Squatters Bill 2.0: Legislation targets residents of long-stay hotels

Last year’s bill “was a strong start ... but it left loopholes,” Seabaugh said. “They’re still being exploited by individuals who unlawfully take over homes, storefronts and hotel rooms, refusing to leave and costing owners time, money and peace of mind.”

Opponents say the bill gives expansive powers to hotel and property owners while stripping residents of due process protections when they face allegations of squatting or trespassing.

The Georgia Senate Committee on Public Safety passed the legislation, House Bill 61, by a majority, with two senators dissenting. Next, the Senate Rules Committee will determine whether to advance the bill to the Senate floor for a full vote.

The fifth section of the bill revives a measure to define extended-stay hotel residents as guests. Housing advocates say the provision would allow hotel owners and management to enlist law enforcement to remove them as trespassers if they are late on even one payment, effectively stripping them of the ability to claim rights as a tenant and undoing legal rights established in the 2023 Georgia Supreme Court ruling Efficiency Lodge Inc. v. Neason.

Seabaugh had proposed protections for extended-stay owners and operators in the Innkeeper Reform Act, which stalled in the House Judiciary Committee after it was tabled in February.

At that time, Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, questioned why state resources should be spent policing long-stay motels and hotels that profit through a risky business model, and why hotels couldn’t hire their own security to remove nonpaying guests.

The Georgia Anti-Squatters Act received a warmer reception before the Senate Committee on Public Safety during testimony this past week. Roswell Republican and Chairman John Albers praised Seabaugh on Monday, calling his work on the issue “nothing short of extraordinary.”

During the hearing, Seabaugh addressed critics who fear a bill backed by the extended-stay industry will strip vulnerable families of the few rights they have and who have assailed the latest iteration of the bill as even more draconian.

“When someone refuses to leave after their agreed stay or tries to claim tenant rights without paying, it threatens the entire business model and reduces availability for others who need temporary housing,” Seabaugh said.

He told committee members the only way residents can claim tenancy is if they have a written agreement establishing a landlord-tenant relationship, even though some residents live in extended stays for years, typically under week-to-week contracts. Extended stays are neither “social safety nets” nor “de facto housing agencies,” the lawmaker argued.

Under the bill, hotel owners would have the power to ask law enforcement to remove residents, long-term or otherwise, by submitting a written affidavit.

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

‘We know people lie’

Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, argued residents should be given the opportunity to defend against allegations presented in an affidavit, which she said should not be accepted on face value.

“The fact remains that these extended stays are serving as safety nets for households. We’re setting up a situation where someone who has literally lived in a place for three months, six months, a year, two years, can just be set out the very next day,” Jackson said.

She said a hotel owner could arbitrarily decide to remove a resident, even if they had missed or been late on just a single payment, then misrepresent the facts in an affidavit.

“We know people lie, and there’s no due process in here,” Jackson said.

Albers suggested there was already a deterrent in place. An owner lying on a sworn affidavit could face criminal charges for perjury or civil action, he said.

Jackson was incredulous.

“That family that’s now sleeping in their car, who has no place to stay, is going to go get a lawyer to file a civil suit?” she said.

Opponents of the bill say the industry is pushing back on protections granted to extended-stay residents by the Georgia Supreme Court. The Efficiency Lodge Inc. v. Neason ruling established a legal framework for deciding if a guest at an extended stay could be considered a tenant.

During public testimony last week, Natallie Keiser, executive director of housing advocacy group House ATL, said owners already have the power to remove residents without much resistance.

She said last year she met a mother who had complained about conditions at the extended-stay hotel after the electricity was cut off. She had been at the hotel for 18 months and had been paying $365 a week, or more than $1,400 a month, Keiser said. Keiser did not refer to the woman by name at the hearing but confirmed afterward that she was Marie Adekoya, whom The Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviewed in March 2024. At that time, she was staying at the Live In Lodge in Jonesboro, Georgia.

After the complaint, the hotel refused to take her payment for the next week and told her she would have to be out by the next Monday, Keiser said. The AJC obtained a March 4, 2024, letter sent on Adekoya’s behalf by Clayton Legal Aid, informing Live In Lodge of her legal rights as a tenant under state law.

“I went to the hotel that Monday morning and stood beside her as she pleaded to make her payment. Instead, they sent the maintenance staff to the room to remove all the furniture, the stovetop and the mini refrigerator, and leave her son and the dog sitting on the floor with nothing,” Keiser said.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Attorney Lindsey Siegel represented the Efficiency Lodge residents in that case. She said she was alarmed by language in the bill that would allow hotel owners to place a lien on a resident’s property and take their belongings.

“It would create a humanitarian crisis to essentially say that those families get absolutely no notice before they’re put on the curb with all their belongings — including their children’s schoolbooks, their medications, all of the clothes that they own in the world,” Siegel said.

Extended-stay hotel owners claim existing state law has created confusion among law enforcement officers when they are asked to remove someone who hasn’t paid for their room. Chris Hardman of the Georgia Hotel & Lodging Association said it can take months to remove someone through the eviction process.

“What this legislation does is it brings clarity to an uncertain legal system, but most importantly, provides safety and security for our hotel employees, as well as the law-abiding guests that we serve,” he told the committee on March 19.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, about 30,000 families are living in motels or hotels across the metro Atlanta region.

Voicing broad opposition to the bill last week in a committee hearing, attorney and public policy advocate Elizabeth Appley said the bill will undo protections “carefully negotiated and reviewed” before lawmakers passed last year’s bill that dealt exclusively with squatting in homes or on private property.

Those include provisions to protect unwitting renters from criminal liability when they were duped into signing what they believed was a valid lease.

Under the Squatter Reform Act, a tenant can present a lease to law enforcement, and a magistrate judge makes a determination on the authenticity of the documentation. However, those due process protections are struck out of the latest version of the Georgia Anti-Squatters Act.

Credit: Jenni Girtman

Credit: Jenni Girtman