ATLANTA — A state Senate committee advanced legislation Monday following up on a bill the General Assembly passed last year aimed at illegal squatters.

The 2024 measure, which cleared the Georgia House and Senate unanimously, created the offense of unlawful squatting when someone enters upon the land or premises of the owner without the owner or rightful occupant’s knowledge or consent.

Last year’s bill has made a difference, state Rep. Devan Seabaugh, R-Marietta, chief sponsor of the 2024 legislation, told members of the Senate Public Safety Committee.

But Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, the committee’s chairman, said illegal squatting remains a significant problem in Georgia.

“There actually are entire websites dedicated to people who want to be squatters … how to navigate the system for the longest possible time before they are evicted,” Albers said last week during an initial hearing on this year’s bill. “We do not want that.”

Seabaugh said this year’s bill, which he also is sponsoring, closes loopholes the 2024 legislation left in the eviction process.

“House Bill 61 … provides real enforcement tools, deters fraud, and restores control to property owners and law enforcement,” he told Albers’ committee Monday. “Most importantly, it balances firm action against unlawful squatting with fairness and due process for all.”

This year’s bill put Georgia’s magistrate courts in charge of adjudicating eviction cases, limits the liability law enforcement agencies face for enforcing evictions, imposes restitution on criminal squatters based on the market value of the property they are occupying, and makes forging documents related to squatting a felony punishable by one to five years in prison.

Much of Monday’s discussion focused on tenants who are evicted from extended stay motels.

Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, who voted against the bill, said those tenants should be treated differently under the law from illegal squatters.

“We need to make a distinction between a squatter and a person who paid their rent and paid their rent, then missed a day,” she said. “To charge them with criminal trespass and to set them and their kids out, I think, is an injustice.”

“A lot of these extended stays are voluntarily allowing families to live there for years,” Lindsay Siegel, an Atlanta lawyer who represents tenants in housing rights cases, said during last week’s hearing. “It would create a humanitarian crisis to essentially say these families get no notice before they’re put out on the curb.”

After agreeing to a couple of amendments, the committee approved the bill with just two “no” votes. It heads next to the Senate Rules Committee to decide whether to bring it to the Senate floor.