As housing costs continue to climb and homelessness remains a persistent challenge across the country, a less visible issue has increasingly drawn public attention: squatting.
Stories of property owners unable to regain possession of vacant homes have fueled legislative action in numerous states, while advocates and researchers argue that the phenomenon cannot be understood apart from the broader housing affordability crisis.
In an interview with the Vanguard, Kyle Sweetland of the Pacific Legal Foundation argued that the rise in squatting reflects both weaknesses in existing legal procedures and deeper housing market problems.
“I think the big issue obviously is that for property owners, there’s a couple of issues here,” Sweetland said. “The first one and the one that we care about at PLF at first is the fact that property owners are not able to get into their homes.”
Sweetland said many owners face lengthy delays when attempting to remove squatters through civil court proceedings.
“I’ve seen stories where they’re not only having to wait for squatters to be removed through a civil eviction process that can take anywhere from six months to two years, but they may sustain a ton of property damage and insurance doesn’t necessarily cover that either and they’re being kept out of their homes during that entire process of waiting,” he said.
The issue has attracted national attention. A recent New York Times report detailed a growing market of high-end squatting cases involving luxury and vacant properties, highlighting the legal difficulties owners encounter when occupants claim tenancy rights or produce documents that require courts to determine whether they are legitimate.
Sweetland believes squatting is connected to larger structural problems.
“I think that the squatting issue, like the homelessness issue that we see on the rise around the country, is more symptoms of the larger problem we have with our housing crisis,” he said. “And I think that’s why we’re seeing that issue with squatting specifically on the rise today.”
According to Sweetland, squatting itself is not a new phenomenon. What has changed, he argues, is both its frequency and public visibility.
“At least those are the theories out there. I can’t say that they’re proven, but based on the timeline and the number of cases I’ve been seen filed in the court system related to squatting, that seems to line up pretty well with the timing of all those things,” he said. “But squatting isn’t a new issue. It’s something that’s existed in the past as well, but not to this degree.”
Sweetland pointed to several possible factors, including information shared on social media about legal loopholes and the economic pressures many renters faced after pandemic-era rent protections expired.
“I think people were learning about that online through social media,” he said. “And also a lot of people were … I think that when this rise in squatting really took off was in the early 2020s around the time when the COVID rent moratoriums came out of hibernation and suddenly renters are being faced with a much higher cost of renting their current place and they may not be able to afford that anymore.”
One of the central issues, according to Sweetland, is that law enforcement officers often cannot immediately determine whether someone occupying a property is a squatter, a tenant, or someone with a legitimate claim to reside there.
As a result, many disputes are routed into civil court systems that were originally designed to resolve landlord-tenant conflicts rather than unauthorized occupation cases.
California has adopted a distinctive approach. Sweetland noted that property owners can file a trespass authorization letter with local law enforcement before a property becomes vacant.
“In California, it’s unique in that you file what they call a 602 letter with the police department,” he said. “That basically gives the police the knowledge that whoever is on this property is a squatter and they have the right to cite them for that. But if you don’t do that, then you have to go through the civil channels, which again, take more time.”
California recently expanded the duration of those notices from 30 days to one year.
“The changes California made were to expand that no trespassing letter from 30 days to one year,” Sweetland said. “So it gave a significantly larger margin of time once you file a letter.”
Still, he believes the requirement remains burdensome because owners must act before a problem occurs.
“I think the issue with it is that you’re still having to be proactively filing a letter in advance of anything like that happening,” he said. “And that may not be the first thing people are thinking to do when their property is vacant.”
Sweetland highlighted Georgia as one example of a state that has significantly accelerated the removal process.
Under reforms signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp, property owners can file affidavits asserting that unauthorized occupants are squatters, triggering a faster review process.
“The new process basically allows the property owner to sign an affidavit and saying that I’m the property owner and this person who is on my property, I’m testifying under perjury law is a squatter and not supposed to be here,” Sweetland said.
He said the new framework dramatically reduced waiting times.
“That process goes from taking eight months to determine if this is a squatter to 10 days,” he said. “And that’s a significant amount of time for the property owner who doesn’t have to rent another place and doesn’t necessarily have to deal with any sort of damage to their property.”
The Pacific Legal Foundation has promoted a model proposal known as the Stop Squatters Act, which incorporates similar concepts.
“It’s pretty similar,” Sweetland said. “It tries to speed up that process in a similar way through that affidavit and in turn that creates this separate process a little faster.”
For Sweetland, the fundamental concern remains the amount of time property owners can be excluded from their own homes.
“Yeah, that’s the main concern,” he said. “The amount of time, six months to two years is pretty long time to be kept out of your own home.”
At the same time, Sweetland acknowledged that removing squatters does not address the underlying reasons many people may have occupied a property in the first place.
“I think that that’s an important point you’re bringing up,” he said. “This isn’t the end all. If you’re going to remove a squatter out of their home, they need a place to go. They’re going to be homeless, I’m guessing, at that point.”
He said more research is needed to understand who squatters are and how closely squatting is connected to homelessness.
“Who are these people? I couldn’t tell from digging in the court dockets myself,” he said. “It doesn’t identify who these people are. Obviously, I believe that they’re homeless.”
Sweetland repeatedly returned to housing supply and affordability as key factors.
“I think if you’re getting the root of that, having an abundance of housing that’s not as expensive is really important,” he said. “So I think having a healthy institution of housing supply be a really primary issue for anybody who’s serious about how do we reduce squatting and how do we reduce homelessness.”
He pointed to Houston as an example of a city that has reduced homelessness through coordinated services and lower housing costs.
Sweetland also argued that lower housing costs generally correlate with lower homelessness rates.
“The research has shown that homelessness is lower in cities that have lower rent burdens and lower costs of housing,” he said.
One aspect of his research that surprised him was how difficult even legal professionals found the process.
“I think just realizing how complicated the process is,” Sweetland said. “It just shows you how complicated it can be even for people who are very well versed in the law to navigate this process.”
The issue has gained increasing legislative attention nationwide. Sweetland said he found a sharp increase in states adopting laws that criminalize squatting or create expedited procedures for removing unauthorized occupants.
“From May 24 to July 25, it went from eight states criminalizing squatting to an additional 15 states doing so,” he said. “You can see that states are paying more attention to this issue and trying to deal with this issue in the legislative process as well.”
Yet even as lawmakers move to strengthen property-owner protections, the broader debate remains unresolved.
For critics, squatting illustrates the failures of housing policy, homelessness response systems and affordability challenges. For property owners, it raises questions about how long someone can occupy private property before legal protections become obstacles to reclaiming it.
The debate increasingly reflects two realities that many policymakers struggle to reconcile: the right of property owners to regain possession of their homes quickly and the reality that rising housing costs continue to leave more people vulnerable to homelessness. As legislatures across the country continue to revise squatting laws, both concerns are likely to remain at the center of the conversation.
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It’s unbelievable that squatters can’t be removed almost immediately.
This is something that needs to change.
One a related note, a couple of days ago I heard that about 20% of the homes in College Park are unoccupied, and that homeless people have set up camp in the backyards. I haven’t confirmed any of this, but the story came from an elected official who presumably has reliable sources.
Although I don’t consider the situation to be desirable, I’m nevertheless struck by how resourceful the homeless can be in finding the nooks and crannies unnoticed by the general population that are available for occupation.