Faced with increasing difficulty and frequency of trying to get rid of unwanted occupants, property owners may get some help from Wyoming legislators.
The Legislature’s Judiciary Committee considered bills Thursday that would tighten the squatting laws in Wyoming.
The main bill considered by the committee authorizes property owners to request law enforcement assistance for the immediate removal of unauthorized occupants, also sometimes known as squatters.
“I think it adds some concrete basis for law enforcement to act,” said Natrona County Attorney Dan Itzen.
Big Problem In Casper
State Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, said squatting has been a “hot button issue” in Casper, citing the example of a person who returned home after a winter in Arizona to find someone living in their home.
Sen. Jim Anderson, R-Casper, who was one of the lead organizers for the bill, said he was prompted to pursue legislation after being contacted by a constituent who had a problem with squatters and found the process overly cumbersome for removing these people.
“What we found is it took an awful lot to get rid of a squatter in Wyoming,” Anderson said. “You just couldn’t call a sheriff and tell him to kick them out if you were the lawful owner.”
The bill draft mirrors a Florida law that gives law enforcement leverage to quickly remove a squatter. Instead of identifying these people as tenants, they are given a new legal status as trespassers.
Under the proposed law, a person can be charged with a felony and get up to 10 years in prison if they unlawfully detain, occupy or trespass on a property and knowingly deface, injure or destroy it, regardless of the cost of restoring the injured property or the value of the property destroyed.
As currently written, the bill only applies to residential properties, but Anderson said commercial real estate has also been targeted by squatters. He said the law currently allows for quick removal of squatters on commercial properties.
Casper Realtor Ronna Boril has been a rental property manager since 1977 and a rental property owner since 1989. She recounted a squatting experience to the committee that she had never experienced in her profession before.
A Horror Story
In October 2021, Boril rented out a home to a man and his wife. For about six months, they paid their rent on a “somewhat timely” basis. By the next spring, the couple applied for and received assistance from the Wyoming Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
By the next fall, Boril learned that the wife had left for Wisconsin and the man hired a maintenance man to clean and do repairs on the property. About one month later, Boril had yet to receive rent or any contact from the maintenance worker.
The tenant informed Boril that he had already gone to Wisconsin but that the home would be repaired and cleaned. About three weeks later, she visited the property to find the home occupied by unknown men who verbally accosted her for being there.
A man there told Boril it wasn’t her property and they had signed a lease and given money to someone they thought was an owner. Boril informed them they were trespassing and that they needed to leave the property immediately.
“It was a tense moment,” she said.
But members of the local sheriff’s office and police department told her they couldn’t do anything to remove the men because they didn’t have statutory authority. They told Boril she’d have to file a forcible entry and detainer.
By the time she returned to the home the next day, the men were gone, but the place was trashed. Filthy mattresses littered the floor along with drug paraphernalia, clothes and trash strewn about.
“Whoever was cleaning that had come up short,” she said.
Repairing the property cost her nearly $15,000.
Laurie Urbigkit, government affairs director for Wyoming Realtors, told her own story of squatting that she witnessed in Cheyenne, and said similar problems are being reported throughout the state. In one Wyoming county, she said the sheriff’s office there will remove squatters even though they may not have the legal backing to do so.
Rep. Mark Jennings, R-Sheridan, said he thinks they do have this right and expressed confidence that current trespassing laws already cover acts of squatting.
Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, requested consideration for how the potential bill could impact legal renters to make sure they’re not negatively impacted.
Trespassers Vs. Late Renters
Allen Thompson, executive director of the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police, said he’s not aware of any law that allows law enforcement to remove squatters with some form of past rental agreement immediately without some form of court intervention.
He said trespassers and tenants who have defaulted on their rental agreement are distinctly different.
Thompson and Sheridan County Sheriff Levi Dominguez expressed some concerns about the bill in regard to how it interacts with current eviction laws and possibly leaving law enforcement criminally liable for wrongfully removing someone, although Dominguez said the latter has never happened.
Sublette County Attorney Clayton Melinkovitch also expressed concern that the draft bill will put sheriff’s deputies into the position of having to be title clerks to verify home ownership. He also noted that there are no implied tenancies in Wyoming.
“We already don’t allow these types of tenancies in Wyoming so I wonder if this would be a solution in search of a problem,” he said.
Itzen said challenges can also arise when people have unwritten rental agreements with their landlords.
Boril said the law should be written tightly enough to eliminate the possibility of a squatter or trespasser claiming tenancy because of certain things they were told.
“Squatters should not be considered tenants by inference or omission or lack of applicable legislation,” she said.
She also said loopholes should be closed that might allow a squatter to claim tenancy when served a notice to quit or eviction notice by paying rent.
Fraudulent Takings
Another bill considered by the committee would make it a felony offense to use fraudulent documents to gain or remain in possession of a property to which a person does not have right to possess or hold. Those found guilty of the crime could receive up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. This is the same level penalty for felony forgery and possession of forged writings in Wyoming.
Brian Fuller, a staffer with the Legislative Service Office, said New York is the only state he could find that has a similar law, a statute outlawing deed fraud, but federal law also exists addressing the matter.
Dominguez suggested this bill could be inserted into the state’s existing felony theft and trespass laws to help bolster those statutes and avoid conflicts with tenant’s rights as well as allow for a wider range of law enforcement.
Rep. Ember Oakley, R-Riverton, disagreed with that suggestion and said the law should be clear cut and uniformly applied.
Jennings questioned why the current law for felony forgery is insufficient for covering crimes of this nature, to which Itzen agreed.
When posed with a hypothetical scenario from Provenza about stealing another legislator’s goat, Melinkovitch confirmed it would be considered a felony as long as the goat was worth more than $1,000.
The committee agreed to continue discussing both bills at its next meeting in November.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
