JEFFERSON CITY — Local governments would not be able to impose a moratorium on eviction proceedings under legislation that passed out of the Missouri Senate Tuesday evening.
It’s the first time the Senate has passed an eviction moratorium ban, while the House has in past years approved it.
The bill sponsors, Rep. Chris Brown, R-Kansas City, and Sen. Curtis Trent, R-Springfield, have called it a property rights issue.
Eviction moratoriums arose during COVID-19 pandemic shutdown orders. But after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal moratorium, some local governments enacted their own.
The proposal passed the House earlier this year on a 111-26 vote and has the support of House Majority Leader Jon Patterson, R-Lee’s Summit. To win final approval by the full Legislature, though, the measure will need another review and vote by the House due to changes made in the upper chamber.
People are also reading…
Those changes include a variety of property-related provisions.
One of those would make squatting a class A misdemeanor and set up a process for removing a squatter.
Another would require governments that impose shutdown orders affecting businesses to forgo a portion of tax revenue and license fees from those businesses.
And another provision limits the ability of government to require property inspections before residential home sales.
There are also proposed changes to state law related to real property taxes and land banks, which Trent said are meant to work together:
“What we’re trying to do is find a way for properties that are decayed, abandoned, otherwise delinquent in taxes and upkeep, to find a way to for those properties to get them basically back onto the taxpaying rolls, get them back into productive use,†he said.
Of the multi-pronged legislative proposal, Trent said, “This is a very tidy package related to the disposition of real property, making sure that property rights are protected.â€
By the end of debate, the final version of the legislation that passed out of the Senate contained several amendments from other lawmakers related to the state’s historic tax credit program, chicken-keeping in homeowners association neighborhoods, fire hydrant testing schedules, and electric vehicle charging stations at nonprofit organizations.
This legislation is Hous.