If you get caught while doing it you would likely be charged with attempted burglary. It's up to you to convince jury/judge that you didn't intend to steal.
If you only get caught after leaving the premises it is trespassing, since it's apparent you didn't steal. Picking a lock in order to trespass might make the sentence a bit harsher than normal.
So anyone can just come walk around inside your house without your permission, and you think it’s legal and no problem as long as they don’t take anything? I could see that being the perspective in another culture but it certainly isn’t how the US works.
> you think it’s legal and no problem as long as they don’t take anything
Not only that, they can move in!
Here in Belgium a young couple left the country to do volunteering work only to hear from friends back home that gypsies had squatted their house. Official reaction of the mayor of Ghent was "I can't do anything about it ... it's complicated"
Obviously breaking & entering is a crime but if you're "living" there, only the courts can kick you out after following all the necessary legal steps.
UK has (had) similar squatting laws but afaik those were mainly (ab)used in the 90s to throw parties in abandoned warehouses.
The UK has a lot more defences if your _home_ gets squatted. The rationale is that now we're considering two parties who both want to live somewhere, and so the legitimate owner/ occupier wins. Where squatters move into somewhere empty the court has to weigh up on the one hand property rights of the owner who left it empty but on the other the squatters desire to have a home. So these are unequal rights and the squatters may win under some circumstances.
The antidote is desirable for a community. If you don't want squatters in a building you never live in, let somebody else live there instead. Now if it comes to it (which it probably won't) any squatters will lose. Lots of places that somebody owns and might otherwise stay empty have people living in them for very little rent for this reason. If you've got a good reputation don't care where you live and don't mind potentially having to leave on very short notice when the real owner wants it back, you can get very, very cheap rent in crazy buildings because of this. People live in unused lighthouses, buildings that used to be part of defence systems, big factories, all sorts of stuff.
There's still valid reasons to keep an empty property though.
Maybe I don't have the money to provide safe electrical / water / heating / fire safety systems. But I also don't want a tribe of homeless people in there.
I also know someone who's kept a property empty for 10 years. He lived there together with his wife, she passed away, he moved out and never had the courage to move out all her stuff.
