Servicemember Residence Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Bost for his work on this piece of legislation and Ranking Member Takano for working with the majority on this piece of legislation, the Servicemember Residence Protection Act.

Mr. Speaker, why this bill? Why do this? It is designed to help those servicemembers that are affected by somebody squatting in their home, trespassing, illegally staying in their home, it will help them get those individuals out in a less costly way and a less intrusive way to their life.

Why does all of that matter? Why do any of this? These are servicemembers. I have yet to meet the servicemember that got rich spending their time in uniform. The work that they do is always dangerous. It is very often deadly, and it requires them to be away from home for large amounts of time: whether being away from home is somewhere around the world doing something dangerous or deadly, or whether that work is around the country in training for something that is dangerous and deadly, or whether it is incurring a permanent change of station to somewhere across the country or the globe where maybe they have a home that they have to leave and put it up for sale or they have to rent it out while they are gone. There are a great number of circumstances that affect our servicemembers with their homes when they are not around to be the immediate tenants of their homes.

This piece of legislation comes in to help protect them to make sure that they can get squatters out of their home when these squatters illegally go into their homes, overstay their time in those homes, or whatever it might be.

It is a big deal to help our servicemembers in any way, shape, or form that we can to get people illegally out of their homes. It just takes an undue stress off our servicemembers so that they can focus on the missions at hand, which, again, they are dangerous missions. They are often deadly missions. They deserve the right to focus on those missions without worrying about anything else.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for the time to speak on this and for working with me, as well.

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