Real Estate Mobbing
Tenant "clearing" after blockbusting has lost its luster

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What is "mobbing"?
 Workplace mobbing comes Home. Workplace mobbing has been increasingly recognized as a means of group bullying with the goal of expulsion. In Europe, however, "real estate mobbing" is acknowledged as a common problem, especially in Spain and France. Real estate mobbing, sometimes called "property mobbing" when it is referenced in the United States at all, is a brutal method of forced eviction in which a legal resident--tenant or owner--is harassed into leaving a property that interests in real estate and development want to acquire. Real estate mobbing used to be called "blockbusting" and it is a phenomenon that is most likely to occur in gentrifying neighborhoods under the sway of a pro-development neighborhood association as well as other interests in speculation. 

Mobbing in Seattle
RenterHarassment.com would like to hear from those who are experiencing this criminal method of forced eviction. At this point, however, we are aware of an ongoing case in Seattle of a renter in a neighborhood overrun with realtors, developers, and a corrupt neighborhood association that may even have retained professional harassers to "mob" her out of her house when her landlords declined to accept an offer to buy and further refused to assist in expelling their tenant. The goal seems to be twofold: To force a renter who knows too well her rights from the neighborhood and then to pressure her landlords to accept a low-ball offer from speculators who would raze the house and build more expensive housing for their own profit. 

Techniques of the "Mob"

• Isolation. Mobbing is a technique that is easier to apply in cases where an individual lives alone, especially if he or she appears to have some vulnerability, for example, a renter surrounded by owners in an anti-renter neighborhood; a woman living alone; an elderly person who is seldom visited. Mobbing is a form of gang bullying, a practice that attracts those who relish being part of a mob that overpowers someone who is isolated, whether by politics, gender, age, or economic status.
  
• Monitoring. Isolation works hand-in-hand with "monitoring," "Monitoring" "monitoring," which is legally stalking and may extend to stalking outside of the house as well as monitoring inside the house, privacy protects the harasser from exposure and prosecution.
  
• Defamation. Some mobbings start out in the street, with gossip that is constructed to make you uncomfortable. This open gossip may use language that continues throughout the mobbing, even if it goes indoors and continues from houses on either side of the property to be "cleared." Terms like the Village Idiot are used to construct a neighborhood or "mob" bullying situation and may also be used to avoid using your legal name in conversations that would likely reveal the crime that is being committed. Staged conversations in front of your house may include constant references to the Village Idiot and then you may find yourself constantly addressed in round-the-clock harassment as the Village Idiot. While this may seem incredible to you, they will maintain that the sole solution you have is to "Leave!" or "Get out!" or "Move on!" Ironically, these demands may be made to legal residents by harassers who are receiving free housing or money to "clear" properties for development interests. The general dint of this is to treat the resident like a criminal, and from the perspective of those who would use such techniques, their view probably is of "the tenant as criminal."
  
• Tricks. Those who dress up criminal harassment by calling themselves "mobbers" tend to like legal tricks and tricks of all kinds, so long as they're on you. This style of harassment is predicated on the trick of pretending to be upstanding citizens while hosting or participating in an invisible but vicious forced eviction of a legal resident in which they self-dubbed "mobbers," often young adults out for cheap rent or to make a quick buck out of real estate, include in the harassment statements that the "mobbing" won't end until you leave, which they hope will be today, while simultaneously telling you, to protect themselves from culpability, that their attorney says you must leave of your own free will. Sound nasty? The process of mobbing is attractive to corrupt community organizations, real estate speculators and developers because it it is structured so that the perpetrators avoid legal liability for criminal behavior. Another "trick" is the constant assurances that it is "civil," that is, except for the stalking, except for the sleep deprivation, except for the threats, the blackmail and the other coercive techniques they attempt to use to frighten you from your home. We've also heard of cases of mobbers using recorded gunshots and other simulacra to frighten while simultaneously claiming they've committed no crime. After all, how can they be accused of shooting guns to frighten if they're only "playing" a recording? Other ploys include the possible use of voice filters to make their voices sound like those in your neighborhood. This is likely designed to enhance the bullying effect, especially if the voices they use belong to those who support the mobbing. But in one case we know of, the mobbers have constantly incorporated into  the harassment the statement that they may be or represent the person whose voice they assume, also taking great pains to constantly repeat the question to their victim, "Who am I?" This is to say that if you can't see the person who is speaking, and if they might not truly be the person whose voice they assume, they cannot be prosecuted. If you are in this situation, do not believe this. Criminals disguise themselves in numerous crimes that can be and are later successfully prosecuted. Real estate mobbers are highly predatory and will do anything to attempt to convince you that they cannot be prosecuted, that no forensic evidence exists, that if you report people will think you are crazy, that if you report they will say that you are in fact harassing them, and so on. Don't buy it. Giving in to illegal bullying just encourages those who "clear" residents in this manner to inflict it on others.
  
