Texas Landlord Groups Push 'Squatter' Legislation as a Trojan Horse for Eviction Protections

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Texas Landlord Groups Push 'Squatter' Legislation as a Trojan Horse for Eviction Protections
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Attorney Mark Melton, board chair for the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, criticizes proposed Texas legislation framing evictions as targeting 'squatters' to circumvent due process protections. Melton argues that the legislation is a harmful ploy to weaken tenant rights and exacerbate homelessness, as genuine 'squatter' situations are rare.

Attorney Mark Melton during a hearing in Dallas, Sept. 14, 2022. Melton, board chair for the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, opposes proposed legislation in Austin which he says will make it easier for landlords to evict tenants without due process.For months now, the landlord associations have been courting the Texas Legislature to make it even easier than it already is to evict poor tenants. But instead of calling it what it is, they have framed their request as a need to evict “squatters.

Before the pandemic, fewer than 3% of tenants had a lawyer. Most of the time landlords could just walk into a courtroom and get an eviction without any evidence that a tenant had breached their lease. Back in 1974, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said the courts were never meant to be “rubber stamps for landlords seeking to evict their tenants.” But that’s exactly what was happening in Dallas courts.

Landlords have decided that because the rules no longer work for them, they want to change the rules. It’s not squatters they’re concerned about; it’s real tenants, the majority of which have children in the home. Usually, it’s single moms and their kids. But, obviously, the landlords can’t say that out loud, so they instead reframe it with an unsympathetic villain, the imaginary squatter.

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