GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Hotel guests who check in but refuse to check out or pay the bill. HB 61 has now passed the Georgia State Senate and is waiting on a vote in the House.
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It would expand Georgia’s Squatter laws to cover hotels and motels.
“You’ve had people travel here from all around the southeast, and they’re exploiting a loophole in the law. We’re closing that loophole,” said one of the bill’s authors, State Representative Matt Reeves (R-Gwinnett).
Gwinnett County Hotel owner Vipul Patel’s family has been in the hotel business since 1978. He says it was not until about three years ago that he ever encountered someone claiming his hotel was their legal residence.
“The guest was like, ‘No, you can’t kick me out. I live here,” Vipul Patel told Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray.
Police told Vipul Patel because the hotel guests claimed the hotel as their residence, he would have to go through a legal civil eviction procedure to kick them out.
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“Why is it okay to take something and not pay? I mean, it’s a fundamental principle,” Vipul Patel said.
He’s had multiple squatter cases at his three hotels since that first experience. The last family he had to evict was in the hotel room for five months without paying their bills.
During the eviction fight, the hotel guest wrote in court filings to the judge, “That was our residence. We were there for over a month. They could not put us out.”
They even complained about the quality of the hotel service they were not paying for, writing that hotel employees “were not allowing us to get breakfast.”
Georgia’s original squatter law was passed in 2024 after a series of Channel 2 Action News investigations exposed a legal loophole squatters were exploiting.
Now, Reeves says word is spreading even into neighboring states about how to squat in a Georgia hotel room.
“You’ve had people travel here from all around the southeast, and they’re exploiting a loophole in the law. We’re closing that loophole,” Reeves said.
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However, opponents of the bill worry about the impact on families living in extended stay motels.
The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates 30,000 families are living in motels in metro Atlanta.
“What is so frustrating about this is that you’re being criminalized for not having stable housing,” housing advocate Sue Sullivan said.
“You’re being criminalized for not having stable housing,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan is the Director of Transitional housing at Park 500 in Dekalb County.
She worries about the effect of the law on struggling working families trying to keep up with the high daily and weekly costs of extended stays.
“If somebody is saying I’ll be able to pay by two o’clock, now are they considered trespassing?” Sullivan said.
Vipul Patel does not own Extended Stay Motels. He says the bill is necessary to protect the safety of other guests. He says squatters in hotel rooms cook in rooms that are not equipped for it and have even thrown pool parties.
Patel’s wife, Kataki, a former social worker herself, says their hotels are not equipped to handle full-time residents.
“Our business model is very simple. The guest pays, they stay for a couple of nights, and then they check out. Now, when you’re going outside that business model, it creates a lot of risk,” Kataki Patel said.
The Hotel squatting language was added to an unrelated license plate bill. It passed the Senate last week and could come before the House for a vote this week.