Connecticut Housing Committee Member Rep. Minnie Gonzalez (D-Hartford) says she knows what it’s like to deal with squatters.
“I thought that I was in a movie or something like that, (that) this is not happening to me, this is crazy,” she recounted at the Housing Committee’s meeting on Feb. 19. “You go to your house, you try to open it, and somebody is inside holding the door, because they didn’t want you to get into the door.”
In that Committee meeting, she recounted a situation where she didn’t know who was living in her house—she never made any rental agreement, let alone received any rent. Despite that, the stranger told her to, “Get off my property before I call the cops,” Gonzalez said.
It took four or five hours to remove them, she said, and she considers herself lucky.
“I heard (of) cases that you had to pay them to move out of your property,” she said. “So it’s crazy.”
That’s why she voted in favor of “An Act Concerning Squatters’ Rights.” This proposed bill concept was introduced by Housing Committee Co-Chair Rep. Antionio Felipe (D-Bridgeport) near the end of the meeting, even though it wasn’t on the agenda.
The Committee unanimously voted to approve this bill concept.
“We need to make sure that we can prove whether folks are tenants or not—that works on both sides,” Felipe said. “If you’re somebody who pays cash, there needs to be a way to have a receipt or show that you are a tenant so somebody can’t just say they never paid me, they never had an agreement, but by the same token, I don’t think that somebody should have to go through the long slog of an eviction when somebody is broken into and used their property for their own purposes without having any right to their property.”
Despite the bipartisan support, it’s not clear whether this bill will make it through the legislature.
Last legislative session, two bills were introduced to create streamlined processes to evict squatters. One of the bills, which was introduced by Rep. Joe Zullo (R-East Haven), was referred to the Housing Committee, and the other bill, which was introduced by Rep. Carol Hall (R-East Windsor), was referred to the Judiciary Committee. Neither bill made it out of committee.
“I know that this is a difficult policy to come up with the language for that’s fair,” Sen. Rob Sampson (R-Wolcott) said. “I think that’s why we haven’t been able to get something over the finish line in recent years. But I will say this is a problem that is becoming more and more prevalent.”
Sampson says that his barber, who owns a property in New Britain, also had a run-in with squatters. When the man went there to make repairs one day, he found people living there. Unlike Gonzalez, he couldn’t kick them out right away because they claimed they were paying rent in cash.
If someone resides in a property for at least 30 days, current Connecticut law says the property owners need to go through a formal eviction process to get them removed. It can cost between $5,000 and $10,000 to evict someone in Connecticut, and evictions often take multiple months.
“The intent here is not to create another loophole; it’s trying to close this one,” Felipe said. “We need to figure out something that works for everyone, and I’m willing to have that conversation with anybody who is willing to come to the table.”
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