Airbnb Guest Will Not Leave: DC Bill and the 28 Night Line

On Wednesday, September 23, 2026, the DC Council's Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety held a public hearing on Bill 26-757, the Illegal Occupancy Enforcement Amendment Act of 2026. The bill would amend the District's short term rental law so that a guest has no lawful right to remain once a reservation ends, and it would let the Metropolitan Police Department remove an overstaying guest in a short term rental, vacation rental, or hotel as a trespasser. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson introduced it on July 10, 2026 at Mayor Muriel Bowser's request. It has not passed.

The case behind the bill is why a host in Texas or Arizona should read this. A Washington, DC homeowner rented her furnished house through Airbnb for a 32 day stay that ended on March 29, 2025. The guest refused to leave, claimed residency, and stayed until a judge ordered her out on December 11, 2025. Police called it a civil matter because the guest had passed 30 days, and the homeowner spent the intervening months in court while paying the mortgage on a house she could not enter.

Nothing about that failure is unique to DC. Airbnb's help center says guests may establish tenant rights after a month in some jurisdictions, and Airbnb's default maximum trip length is 31 nights. The settings and the one document below decide whether an overstay ends in a police call or in housing court.

Key facts

• DC's Bill 26-757, the Illegal Occupancy Enforcement Amendment Act of 2026, was introduced July 10, 2026 and heard September 23, 2026, per LegiScan's bill history. It remains in committee.
• The bill would "clarify that a guest has no lawful right to remain after the conclusion of their stay" and make clear that guests "unlawfully staying beyond their term in a short-term rental, vacation rental, or hotel are trespassing and, if needed, can be removed," per Mayor Bowser's July 10, 2026 release.
• In the case behind the bill, a 32 day Airbnb reservation ended March 29, 2025 and the guest was not removed until a DC judge ruled on December 11, 2025 that she had no tenancy rights, per WJLA.
• Airbnb treats any reservation of 28 nights or more as a monthly stay and warns that "in some jurisdictions, guests may establish rights as a tenant after a month," per Airbnb's Host monthly stays article.
• If a host never sets a maximum trip length, Airbnb applies a 31 night maximum automatically, per Airbnb's Customize booking settings article.

What DC is trying to fix

A 32 day booking and an eight month overstay

Homeowner Rochanne Douglas accepted a 32 day Airbnb reservation for her Northeast Washington home in February 2025. The reservation ended March 29, 2025, and the guest stayed, according to WJLA's December 12, 2025 report. Douglas called police, served a 30 day notice to vacate, and offered 2,500 dollars for a signed acknowledgment that the guest was not a tenant. The guest signed and did not leave.

On Thursday, December 11, 2025, a DC judge ruled that the guest had no tenancy rights, found the signed agreement still valid, and authorized immediate removal, per WJLA's report on the ruling. By then, Douglas told WJLA she had lost more than 30,000 dollars in damages, attorney fees, and lost payments. She sold the house in March 2026, per WJLA.

What Bill 26-757 actually says

The Mayor's two sentence description is quoted in the key facts above, and the bill would cover hotels as well as short term and vacation rentals, per the July 10, 2026 release. As of September 25, 2026 no committee vote is scheduled. The bill is proposed, not enacted.

At the hearing, Douglas testified that "the most challenging part of it was that the police could never assist me," WJLA reported on September 23, 2026. MPD officials said the bill would let officers warn and then arrest a guest who refuses to leave after a documented reservation ends, and flagged a detail for every host: verbal extensions muddy enforcement, so the platform reservation record should be the paper trail.

Why the police could not help before the bill

Three terms of art explain the problem. Trespass is a police matter: an officer can order someone off property they have no right to occupy. A possession action, often called unlawful detainer, is a court matter with notice and a hearing. Tenancy is the status that moves a dispute from the first track to the second.

DC's short term rental law never draws a line in nights. It defines a vacation rental as a stay where "a transient guest has exclusive use of the host's property" with the host absent, and caps vacation rentals at 90 nights a year, but it never says when a transient guest stops being transient, per DC Code section 30-201.01 and section 30-201.06. The Rental Housing Act defines a tenant broadly as any "person entitled to the possession, occupancy, or the benefits of any rental unit owned by another person," per DC Code section 42-3501.03. That gap is what the guest used: after 30 days she claimed residency, and the calls became civil matters.

The 28 night line every host controls

Airbnb's monthly stay mechanics

Airbnb treats a reservation of 28 nights or more as a monthly stay, paid in monthly installments, and Airbnb's Host monthly stays article adds the sentence hosts should read twice: "In some jurisdictions, guests may establish rights as a tenant after a month, so we encourage Hosts to be knowledgeable about their local laws." A long term cancellation policy applies to those stays, per Airbnb's monthly cancellation article.

Airbnb states the risk and leaves the fix to the host. Asked about the DC case, its statement addressed booking on platform, not removal: "Hosts and guests should always communicate, book, and pay on Airbnb, so they're covered by our policies and protections," Airbnb told 7News. It removed the guest from the platform, not from the house.

Where the tenancy line sits

Proper Insurance, which writes short term rental policies, lists seven states where a guest may acquire tenant status after about 30 days: California, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington. In DC, the 30 day figure comes from how police and courts treat occupants in practice, not from a number in the short term rental statute.

