A bill that would give property owners new recourse to remove squatters from their property and punish those who try and use false documents to stay in a property is headed to the House.
On Thursday, the House of Representatives nearly unanimously approved a bill from Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, Rep. Bruce Skaug R-Nampa and Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Moyle, R-Star. The measure dubbed the “squatters bill” is named after efforts in other states to address concerns with people breaking into homes and claiming to own them.
Skaug, who presented the bill in the House Judiciary Rules & Administration Committee, said there have been reports in Idaho and nationwide of homeowners finding people living in their property and refusing to leave.
Currently in Idaho, if a homeowner calls 911 for law enforcement to remove someone from the property, they can’t and would instead have to file a civil lawsuit, which can take months, while the person lives inside the property or damages it. This bill would allow the sheriff to remove someone from the property.
The bill also says someone who willfully presents a false document they say is a valid lease for a property can be charged with a misdemeanor. If someone advertises a residential property for sale or rent that they don’t own, they can be charged with a felony.
“I think this is adequate to at least have some recourse when somebody does these crimes and it is a crime to take somebody’s property in this matter,” Skaug said.
BoiseDev covered a situation like this in New Meadows in 2021. Homeowners had a cabin in the area, which they would occasionally list as a vacation rental. It was listed on Craigslist as a long-term rental by a scammer. This created a situation where would-be renters were out money and places to live, thinking the cabin was rented to them, and the property owners had strangers coming to the house trying to move in.
The bill will now need to get a hearing and pass the Senate floor before it can go to Governor Little for possible signature.
What are the criteria?
This bill wouldn’t allow just anyone to be removed from a property for squatting.
In order for a county sheriff to remove someone, the situation would have to fit a list of criteria. The person who made the request to the sheriff would need to be the property owner or an authorized agent, the property needs to be residential, and the unauthorized person needs to have broken in during a time when the property wasn’t open to members of the public. The property owner needs to have already told the person to leave the property, not be an immediate family member, and there cannot be any active lawsuits between the two people.
A property owner would need to submit a formal complaint to the sheriff asking for the person to be remove,d and the sheriff would then need to verify the identities and ownership of everyone and the property involved.
This bill would not apply to situations where someone had a renter in their home, either on a lease or an oral agreement, who refused to leave the property.
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During the committee hearing, Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, asked Skaug about situations where someone walks into their home and finds someone living inside they were not expecting.
“If I discover when I get into the home and I shoot them because they’re in my home, is that a completely different scenario?” she asked. “I’m being serious about this question, they’re in my home.”
“That’s outside the scope of this,” Skaug replied. “Then you’re involved in criminal law because you have justifiable homicide if you killed them.”
