The practice of squatting has regenerated a tricky conversation to tackle an issue surrounded by a legal gray area and intensely personal feelings of violation and helplessness.
So, what is squatting?
It depends on your legal guidance, but perhaps the most widely accepted definition involves a person moving into a home they do not own and claiming it as their own.
To make that unsettling idea even worse, there’s little a homeowner can do about it.
The practice of squatting can be traced back to Medieval England.
In the U.S., it’s linked to significant periods in history, such as the California Gold Rush, the Great Depression and World War II.
Today, the renewed concern over squatting may be linked to a part of American history we’re witnessing in real-time: the crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border.
A TikTok video went viral in the spring of 2024. It depicts a man believed to be Venezuelan telling people they can come to the U.S., move into a home and claim squatters’ rights to stay.
‘Squatters Rights’
In the state of Texas, ‘squatters rights’ are not officially spelled out or protected by any legal definition.
There is something called adverse possession.
“It’s a concept in the law that dates back in our common law to England. It actually predates the founding of the United States,” said Greg Zlotnick, visiting clinical assistant professor and supervising attorney for the Consumer Protection Clinic at Saint Mary’s University School of Law.
Here’s the example Zlotnick used:
“Let’s say we’ve got two farmers who work land side-by-side, and there’s a patch out in the in the far, far reaches of their land. Farmer A starts to go over onto Farmer B’s land, maybe accidentally at first, and maybe they’re not quite sure where the boundaries are. Farmer A starts growing crops in Farmer B’s land,” he said.
“After ten years, Farmer A could actually make a claim to make that patch of land that was Farmer B’s as their own,” said Zlotnick.
But that is only after ten years pass with continued, positive use of the previously unused land without that use being disputed.
Why law enforcement can’t step in
Precinct 4 Bexar County Constable Kathryn Brown estimates her office deals with the highest number of calls about suspected squatting in the county.
She believes that is the case not because of recorded data, but because her precinct has the highest homeless population.
The constable’s office does not keep track of the number of squatting reports it receives.
Neither does the San Antonio Police Department.
“We were first introduced to our most egregious squatting complaint during Covid,” said Brown, who says the call came from a friend.
“He had called me frantically complaining about how his electric bill quadrupled,” she said. “They saw an electric cord from his power outlet outside in the back of his church (going) over the fence into a vacant home with squatters in it stealing his electricity.”
KSAT covered this story in March of 2023.
Bexar County owned the East Side home at the time.
Eventually, the city’s Dangerous Assessment Response Team inspected the house and determined that the people staying there had no right to live there and the house was deemed a safety hazard.
Court records showed a man who was staying at the home filed a lawsuit claiming the house on Morningview St. was his.
The same man had also filed a similar lawsuit claiming he owned another home on the West side of San Antonio.
“Police decided, well, it’s a civil matter. We’re going to stay out of it. But in reality, what he was doing was burglary,” attorney David Dilley, who represented the owners of the house, told KSAT in March 2023.
The person who owned the East Side home on Morningview St. before Bexar County had passed away before squatters moved in.
Brown says her office got the squatters out because of that power cord.
“The individuals were not able to produce a lease and said that they were just temporarily staying there,” she said. “And so being that we saw the electricity, you know, being over the church’s fence into the vacant home, we issued them no trespassing documents and got them out of the home.”
Brown says a law must be broken for law enforcement to force squatters to leave a property.
The problem is there are no squatting laws in Texas.
“If you suspect that there’s a vacant home of a good friend that you know that perhaps passed away or something, and you know that the family don’t live nowhere close by, who do you call to say, ‘I think I have a possible squatter living next to me,’ Brown asked.
Law enforcement might be on the receiving end of many such calls, but Brown asks, “And what could we do if they’re not breaking the law?”
Texas lawmakers taking notice
In May 2024, the Local Government Committee of the Texas Senate held a hearing on the issue of squatting as part of a charge from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to examine how state laws can be changed to address the issue.
Senators heard testimony from people who have dealt with squatters.
“I told a handyman, ‘Hey, don’t come to the house. I’m going to be out of town for about two or three weeks,’” Terri Boyette, a homeowner from Mesquite, Texas, told the committee. “He broke into my home. I called the police. They said, ‘How long has he been there?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been gone about two weeks.’ And they said, ‘Well, this is (a) civil matter, you’ll have to go to court.’”
Boyette testified it took seven months to get the squatter out of her house.
Suspected squatting cases can cross into a complicated area of landlord-tenant law, especially if, at one point, the person was permitted to be in the home.
Let’s say a contractor was allowed to stay at a house while making repairs.
Or a guest was allowed to live there for a short time.
Current law could view that person as a tenant, so homeowners might have to evict someone to remove them.
“I think a lot of these depend on the facts, the specific facts. And for how long someone has been staying there,” said Zlotnick.
“If they have stayed there past a month, even if you only rented it for two weeks ... it is possible that the person who’s still staying there, they’ve breached their contract, almost certainly,” Zlotnick continued. “They are subject to removal, almost certainly. But they might be able to claim- possibly defensively, possibly not- that they’re entitled to the protections of landlord-tenant law, which require an eviction rather than a summary removal from law enforcement.”
Texas law requires at least a three-day notice before someone can be evicted.
An owner can file an eviction lawsuit if the person doesn’t leave.
Those cases are typically heard between 10 and 21 days after a suit is filed.
What you can do
With the laws that exist — or don’t exist — in Texas related to squatting, what can you do to better protect yourself and your property?
“The burden does fall on property owners to be really cautious and careful about the agreements they enter into,” Zlotnick said.
Remember, some agreements can be verbal, whether you intend to make one or not, when inviting someone into your home.
So, put everything in writing and include start and end dates.
If you have a vacant home or a second property, make sure you check on it regularly.
“There seems to be a correlation for the longer that a person is living someplace, the less likely that law enforcement will be to come in and remove them,” said Zlotnick.
While legislators are looking at ways to change laws, there are concerns about unintended consequences.
“Putting these into place might invite abuse from someone who claims to be the true owner and is not,” said attorney Rusty Adam during the Texas Senate hearing in May. “How is it going to affect a short-term renter?”
“Outside of the generally applicable laws against trespass, burglary, property destruction, and then the eviction process, there’s nothing that really covers this fairly narrow area,” Zlotnick said.