Illinois law allows brazen squatters to extort Chicago property owner
It should go without saying: Squatters are not the same as overstaying tenants. Tenants that overstay had a legal contract with the property owner that allowed them to be in the home. Squatters never did. A property owner may not even know of squatters’ presence. Squatting, simply put, is criminal trespassing.
Yet several states have treated trespassers like overstaying tenants, resulting in a lack of protection for property rights and forcing some property owners to take matters into their own hands. For example, a Chicago homeowner recently paid a ransom to get trespassers to stop squatting and leave because buying them off was cheaper and faster than the eviction process under current Illinois law.
South Side property owner Marco Velazquez called police when he discovered squatters, Shermaine Powell-Gillard and her boyfriend Codarro, in his family home. But when officers responded, Shermaine and Codarro showed them an allegedly fake mortgage document. The officers told Marco that, even though they could not find the document in their records, he would have to file an eviction case in civil court to prove Shermaine and Codarro were squatters. Only then might Marco be able to remove them from his property.
Marco, afraid he would have to wait for six months to a year for a civil case to be heard, paid the squatters a $4,300 ransom to leave.
While it might sound as if Marco’s situation is unique, squatting happens more often than you might think. A survey conducted by the National Rental Home Council in 2023 found that 1,800 homes across Atlanta, Dallas, and Orlando had been squatted in at some point. And according to my own investigation of civil court records, squatting is increasingly a problem dealt with in civil courts. Georgia saw a dramatic rise in squatting cases from 3 in 2017, to 198 in 2023. And in New York, squatting cases jumped from 9 in 2020, to 37 in 2024.
Additionally—and unfortunately—Marco is correct about how long it can take for a case involving a squatter to be heard in court, which in turn can cost more than what Marco paid the squatters to leave his home. For example, in Tennessee, it can take up to two years to evict a squatter, and in Maryland and Pennsylvania, it can cost $3,000 and $10,000 to get a squatter eviction case through the court system. To add insult to injury, squatters often take over the primary residence of the property owner, denying residents the ability to live in their own homes while they wait for a case to be heard.
The reason why these delays happen is that landlord-tenant laws in Illinois and many other states around the country treat squatters the same as overstaying tenants merely if a squatter claims to be a tenant. Because of this, one of the most effective ways states can help protect property rights is by reforming laws to make it easier and faster for property owners to remove squatters from their property. Georgia did this last year, making squatting a criminal offense and speeding up the process to allow a homeowner to regain possession of their home from 8 months to 10 days.
Illinois is currently considering its own squatting bill—Senate Bill 1563—to try and help homeowners like Marco regain possession of their home quickly. The bill would differentiate squatters from legal tenants and allow police to remove squatters from someone’s house on the spot if the property owner can prove it is theirs.
No one should have to choose between waiting for months to get a trespasser out or paying a ransom like Marco did for squatters to leave his family’s property. By taking these steps to make it easier to legally remove a squatter, Illinois is protecting the property rights of Marco and all other Illinoisians from squatting and making it easier for them to regain possession of their homes.
