Red States Crack Down on Squatters With Help From ALEC

State legislatures seem to be obsessed with squatters these days — and the corporate-dominated American Legislative Exchange Council ( ALEC ) has played a major role in advancing legislation to crack down on them.

As homelessness reaches record highs and over 21 million households nationwide spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, state legislators have decided what the problem is. It’s not that there are an estimated 1.4 million abandoned residential properties in the U.S., or that private equity landlords have gobbled up over 10 percent of the country’s apartments. The problem is the people who take up residence in empty properties or overstay in apartments after being invited in tenants who have left — despite little evidence of an increase in squatting.

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