The data you have is the data you have but not necessarily the ground truth. See, for example, San Francisco shoplifting statistics.

I agree that it may not be 100% accurate, but probably correlated with the truth and directionally accurate. If you discard it, what do you have? Anecdotes? The media narratives?

If data is not representative it's just a metric. Its worse than anecdotes because an anecdote has a lot of information and nuance that can be obtained from it.

But you'd need other data to prove (or at least strongly suggest) that the data isn't representative.

You can't just say "the data COULD be unrepresentative", then just use some random guys anecdotes on the internet as more valid than national statistics.

The cases I know of are usurpation, not trespassing.

Oh sure, I'm not saying the number of lawsuits are wrong, I'm saying something different:

• The lawsuits, by their nature, represent a lower bound of the number of okupations, since one would assume that there's many cases where there's an okupa but the owner doesn't go the legal way. One can hardly assume the opposite since that's a lost lawsuit for sure. So the number of lawsuits is the lower bound for the number of okupas, and NOT a representation. I do not know nor claim to know where the upper bound or actual number of okupas is, but equating lawsuits with occurences is a weak correlation at best.

• There's clearly a big one-sided abuse of the system, which affects both homeowners AND honest renters.

• I'd also agree to add punitive measures to banks or companies that hoard a large number of houses for especulation. This is slightly difficult to arrange legally without also punishing someone who buys a second house, but I'm sure possible and I believe both sides of the aisle would benefit from some regulation like this.