense officials were grilled in the same building at another Congressional hearing on military issues that could affect San Diego County.

A House Appropriations subcommittee called a hearing on the impact that President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall project may have on military readiness, now that he has declared a state of emergency. Trump has said he wants to divert up to $8.1 billion toward the border wall, including $3.6 billion of “unobligated” funds in the military construction budget.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/military/sd-me-trump-military-projects-20190227-story.html

Already, three terrible long weeks had passed without answers and the family of Fernanda González Serrano could not let another day go by without the truth.

González, 32, who grew up in San Diego and Tijuana, was dedicated to her family and would never ignore them or willfully take off, they insisted. She was missing without any clues as to her whereabouts.

That’s why, on Sunday, her father disregarded the advice of police and brought a pick ax and a shovel to his daughter’s Tijuana home to begin digging holes in the yard. He eventually found her body buried in the courtyard — a Volkswagen Beetle had been parked on top of her makeshift grave.

Family members reported González missing to Tijuana authorities in early February.

She stopped responding to WhatsApp messages on Feb. 3, said Erika Serrano González, the victim’s sister who lives in Chula Vista.

“My sister never turns her phone off. She always answers,” said Erika González, about how she knew something was wrong.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-california/sd-me-missing-girl-20190226-story.html

On Nov. 11, 1978, Simi Valley police arrested restaurant manager Craig Coley for the murder of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old son.

Despite a solid alibi, no criminal record, questionable evidence and a public outcry over his innocence, Coley was convicted of the crimes. He spent 38 years and 10 months in prison before Governor Jerry Brown, citing DNA and other evidence, exonerated him on Thanksgiving Eve in 2017.

Regaining his freedom was one form of justice for Coley, who is now 71 and lives in Carlsbad. Another came on Saturday when the city of Simi Valley announced a $21 million settlement with Coley over a civil rights case he filed last year.

Coley’s award is the highest individual civil rights case payout to an exoneree in California history and the fifth highest in the U.S. since record-keeping began in 1989, according to Jeffrey S. Gutman, co-director of the Jacob Burns Community Legal Clinics at George Washington University School of Law in Washington, D.C.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/sd-no-coley-settlement-20190225-story.html

A federal judge has ruled that a men-only draft is unconstitutional, but he stopped short of ordering the Selective Service System to register women for military service.

The Houston judge sided with a San Diego men’s advocacy group that challenged the government’s practice of having only men sign up for the draft, citing sex discrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/sd-me-military-draft-women-lawsuit-20190223-story.html

The beautiful view taking the Coaster north from San Diego through Del Mar hides a scary truth: the ground underneath the train tracks is slowly eroding.

A combination of ocean waves, erosion from precipitation and from people walking near the tracks has caused a series of bluff collapses, so local agencies have been working on a plan to move the tracks safely inland.

Time is money. And for San Diego Gas & Electric customers, the time of day and night you use electricity will soon cost — or save — you money.

As per directives from the Legislature and the California Public Utilities Commission, SDG&E will become the first of the state’s three investor-owned power companies to move customers from a tiered billing system to a “time of use” format.