State legislatures seem to be obsessed with squatters these days — and the corporate-dominated American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has played a major role in advancing legislation to crack down on them.
As homelessness reaches record highs and over 21 million households nationwide spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, state legislators have decided what the problem is. It’s not that there are an estimated 1.4 million abandoned residential properties in the U.S., or that private equity landlords have gobbled up over 10 percent of the country’s apartments. The problem is the people who take up residence in empty properties or overstay in apartments after being invited in tenants who have left — despite little evidence of an increase in squatting.
After five states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and West Virginia) enacted new laws last year criminalizing squatting and adopting expedited procedures for removing squatters, ALEC adopted a model Stop Squatters Act in July 2024 that seeks to accomplish the same goal.
Legislation closely tracking — or in some cases exceeding — ALEC’s model was enacted into law in 10 states this year (Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Texas, and Wyoming, with Florida and West Virginia adding to what was already passed last year), and in six of those an ALEC state chair was the author, lead sponsor, or cosponsor of the bill.
The new laws create real risks that housing-insecure people will get further caught up in the dragnet of criminalization, with fewer legal protections, advocates say.
ALEC-aligned legislators argue that squatting provides a false solution to homelessness as housing costs explode. Just as concerning, they used the anti-squatter push in Texas to unsuccessfully advance a broad-based attack on the rights of tenants, and in Maryland, to successfully push back against Good Cause Eviction reforms.
Critics say the legislation is a solution in search of a problem.
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“There’s no real evidence of any significant squatting crisis despite what the industry claims,” says Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project (NHLP). “One of the industry lobbying groups surveyed their members and found that there were 1,200 cases of squatting in Atlanta -– but you can’t see the survey results, just their report on it.”
The survey numbers are based on an indeterminate number of years, and there is no indication of a trend as this was the first time the rental industry conducted a survey on the issue. It is also unclear how the survey defined squatting.
Either way, the result of the legislation will be to increase dangerous encounters between police and tenants, Dunn argued.
“No matter who you are, if you’re a tenant or a squatter, you don’t want the police knocking on your door,” he said. “It’s just a recipe for more dangerous encounters between people and police.”
ALEC’s Model Anti-Squatter Bill
The legislative push has been driven by ALEC and the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), an affiliate of the right-wing State Policy Network. Originally founded in 1973 as the Conservative Caucus of State Legislators, ALEC has grown to become one of the leading drafters of state legislation across the U.S., a pay-to-play clearinghouse for corporate interests to advance their agenda — with particular efficacy in red states.
The model legislation was released in conjunction with a report by the PLF entitled “Locking Squatters Out,” which cited a 2023 survey of landlords by the National Rental Home Association that found a post-pandemic jump in “squatting” cases in Georgia, and an increase in New York since 2020.
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ALEC’s model bill distinguishes between tenants and squatters, but provides no protections for family members of tenants, and provides no opportunity for a court hearing prior to removal. Once a property owner files a complaint, law enforcement is required to issue a “notice to immediately vacate” and “put the owner in possession of the real property” if “preliminary fact-finding” supports the owner’s claim.
ALEC does not disclose its funders. The pro-landlord California Association of Realtors Mobilization PAC gave the PLF a $150,000 grant in 2023. In the past, the group’s biggest funders have been the Charles Koch foundations and the right-wing Searle Freedom Trust, which also donate heavily to ALEC.
At a meeting in December 2024, an ALEC official trumpeted the anti-squatter bill as one of the group’s top priorities for 2025. And in Arkansas, Indiana, and Montana, staff for the PLF testified in favor of anti-squatting legislation. In Florida, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity (AFP) lobbied in favor of one of the bills.
The following is an overview of legislation aligned with ALEC’s model bill that passed in the 2025 session.
Arkansas
Arkansas passed HB 1049, “A Bill To Amend Arkansas Law Concerning Criminal Offenses; And To Criminalize Unlawful Squatting,” which was signed into law by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) on March 4, 2025, with no exclusion for family members of former tenants. Sanders said on Facebook that, “In Arkansas, we protect property owners and now allow law enforcement to kick squatters off their property.”
Jeff Rosenzweig, an attorney in Little Rock, testified against the legislation, warning lawmakers that the way it was written will lead to catching “people that I don’t think [the lead sponsor] was trying to catch, but because it’s a criminal statute I think we need to fix that … with just dropping the relevant criminal trespass defenses into the bill.”
The bill was cosponsored by State Representative David Ray (R-69), who is one of ALEC’s Arkansas state chairs.
Florida
Under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis (R), Florida pioneered the anti-squatter push, passing an anti-squatter bill (HB 621) in 2024. This legislation was more expansive than the ALEC model bill in that there is no requirement for a sheriff to perform an investigation prior to evicting the occupant if the owner attests to a list of facts.
Florida doubled down this year, passing SB 322, expanding the squatter bill to include commercial real estate property and permit the use of force, and SB 606, authorizing the immediate removal of transients and unwanted guests from hotels, motels, and food service establishments.
“Florida doesn’t tolerate squatters; we stand with property owners,” DeSantis said in June.
Cynthia Laurent, the housing justice campaigner at the advocacy group Florida Rising, stated that the two pieces of legislation are just another way to further tilt the state’s laws in favor of landlords and against tenants.
“What they are doing is amplifying … [a] very few small examples of people who have dealt with the issue of squatting,” Laurent told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). “Legislators say, ‘This is for property rights, this is for public safety.’ But the true public safety solution is to make sure that folks are safe and secure in their housing.”
Laurent sees the anti-squatter push as part of a broader effort to crack down on tenants’ rights that is increasing homelessness in Florida.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, Florida Rising and other pro-tenant organizations had won Tenants’ Bills of Rights and Offices of Tenant Advocacy in various Democratic-leaning Florida cities, Laurent explained. But those wins were blocked — “preempted” — by the Florida state legislature. ALEC has also been deeply involved in promoting preemption legislation.
“There’s skyrocketing insurance costs in Florida due to disasters,” which pushes people out of home ownership, Laurent pointed out. The situation for renters is equally bad. ”Since the pandemic there has been an increase in private equity coming into the state purchasing homes to rent them out and make profit that way,” she said. “It was revealed that landlords were colluding in setting prices artificially high using platforms like RealPage, those renters were then forced into a motel/hotel lease [and] technically … designated as transient.”
By expanding the squatter legislation to mo