This story was updated at 8:53 a.m. Tuesday, March 25.
The Georgia Senate Public Safety Committee Monday passed the “anti-squatters act” that establishes a process for requiring law enforcement officers to remove people accused of illegally staying at a residential property.
Under House Bill 61, people who stay in residential properties, hotels or cars without the owner’s express permission are guilty of misdemeanor unlawful squatting. Any person violating the law would be subject to having law enforcement officers remove them from the property within 10 days of notification.
The bill’s advancement by a 7-2 committee vote comes on the heels of a coalition of housing rights advocates heading into a disappointing homestretch of the 2025 legislative session after seeing little progress on bipartisan bills aimed at protecting Georgians from higher rents, problematic landlords and increasing threats of eviction.
If passed, people convicted of unlawful squatting must also pay restitution based on fair market rent to the property owner.
The squatters bill will next go to the Senate Rules Committee, which determines which legislation will be heard in the chamber by April 4, the last day of this year’s legislative session.
The bill’s supporters argue that it closes loopholes in the anti-squatting laws.
Housing rights advocates have argued that the bill infringes on the due process that should be afforded to people who have been living in extended stay hotels for long periods of time. They also contend that HB 61 would treat all squatters as criminals, regardless of whether they were the victim of a fraud and had been paying rent to a person who claimed to be the lawful owner.
Innkeepers are permitted to evict tenants and withhold belongings if they fall behind on payments or overstay their welcome under the anti-squatting law.
Marietta Republican Rep. Devan Seabaugh, the bill’s sponsor, said that extended stay hotels are still businesses rather than social safety nets for families who cannot afford traditional housing.
“They play an important role in our communities, and they often provide affordable, flexible lodging for individuals and families in transition, whether due to job changes housing shortages or emergencies,” Seabaugh said. “I think we can all agree on that, and we recognize and appreciate how helpful they are to people facing hard times, but at their core, these are private businesses, not public housing providers or charitable shelters.”
Seabaugh said the bill’s requirement of the property owner providing police with an affidavit is not trying to target holdover tenants but instead people who are illegally occupying a property.
Testimony was offered during the legislative committee process about a family that had been paying daily for several months for a room at an extended stay hotel who had their possessions removed and left outside the hotel because the family missed an 11 a.m. checkout time payment. Other witnesses reported that thousands of long-term residents of these hotels would be harmed by the proposed legislation.
Stone Mountain Democratic Sen. Kim Jackson argued that there should be a distinction between squatters and tenants who have consistently paid their rent but may have fallen behind for a few days.
“A squatter is someone who intentionally goes into my house and sets up camp and says, ‘it’s my place,’” Jackson said. “A person who’s been staying in an extended hotel for a year straight and misses a day, they’re not a squatter, they’re a person who’s late. To charge them with criminal trespass and to set them out and their kids out is an injustice.”
Sen. Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican, said the new anti-squatting measure could provide better regulation over the many extended stay hotels that he says are magnets for crime.
Robertson said that more effort can be put into engaging government agencies like the state’s Division of Family and Children Services to support families living in long term hotels who are at risk of becoming unhoused.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.
