Texas Advocates Thwart Harmful Eviction Bill in Legislature This 2025 Legislative Session 

By Nada Hussein, NLIHC State and Local Research Analyst and Saatvik Amravathi, NLIHC State and Local Innovation Intern  

This 2025 legislative session, at the behest of Texas lawmakers, including Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows (District 83), harmful eviction reform was front and center in the Texas legislature as lawmakers introduced legislation that would have had significant implications for renters’ rights in the state. One of the key bills introduced this 2025 session came from Senator Paul Bettencourt (District 7) who introduced “Senate Bill 38” to make it easier for property owners to target “squatters” and ultimately renter households in a broader platform. Senator Bettencourt’s bill sought to “streamline” the eviction process, substantially expanding the use of summary evictions and stripping tenants of some mechanisms to legally challenge their eviction. However, the bill faced substantial revisions during the legislative process due to opposition from a bipartisan group of legislators. As a result of negotiation and amendments to the bill, tenant advocates worked to stop a substantial erosion of tenants’ rights embedded in the bill this session.  

Historically, the Texas legislature has passed reforms that have been overwhelmingly landlord-friendly including multiple state-level pre-emptions. As a result, statewide tenant protections are comparatively weak, and the state maintains a speedy and landlord-friendly eviction process. Under current Texas law, landlords are required to provide three-days’ notice to tenants about their intent to file an eviction, which can be contracted to occur under a shorter timeframe if documented in a tenant’s lease. A judicial hearing is scheduled ten days after, and a judgment is delivered. Once the judgment is delivered, tenants have a five-day window to submit an appeal, or a writ of possession is issued. This issuance allows local law enforcement to provide a 24-hour notice of removal. In its current form, the Texas eviction process already affords tenants limited due process and provides landlords the ability to expeditiously remove tenants from their property.   

Texas’ landlord-friendly eviction system has facilitated a substantial increase in the number of evictions with over 164,000 evictions being filed in Texas’s four largest cities according to data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. The state has seen a sharp rise in evictions post-pandemic a product of the states’ growing affordability crisis which has left 91% and 86% of the state’s extremely low income (0-30% AMI) and very low income (31-50% AMI) tenants rent burdened according to the NLIHC’s 2025 The GAP: A Shortage of Affordable and Available Homes Report. The high rates of eviction filings in Texas are especially troubling since research has shown that eviction exacerbates negative health, behavioral, and economic outcomes for tenants. Furthermore, eviction also serves as a significant cause for homelessness, which has been on the rise in Texas and has been met with criminalization efforts by the state legislature.   

In its introduced form, Senate Bill 38 would have further shortened the eviction timeline for all renters, not just “squatters.” The primary change was the introduction of a “summary disposition” process which allowed landlords to secure eviction judgments in as little as four days and without a hearing (which was later amended to five days in a later iteration proposed in the legislature). The bill also provided substantial leeway to landlords during the eviction process, which allows for landlords to “forum shop” for eviction-friendly judges that allow for a tenant to be displaced from their residence with impunity. Under the proposed law, landlords would be allowed to remove tenants from their properties within 24 hours with hired off-duty police officers. Beyond tenants, the bill also targeted legal aid organizations, effectively hampering them by requiring jurisdictions to spend an equal amount on relocation assistance.  

Of the original bill’s many provisions, tenant advocates and opponents of the bill were most concerned about the usage of summary disposition in eviction cases altogether, which included provisions targeting renters’ rights and squatters. Tenant advocates in Texas characterized the bill as “the most anti-tenant bill ever proposed in the Texas Legislature,” highlighting the severity of the changes it would make to the eviction process.   

In this case, tenant advocates including coalition members such as Texas Housers, an NLIHC state partner, successfully organized, made their voices heard, and stripped out all of the bill’s most harmful provisions or focused them on squatters instead of introducing a sweeping landlord-friendly eviction process. Advocates and the bill’s opponents were able to successfully highlight the anti-tenant nature of the bill, overcoming the perception that the bill was only targeting squatters. Drawing attention to the bill’s overt landlord tilt helped develop opposition across partisan lines, building a coalition that even included the legislature’s largest landlord. This opposition pushed the powerful Texas Apartment Association and the bill’s authors into negotiating a final bill which removed or amended all the most harmful provisions before passage. 

Through concerted and targeted advocacy, advocates were able to successfully remove many anti-tenant provisions and even secure some favorable provisions. Specifically, the amended bill eliminated some overtly pro-landlord provisions such as the ability for landlords to venue shop or expedite post-judgment removal of tenants from their property. Beyond reshaping the use and mechanics of summary dispositions, advocates were also able to secure a modest “right to cure.” For the first time in Texas, this allowed tenants missing one rent payment the ability to make up back rent to avoid eviction. 

While tenant advocates view the enacted version of Senate Bill 38 as a marked improvement from its original form, the bill still contains troubling provisions such as stripping the Governor and Supreme Court of Texas of the power to modify eviction proceedings in times of emergency. Moreover, the enacted text also includes a harmful provision targeting tenants who are entitled to longer notice to vacate protections (such as through federally declared mandates noted under the 30-day “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act,” CARES Act, mandate or for tenants residing in certain properties managed by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development), which creates conflict between state law and federal eviction protections as the courts can evict tenants from their residences up until execution of writ of possession. Moreover, the law also limits electronic hearings unless both parties agree; potentially limits appeals judges’ flexibility in granting continuance in eviction cases for good cause; and requires payments for appeals in cases other than nonpayment of rent cases, which could lead tenants to pay arbitrary costs to landlords.  

Speaking to the passage of Senate Bill 38, Research Director of Texas Housers Ben Martin noted: “Our fear was that if the Texas Apartment Association was able to rewrite eviction law under the guise of ‘stopping squatting,’ that would serve as a model for other apartment associations in other states to do the same thing. Our hope is that by stopping the worst outcomes of this bill, the landlord lobby in other states will think twice about attempting something similar, and advocates will now have a playbook to fight back if their landlord lobby does try it. While no version of this bill passing is a good thing, Texas advocates and a bipartisan group of legislators achieved the impossible by removing all of the most harmful provisions from the bill before it passed. Tenants and advocates worked tirelessly to educate legislators that the bill they were considering was not about squatters but was rather intended to rewrite Texas' eviction process from top to bottom in favor of landlords at the expense of renters. Lawmakers listened, and even ones that aren't typically tenant champions grew to understand just how cruel and harmful this bill would be.”  

To learn more about the advocacy effort around Senate Bill 38, please visit the Texas Housers’ website here.  

To read the bill’s text, please visit the Texas State Legislature’s website here.  

To learn more about the shortage of affordable and available homes in Texas, as outlined through NLIHC’s The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable and Available Homes, please visit NLIHC’s Texas Housing Profile here.