• Threats of legal bullying and, if need be, legal bullying. Mobbing continues in the courtroom. A key drive in mobbing is to avoid prosecution. For this reason, the mobbers use threats, blackmail and coercion to attempt to make you abandon ship. For the same reason, they use threats, blackmail and coercion in an attempt to prevent you from reporting. They goal is to make you believe that the crime is civil when it is not, that you are the criminal and not them, that if you report you will find yourself in jail, if you call the police they will claim that you are harassing them, and that they will "cream" you in court if you attempt to sue or to get a protection order. Because of their alignment with development, they may have access to some legal help, so this can be daunting. In a well cultivated "mobber" style, they may insist that they'll lie their way through any court proceeding and then take you for everything you've got for defamation. Mobbing is constructed as a crime without culpability and it is very dirty. And the most effective way to coerce a tenant out of his house might just be to pretend you're doing a "smear" campaign on him.
  
• Accusations of check kiting and other tricks. Mobbers like tricks. In fact, they seem to revel in cheap tricks that allow them to feel superior over those they are harassing. Is it radio harassment or stalking? Are there really eavesdropping devices in your house or are these people using shotgun microphones from next door and then talking as though they can see you? Can they really see through walls using infrared panels like they said, or did they hire a drone? Did they put a bomb in your car or should you start it? Did they put a bot on your computer or are they just taking advantage of your obvious upset over the personal information they have somehow acquired on you? Can they really get you evicted for "slatternly" housekeeping? Will anyone really believe them if they carry out their threats to tell people that you are a child molester?
  
• Hoaxes. One mobbing we know of opened with a bot scare that, at least so far, has proved to be nothing more. Other probable or hopeful hoaxes may be that they are "working" with the FBI to evict you, that they are "traffic cops," that they are informing on you to your bosses, that your house has burned down, that they killed your cat. Was there really a bankruptcy in your family? Did your father really tell them that you were the black sheep of the family? Are you really going to die of cancer because of the medical devices they say they're using to see inside your house with? You name it, they'll try to make you think they did it or will do it, so long as it scares you out of a property they want.
  
• Wireless harassment. Highly illegal but difficult to prove without a serious investigation. The wireless harassment may involve use of GPS location services to stalk you, the use of your cell phone to harass you, following you in public using stalker applications (even on others' cell phones if you stop using your own), following you in public via poorly secured wi-fi services in business after business up and down the street, and more.
  
• Radio-based harassment. Likely violates FCC regulation and is illegal. Another form of harassment that they expect to be able to get away with since it is unseen and leaves few forensic traces. Short-wave radio harassment is ideal for the case where the "mobbers" move next to the property they are being paid to take and disrupt or put a "denial of service" on all forms of communication or entertainment by using your speakers to broadcast their harassment. They can use a low-power or pirate station to do this. New directional speaker technology can be used to bounce harassment off of your speakers without even going through the sound system. They can also use directional speakers to bounce sound off of supply systems in your house, causing effects similar to the "twitterers" of old-time blockbusting. Wireless speakers receive audio signals using radio waves. This makes it easy for mobbers to pair the use of a short-wave radio with wireless speakers just about anywhere you are if they want to frighten you out of your home enough to stalk you, and they usually do.
  
• Directional speakers. Another trick. Directional speakers, also known as parametric speakers, create an audio stream so directional that it can be directed to one person in a crowd with everyone but the target being none the wiser. Sound crazy? Do a search on You Tube or look at the promotional literature for the Sound Lazer, for example. Advertisers are beginning to pick up on this technology, big-time, because it attracts consumers who are fascinated by the stream of advertising that they walk into in the middle of the storm. A big plus is that the fact that you alone hear the harassment gives them the extra fun of telling you that since you hear voices you must be "paranoid schizophrenic." One of the more predatory techniques if practiced on someone who lacks knowledge of the process of psychological assessment.
  
• Unceasing harassment. Even 24/7. It's no joke. Try sleeping through the alternate projection of harassment by directional speaker when you put in earplugs, and otherwise through plain speakers or, in the case where the mobbers are being put up in nearby or adjoining residences, by voice alone through walls or open windows. And when they want to wake you up, all they have to do is project an ear-splitting crash or the sound of a bullet over a parametric speaker. To manage you, you might find that they project the sound of your music back to you over the parametric during the night and at a much louder volume, or that instead of making construction noise during hours when it would attract too much attention, they record it and project it onto your windows. When harassment is your job, it pays to make creative use of technology.
  

• Escalating harassment. Depending on the applicable law and your particular situation, it's possible that the complaints to your landlord could be an attempt to undermine your rental agreement. Interfering with the contract of another can constitute a legal wrong (a "tort") commonly called tortious interference. This is the type of thing that results in warning letters and lawsuits for damages. Of course, this is a case where good documentation becomes critical. If you are interested in considering this measure, consult an attorney. Small claims court may also be an option for you.