The maximum stay setting

Here is the number most hosts have never looked at. Airbnb's Customize booking settings article says: "If you don't set a limit, a 31-night maximum will automatically be applied." A 31 night default is past Airbnb's own 28 night monthly threshold and past the roughly 30 day line reported in DC and the seven states above. A host who has never opened the Trip length setting is accepting bookings long enough to cross both.

Take the lower of your jurisdiction's tenancy line and Airbnb's 28 night threshold, then set your maximum one night under it. For most US hosts that is 27 nights. The setting lives under Calendar, then Availability, then Trip length, per Airbnb's article on minimum and maximum nights, and it has to be mirrored on Vrbo, in your PMS, and on your direct booking site.

The trade off is real. Setting 27 nights forfeits the monthly market we covered in what the mid-term rental boom means for short-term rental hosts; monthly stays are a different business with a different contract, and should be a decision rather than a default. Cities forcing 30 day minimums push hosts across the same line from the other direction, as we covered in the federal ruling that upheld 30-day minimum stay ordinances.

The document that won

A signed acknowledgment of non tenancy

The decisive fact in the DC case was a piece of paper. The guest had signed an agreement acknowledging she was not a tenant, and the judge found that agreement "remains valid" in ruling that she "has no tenancy rights and can be removed immediately," per Moneywise's January 10, 2026 account. Douglas obtained that signature after the overstay began, by offering 2,500 dollars the guest took without leaving.

A host who collects the same acknowledgment before the stay begins starts in a stronger position. Proper Insurance's guidance is a signed short term rental agreement that "explicitly defines the end date of occupancy" and states that remaining past it is trespass, per its August 20, 2026 post. Do not draft that clause from a blog post, this one included; have a local attorney adapt it to your state.

On Airbnb bookings, disclose the agreement in the listing and keep every payment on the platform. On a direct booking, it is simply a step in checkout, the one place a host controls every field a guest sees.

Proper's other recommendations, in the same post, are lock codes that "expire automatically at checkout," "shorter booking windows in high-risk states," and no off platform payments, which "could be used to establish informal tenancy." MPD's testimony added the enforcement side: a verbal extension is what stops an officer from acting, so any extension should be a new reservation with a new end date.

The cost arithmetic

Douglas told 7News before the ruling: "I can't pay $4,000 a month, my other bills, and my responsibilities like this," per Moneywise. The overstay ran from March 29 to December 11, 2025, which is 257 days, about eight and a half months. Eight and a half months of a 4,000 dollar mortgage is 34,000 dollars in carrying cost alone. That multiplication is ours, and it lines up with the more than 30,000 dollars in losses she reported to WJLA in December.

Against that, the 2,500 dollar cash for keys offer looks cheap, and it still did not work. Every remedy is slow and paid for; every prevention setting is free and takes an afternoon. It is also a reason to reread the insurance gap most short-term rental hosts do not know they have: loss of use and legal defense are the coverages an overstay tests.

What to do this week

Check your maximum trip length on every channel; Airbnb defaults to 31 nights if you have never touched it, and every other channel carries its own setting. Decide, on purpose, whether you are in the monthly stay business: if yes, use a lease with a defined end date and screen those guests the way a landlord would; if no, set 27 nights.

Add a rental agreement with an explicit end date and a non tenancy acknowledgment, adapted by a local attorney, signed before check in. On a direct booking, make it part of checkout. With a branded direct booking site such as Haven, the host keeps the guest relationship and the guest data, which is where a signed agreement and a clean reservation history live.

Set lock codes to expire at checkout, treat every extension as a new reservation with a new end date, and accept no off platform payments. Look up your state's transient occupant rule and your local possession action before you need either.

What to watch

The first signal is a committee vote on Bill 26-757; no timeline has been announced. The second is whether MPD issues guidance regardless of the bill; Councilmember Brooke Pinto said at the hearing that part of the work is making sure officers "know what the law is and are trained in how to enforce it." The third is copycat legislation. Moneywise's report noted that Florida, Georgia, and New York enacted anti squatting measures in 2024; those laws target squatters generally, so read the text before assuming one covers an overstaying guest.

FAQ

Can I call the police if my Airbnb guest will not leave?

You can, and for a stay of a few nights police will often treat it as trespass. Once the guest has been there long enough to claim tenancy, roughly 30 days in DC and several states, most departments call it a civil matter and send you to court. That is the gap DC's Bill 26-757 is meant to close.

After how many days does an Airbnb guest become a tenant?

There is no single answer. Airbnb says only that guests "may establish rights as a tenant after a month" in some jurisdictions, and Proper Insurance lists seven states, including California, New York, and Washington, where about 30 days can be enough. Your state's transient occupancy rules control.

Does Airbnb help remove a guest who overstays?

Airbnb can remove a guest from its platform, and it did in the DC case. It does not remove a guest from your property; that runs through the police or the courts.

What maximum stay should I set on my listing?

One night under the lower of your jurisdiction's tenancy line and Airbnb's 28 night monthly threshold, which for most US hosts means 27 nights. Airbnb applies a 31 night maximum by default if you never set one, so check the Trip length setting rather than assuming, and mirror the number on every other channel.