Maryland’s own housing rules got so tangled that property owners are now paying a private “Squatter King” thousands of dollars just to get criminals out of their own homes.
Quick Take
- A Baltimore-area contractor built a business removing squatters because owners say police often will not act.
- Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed new 2026 laws targeting fake leases and speeding up some court removal cases.
- State law still forces owners through court, not immediate self-help, before anyone can be removed.
- The contractor charges a $2,000 base fee, scaling up for larger, more complicated jobs.
- The mess shows what happens when tenant-friendly rules outpace basic property-rights enforcement.
A Business Born From Government Failure
Contractor DeAndre Lewis runs a company called Squatter King Removal in the Baltimore area. He told WBFF FOX45 that police “often cannot legally remove squatters” and typically “just leave” the scene. That is when owners call him instead of law enforcement to take back their own property.
Lewis charges a base fee of $2,000 for basic jobs. His pricing scales up to what he calls “level six” removals, which can involve as many as 50 people occupying a property at once. That a private removal industry exists at all shows how far Maryland’s system has drifted from simple property rights.
Lawmakers Finally Admit The Problem Is Real
Governor Moore signed two bills in May 2026 after his own state’s “Spotlight on Maryland” reporting exposed the squatter crisis. One law makes it a crime to create or possess a counterfeit real-estate lease used to defraud a property owner. That step alone confirms fake paperwork schemes had grown serious enough to demand new criminal penalties.
The second law speeds up certain wrongful-detainer cases. Courts must now issue a removal warrant within 24 hours after an owner wins a qualifying case. Lawmakers would not have rushed this fix unless the old system was clearly too slow for owners facing squatters camped out in their own houses.
Owners Still Cannot Just Take Their Property Back
Maryland law still bars owners from removing squatters on their own, even from their own property. Owners must file a wrongful-detainer complaint in District Court, get the case served, attend a hearing, and win before a sheriff can finally remove the occupant. That process, even sped up, keeps owners locked out of their own homes for a stretch of time criminals do not deserve.
Legal guides describe the same court-first path again and again: file, serve, wait for a hearing, obtain a warrant, then call the sheriff. No matter how the paperwork is dressed up, the bottom line stays the same. A homeowner cannot simply unlock their own front door and tell a trespasser to leave.
Fake Leases Fuel The Fraud Problem
Part of what pushed lawmakers to act involves squatters showing up with lease documents that look official but are completely fake. Property managers and owners have reported being confronted with paperwork they never signed and never saw before. Criminalizing that fraud was an obvious and overdue move, but it does not erase the underlying delay owners still face in court.
What Still Needs Answering
The public record does not yet show exactly how many owners hire contractors like Lewis, or how much money the business generates statewide. It also does not prove police are legally barred from acting in every case, since that claim comes mainly from the contractor himself rather than from police policy records. Those are fair questions for further reporting.
When property owners call Sanchez Deandre Lewis, they are often already locked out.
The Maryland contractor, known as “Mikey,” says unauthorized occupants have halted renovation projects, presented leases that owners and property managers do not recognize, and prevented his… pic.twitter.com/gQxhQJMT0N
— The Baltimore Sun (@baltimoresun) July 23, 2026
Still, the core facts stand on their own. Maryland’s legislature felt compelled to pass emergency-style fixes for a squatter crisis serious enough that a private removal industry sprang up to fill the gap. Property owners should never need to hire a private contractor just to reclaim a home they legally own. That is the plain lesson from Annapolis this year, and it is one conservative voters have been warning about for years as tenant-protection rules piled up faster than common-sense enforcement.
Sources:
zerohedge.com, innago.com, foxbaltimore.com, dklawmd.com, doorloop.com
