Iowa recently joined the ranks of states wrestling with squatters who have taken over vacant residential properties, in a bid to strengthen the property rights of owners.

Late last month, state lawmakers filed a bill requiring law enforcement to investigate and remove squatters immediately if an investigation determines that a lease doesn’t exist and there is no relationship between the landlord and the occupant.

Iowa joins a wave of legislation across the country that has been underway for more than a year to address an issue that housing advocates view as minor. However, the states passing the laws also signal that they will do what’s necessary to protect property rights, particularly after COVID-19 eviction and foreclosure moratoriums logjammed the legal system and exploiting squatters.

Squatting became a felony in Wyoming in a law that took effect last month, shifting from civil legal action to criminal. It allows law enforcement to remove squatters immediately. New York, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama have passed similar laws. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has pledged to get squatter law reform through the state legislature this year. North Carolina and Pennsylvania are working laws.

Some experts still consider the problem small. For example, Juan Pablo Garnham, a researcher and communications manager at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, told the Washington Post last year that squatting is “an extremely rare issue.”

Little data exists on squatting. In 2023, the National Rental Housing Council surveyed its members and released the results through the media. Atlanta topped the country with an estimated 1,200 homes taken over by squatters. Dallas-Fort Worth clocked in at 475 homes.

Those numbers are a small fraction of the number of investor-owned homes for rent in Atlanta. Last year, a General Accounting Office report put the total at about 72,000 as of 2022, the country's highest. In Dallas-Fort Worth, the number is at 27,000.

Squatters don’t just occupy rental property. For-sale homes have been targets as well.

Atlanta real estate attorney David Metzger has seen squatters occupy newly built homes waiting to be sold. He’s also seen them occupy million-dollar homes in wealthy north Fulton County suburbs and small homes in poor neighborhoods elsewhere in the county.

Squatting in Atlanta

Squatting wasn’t much of a problem prior to the pandemic. Standard evictions passed through the court system in their usual time periods.

But eviction and foreclosure moratoriums enacted during the pandemic changed the landscape. Renters would stop paying rent and it would ride out the time until eviction proceedings resumed. Once the moratoriums were lifted in October 21, eviction cases started flowing.

The courts got such a huge backlog of cases, that all of a sudden, instead of taking 45 to 60 days, now it's taking seven months, 8 months, nine months, maybe more for an eviction,” Metzger said.

Not only were the courts backed up, but sheriff personnel were swamped with evictions.

It all created prime conditions for squatters. Frequently, tenants would leave their places before the eviction and rather than find a new place to rent, they would find a place to squat, knowing how difficult it was to remove them.

This happened when rents were skyrocketing in Atlanta and other Sunbelt markets in 2021 and 2022.

The common denominator that I have seen is that it's a property that is vacant for whatever reason, whether it's just nobody's doing anything with it, or more commonly, it's being listed for rent or it's being listed for sale,” Metzger said. “It's being advertised in a way that makes it public to the squatters, and they're able to look at that advertisement and determine that's a property that's vacant, that it's going to be easy for me to break into.”

And squatters became more sophisticated and brazen. An Atlanta television station found an Instagram account advertising homes that could be occupied without rent as squatter homes. Prospective squatters paid a fee to access these homes.

Technology that property managers and owners had been slow to adopt before the pandemic suddenly crossed the barrier to heavy adoption during the pandemic. Contactless entry meant a person didn’t need to be at a location in person.

But it had the unintended consequence of easing the path for squatters.

I have seen where folks have used some of these programs where you make an application, and you get approved in some way, and then you know you'll get a key code to a lock box,” Metzger said.

No one was getting arrested. And there was no deterrence.

If they were caught, many would show a fake lease and police officers would have to leave because then it became a civil matter. A fake lease essentially became real to a certain degree because the eviction process was the same.

In 2023, we were seeing a huge increase in squatting activity in the metro Atlanta area,” Metzger said. “And no one was talking about it.”

The courts weren’t much help. Judges frequently dismissed squatter cases because they tended to be filed under the wrong law.

Change in Georgia Law

Florida was the first to pass a squatters reform law last year but Georgia was the first to take effect.

Georgia's change is rooted in an intruder law that existed before the Civil War. Metzger said few lawyers or sheriff departments knew about it, but he discovered it in 2016 when he was handling a squatter case.

Under the original law, an owner provides an affidavit showing right of possession, the intruder is removed if they can’t provide a counter affidavit immediately. The law Gov. Brian Kemp signed last April, amended the old law, which gives the squatter three days to show a lease or counter affidavit. If they do, a court hearing must be set seven days later. Instead of a jury trial, the judge decides, and the case is criminal instead of civil.

It's very frustrating for people that are having this happen,” Kemp said when he signed the law. We have had laws on the book like a lot of other states have had."

Metzger said that the squatter typically leaves within three days because they don’t want their belongings removed and placed on the street. If they show a fake lease, they typically don’t show up to the hearing.

 For a squatter to take the case to trial, “that would take some guts because you committed a lot of crimes at that point in time,” Metzger said.