Prior to this year’s legislative session, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked state lawmakers to look for ways to “secure Texas” from the plight of people illegally occupying residential spaces. Gov. Greg Abbott also promised to address “the increasing problem that we face in the state caused by squatters.”
However, the legislation that emerged has little, if anything, to do with squatting, as housing experts define it. Instead, it would fundamentally alter the eviction process for millions of Texas renters, making it easier for landlords to evict them, often without notice or legal proceedings.
Tenant advocates, judges, and lawyers have sounded the alarm about House Bill 32, calling it a Trojan Horse that would deprive tenants of due process rights and undermine judicial authority.
“The presumption here is that landlords have the correct case, and any defense that a tenant has is false,” said Ben Martin, research director at Texas Housers, a nonprofit. “It makes the eviction process in Texas, once and for all, a rubber stamp for landlords.”
Current law requires landlords to give tenants a three-day notice to vacate before beginning eviction proceedings. After an eviction is filed, each case is scheduled for a hearing before a justice of the peace.
However, the proposed law would eliminate the requirement for a landlord to provide a notice to vacate when evicting a tenant for reasons other than rent arrears. If a tenant is accused of smoking in a non-designated area, for example, a landlord may file an eviction notice immediately, which will be recorded in the tenant’s rental history. Tenants who fall behind on their rent will still receive a notice to vacate.
However, in both cases, if a landlord claims there are “no genuinely disputed facts” in the case, they can request a summary judgment, which means the eviction case will be resolved without a trial.
HB 32, authored by Richardson state Rep. Angie Chen Button, appears to be the result of an interim charge issued by Texas Senate President Patrick. Last year, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, invited property owners to share “squatter horror stories” and promised to help them “come and take it back.”
During the hearing, Crystal Moya, a property manager representing the Texas Apartment Association, requested the Legislature’s assistance in “reforming the eviction process,” which she described as time-consuming, expensive, and ineffective.
When 11 squatters moved into the Dallas apartment complex she managed, Moya said it took six months and $150,000 to reclaim possession of the units.
“Prospective residents that had qualified for these units were not allowed to be housed because those units were occupied by squatters and at the end of it, everyone was overwhelmed,” she told me.
When Bettencourt’s committee made its recommendations, it suggested passing legislation to speed up evictions, such as allowing for summary disposition and establishing “strict timelines” for eviction proceedings.
Many of these recommendations are now included in HB 32. Bettencourt is expected to file a Senate companion bill, but has not yet done so.
Many people wonder whether Texas actually has a squatting problem. Squatting cases are rare, according to Adam Swartz, a Dallas justice of the peace, and current law clearly states that property owners have the right to remove people who are unlawfully occupying their property.
Last year, Rusty Adams, an attorney at Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center, told lawmakers that while Texas case law does not clearly define what constitutes a squatter, “the Texas statutes are pretty clear what we’re really talking about here is trespassing.”
The Texas Apartment Association appears to want to redefine squatting to include tenants who are behind on their rent. According to Chris Newton, the association’s executive vice president, squatting refers to “situations when a person occupies a vacant property, refuses to vacate a property, or lives in a rental property without the owner’s consent.”
During the interim hearing, lawmakers cited a National Rental Home Council survey from 2024, which found Dallas had one of the highest numbers of illegally occupied homes in the country, with 475 that year.
That represents a small percentage of the households facing eviction. According to data compiled by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, over 84,000 households in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were evicted last year. In Harris and Galveston counties, the figure was 77,000, accounting for 8% of all renter households.
Evictions can follow tenants for years, making it more difficult to find housing in the future. Simply having an eviction filing on a person’s rental history, even if they win the case in court, can cause landlords to deny future rental applications.
If the bill becomes law, many tenants will discover they have had an eviction filed against them only after they have lost their case, leaving them with no opportunity to defend themselves.
“You’re talking about someone’s home here,” said Ryan Marquez, director of the Civil Justice Clinic at the University of Houston Law Center. “You want more protection, not less. And I believe this results in far fewer protections for tenants seeking to see a judge.
Prior to the COVID pandemic, less than 3% of tenants facing eviction in Texas had legal representation. However, as millions of people lost their jobs in early 2020, cities and states, including Texas, halted all evictions for nonpayment of rent, fearing a “tsunami of evictions” that would speed up the spread of the coronavirus and leave people homeless.
When courts reopened, judges were more open to legal aid attorneys assisting tenants with the process. Nonprofits such as Lone Star Legal Aid in Houston and the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center set up shop outside courtrooms, offering free representation to clients as they arrived for their hearings. Cities and counties provided million-dollar grants to support their efforts.
More than 60% of tenants who appear in court in Dallas County now have legal representation, according to Mark Melton, the Advocacy Center’s founder and a prominent corporate attorney in Dallas.
He claimed Button’s bill would make it more difficult for organizations like his to operate by requiring cities and counties that fund their efforts to provide equal funding for relocation assistance. In practice, this means that providing legal aid would become prohibitively expensive.
Lawyers and judges referred to the provision as a “poison pill” for legal aid providers.
Melton describes HB 32 as “a direct response to the accountability that these legal aid programs have put in place.”
Newton, of the Texas Apartment Association, stated that the bill would “provide Texas property owners with a more efficient judicial process to quickly resolve claims of possession for both squatting and non-contested evictions.”
Button did not respond to a request for comment.
Justice of the Peace courts have long been referred to as “people’s courts,” as they are designed to give ordinary citizens access to the judicial system.
However, by denying tenants the right to a trial and requiring judges to rule in favor of the plaintiff in certain circumstances, the bill “defeats the purpose of a justice of the peace,” said Marquez, a University of Houston law professor.
And because cases that go to trial must be heard within 21 days, judges say they will have to deprioritize other cases to address evictions. “It removes a whole lot of judicial discretion, both on how to run your court and what kind of decision making you can make,” said Swartz, the Dallas justice of the peace.
The bill also allows landlords to file evictions in precincts close to where the property is located.
According to Michael Cody Moore, a former JP in Fort Bend County who now serves as a municipal judge in Needville, if landlords were allowed to file cases in adjacent precincts, renters in rural Fort Bend County would have to travel more than an hour to court, posing unique challenges for low-income Texans who do not have access to a car. “It does seem to erode the whole point of having a regional people’s court,” he said, adding that Button’s bill appeared to be potentially unconstitutional.
Melton also characterized it as anti-democratic. “People vote for the JPs who will judge them. Now we’re saying, ‘We’ll let judges who you didn’t vote for judge you.'”
