A bill sponsored by a quartet of Colorado Springs lawmakers would make it easier and faster for homeowners to get rid of squatters, which is a big problem for deployed military members.

Senate Bill 15 is fighting scammers who stay in the home for free while the owner spends weeks in the legal process getting them removed.

The legislation would allow law enforcement to bounce squatters in 24 hours after the homeowner makes a declaration that someone is trespassing.

The measure passed the Senate Judiciary Committee this week on a 3-2 party-line vote, with the Republican majority winning the day.

“Squatting is a growing problem nationally, but of special concern in military communities like Colorado Springs, where soldiers or airmen can be sent off to lengthy deployments, sometimes on short notice, making their empty houses easy targets for squatters,” Gardner said in a statement.

“Because it can be unbelievably difficult for property owners to remove these intruders, given how adept some of them are at misusing the system to delay eviction, this is one way we can improve the homeowner’s leverage when dealing with these nightmare situations.”

In the Judiciary Committee hearing, Gardner said squatters continue to use the home and do damage while homeowners go through the eviction process, which can take up the three months.

“In the meantime that property is trashed and the property owner is unable to have access to that property. In turns out that the law of eviction is inadequate to the task of property squatters who would basically take occupancy of the property for as long as they can.”

The bill is sponsored by four Springs Republicans: Gardner and Sen. Owen Hill, with Reps. Larry Liston and Dave Williams.

In a press release, the Senate Republicans said, “Democrats used strained rationales to find fault with the measure, which allows property owners to speed evictions by providing law enforcers with a declaration stating, under penalty of perjury, that their premises has been illegally occupied.”

The Democrats on the committee are Sens. Daniel Kagan of Greenwood Village and Rhonda Fields of Aurora.

Kagan spoke of fairness. Sure, there are property squatters, but there are also sophisticated criminals who create phony leases to vacant property they don’t own. Kicking out victims creates “double victimization” of the same scammer, Kagan argued.

“This bill seems to run counter to fairness when it comes to the point of sophisticated criminals who victimized a person by setting this property out, advertising it,” he said. “And then we’re punishing a tenant who acted in good faith and has no reason to believe he’s signing a fraudulent lease … they have no time at all to remedy the situation.

“Wouldn’t it be fairer to give a fraudulent-lease victim seven days, 14 days, so they can make some arrangements?”

Gardner said lawmakers were making “a public policy choice,” and that’s it’s incumbent on tenants to make sure they’re signing a legitimate lease.