I loved roaming in England. Thinking of the US, how does this relate to squatter's rights? If have the impression that it is risky to let people hang out for too long on your land in the US. It also seems to tie into the problem of homelessness that we have in the US.
It's more than just "hanging out for too long". You have to be clearly occupying the space, and you have to be improving it.
In California, "Adverse possession" requires a lot: You have to occupy a place continuously for 5 years, like how an owner would. You have to pay all taxes on the land for that time. You have to be clearly occupying the land, so it's obvious to all (including the owner). You have to be acting like you are the owner of the land: Getting & paying for electric, water, internet, trash pickup, etc..
How does it work, paying taxes to a property you do not own? You go there and file out something saying, I want to pay taxes for this place, because I want to own it one day?
In my jurisdiction I make my payments on the county's property tax website without any authentication at all. Put in the address / parcel number, enter my email address and credit card number. They send me a receipt. Anyone could pay it!
I don't know what would happen if I owned a piece of property that I didn't live on, and both I and the adverse posessor tried to pay. Maybe they'd take both payments? Maybe it's a race condition? No idea.
Or what if you only want to pay taxes for the part you are squatting on? You could imagine thousands of acres of a ranch and you only want to pay taxes on the back corner.
I went back to my county's site, and that definitely would not be possible. I doubt that that would be possible anywhere, because the owner would typically get a single tax bill for the entire parcel-of-record.
Maybe there's a legal mechanism for carving off a piece of a larger property that you've been "openly and notoriously" squatting for the requisite amount of time. If so, you'd pay the tax bill post facto.
But... I don't really know anything, let alone cross-jurisdictionally. Those are educated guesses.
Paying the taxes is a very clear bar. That makes sense. I know when I was either buying or selling my last house in Texas I had to sign all these papers that there were no squatters anywhere. Maybe in Texas the bar isn't so clear.
