![\"Texas](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/261DB34D70F5EDA1BB0A8A7A3ECA0363.jpg\")
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AUSTIN, Texas – Texas homeowners now have more power to protect their properties.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two laws now in effect are aimed at stopping squatters and speeding up the eviction process.<\/p>\n
Local perspective:<\/p>\n
“It can be a bit of a wild, wild west here occasionally,” Light Tower Property Management CEO Tim Roadnight said.<\/p>\n
For months, the property manager at Mueller Square near Manor Road and 51st Street said he has been fighting an endless battle: trying to keep unwanted tenants out.<\/p>\n
“It’s like Groundhog Day. Every morning, different times I turn up, I’ll find three or four different units broken into. They\u2019re either squatters or homeless people camped out inside them,” Roadnight said.<\/p>\n
Roadnight said police couldn\u2019t do much.<\/p>\n
“Even if the door’s broken into, and they’re inside the unit, it’s not burglary, it is not breaking in, it\u2019s simply defined as trespass,” Roadnight said.<\/p>\n
He said they are usually given a criminal trespass notice and told they can\u2019t come back to the property for a year. But he said they do come back.<\/p>\n
“They come straight back. Literally we had four arrested on Monday morning, and they were back in the afternoon,” Roadnight said.<\/p>\n
Roadnight said one day when he went to confront a man who didn\u2019t belong there, the man pulled a gun on him. He said others carry knives.<\/p>\n
“We shouldn’t have to defend our property and ourselves and police it. I understand that we’ve got to maintain it, but I don’t feel that we should be policing our own properties to the point where we have to pull out handguns and carry weapons on a daily basis,” Roadnight said.<\/p>\n
New Texas laws passed <\/p>\n
Dig deeper:<\/p>\n
New laws were passed this legislative session to address these issues:<\/p>\n
SB38 streamlines eviction cases, requiring a court hearing within 21 days.SB1333 gives sheriffs and constables authority to remove squatters faster and raises criminal penalties for trespassing and fake real estate transactions. <\/p>\n
“We are putting squatters in Texas out of business,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said.<\/p>\n
Property owner Ari Rastegar said this legislation helps landlords and residents who were previously left unprotected.<\/p>\n
“Being able to utilize these and protect families and protect property is just the beginning of allowing our state to continue to thrive,” Rastegar said. “But there’s a lot of damage that’s been done over these past years that’s eroded values, that’s created criminal environments for individuals that needs to be remediated, and that’s the next step.”<\/p>\n
Both laws are now in effect statewide.<\/p>\n
The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin’s Meredith Aldis<\/p>\n
CrimeWatch<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a>Mueller<\/a>Texas Politics<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas – Texas homeowners now have more power to protect their properties.\u00a0 Two laws now in effect…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1046,20826,21537,223,287,1726,394,216,395,393],"class_list":{"0":"post-33857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-crime-publicsafety","12":"tag-crimewatch","13":"tag-mueller","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-series","17":"tag-travis-county","18":"tag-tx","19":"tag-tx-politics","20":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}