Squatting occurs when uninvited guests occupy a property without the owner’s consent or knowledge. The practice has historically been tricky to maneuver legally because it wasn’t explicitly defined in state law, and it's difficult to truly know just how pervasive the problem is.
As of last June, David Howard, executive director of the National Rental Home Council, believed there could be as many as 500 ongoing squatting cases throughout Dallas-Fort Worth alone. Still, that number is hard to verify because police departments tend not to classify cases using the “squatting” terminology. Charges of criminal trespass or burglary could be used in instances of a person living illegally in a home, a spokesperson for the Dallas Police Department told the Observer at the time.
It was the testimony of Texans like Mesquite resident Terri Boyette, whose home was turned into a “drug den” when a man moved in while she was out of town, that left state senators feeling like the handling of the issue to this point has been “a bunch of crap.”
“I invited the public from all over the state to tell their horror squatter stories and proposed solutions. This should not be happening in Texas,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, who chaired the hearing. “We are going to make it easy for homeowners and business owners to ‘Come and Take it Back’ from squatters."
Advocates say Senate Bill 38, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law on June 20, will make it easier for landlords to evict illegal occupants in bona fide squatting cases by allowing for summary disposition — a legal procedure in which a judge can rule on a case on an expedited timeline in which a full trial is not required because the facts of the case are not in dispute.
In Texas, anyone "squatting" in your home is breaking the law.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 29, 2024
They are criminals violating TX laws like criminal trespass & criminal mischief (Tex. Penal Code 30.05 & 28.03).
Also, the Texas Castle Doctrine empowers Texans to use force to defend themselves & their property.
But as the legislative session wound to a close, SB 38 had the potential to completely rewrite the eviction process, affecting millions of Texans by effectively lumping anyone who pays a monthly rent to a landlord into the same legislative category as squatters occupying a property illegally. Brennan Griffin, a housing legislation advocate and senior deputy director for Texas Appleseed, told the Observer that the bill was nearly a “poison pill” for renters and renter advocacy efforts.
It was a surprising, last-minute coalition of bipartisan lobbyists and legislators that kept those sweeping changes to tenants’ rights at bay.
“We knew something like this was coming, but we didn’t know how bad it was going to be,” Griffin said. “Senator Bettencourt, who is a Senate author of SB 38, said, ‘We just don't have a way to sort of confine this to squatting.’ But that's what we ended up doing.”
The Threat Posed to Renters
Early language in the squatting bill would have shortened the eviction process for delinquent residents from 21 days to less than a week through the summary disposition process. If a tenant missed a rent payment, a landlord would have been able to petition for eviction before a judge, giving the tenant only four days to provide their evidence in the matter. That law would have been especially harmful for Dallas renters, who are some of the most at-risk tenants for eviction anywhere in the United States, a recent study by Mortgage Calculator found.A series of amendments ended up shielding legal tenants from that shortened eviction process, and in some places, housing advocates even recorded meager gains in renters' rights.
For instance, the bill introduces a “right to cure” for tenants who have missed a month of rent, but had not previously been delinquent. In those instances, a landlord will be required to give a three-day notice that an eviction will be filed, and within those three days, the tenant will have the right to pay the rent to remedy the situation.
“It's going to be of limited utility, but there are some tenants that that's definitely going to help,” Griffin said. “In a lot of this kind of [advocacy work], where there's this very entrenched and powerful opposition, being able to get anywhere feels pretty good. But I think overall we still would call this bill slightly worse for tenants, because of some of the other stuff that was in it.”
SB 38 does loosen the requirements for how a landlord is required to serve an eviction notice, a hit, he said, to tenants’ representation groups that have typically relied on landlords improperly serving notices as an avenue to defend renters.
"Now you will potentially have plainclothes officers, off-duty officers going and trying to serve evictions at a very vulnerable time, and people being pretty defensive." - Brennan Griffin, senior deputy director of Texas Appleseed
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Griffin also has his eye on a measure that will change the way the courts handle appeals in eviction cases. With the passage of SB 38, if a tenant wants to appeal an eviction judgment against them, the onus will be on the tenant to prove the retrial is appropriate. The justice of the peace, the court that handles eviction cases at first instance, will be required to supply documents related to the eviction case to the county court.
The problem here is that justice of the peace courts are not courts of record, meaning there are no hearing transcripts. Until now, the county court has completely retried appealed eviction cases without considering the justice of the peace’s findings. Griffin said it’s “a bit fuzzy” how that will be worked out and implemented by the courts, but for tenants, “it’s not great.”
And, while constables have typically served judgments brought against tenants, the bill will now allow for plain clothes officers to serve them if a constable does not do so in a timely manner. That’s an amendment that advocates have become “extremely concerned” about in recent months as immigration raids have swept through the country, Griffin said.
“It was becoming clear during the session that ICE is working with plainclothes, masks, no badge numbers, nothing like that, heightening the fear. And now you will potentially have plainclothes officers, off-duty officers going and trying to serve evictions at a very vulnerable time, and people being pretty defensive,” Griffin said. “We just think it's a volatile situation already. … There's definitely going to be a lot more room for these situations to escalate unnecessarily.”
