Landlord Tenant struggles

Kanky

Well-Known Member
So I was reading this story with sympathy for the landlord until I got to this bit.
He knew everyone in the room, and their stories were similar to his: Most of them were immigrants who had arrived in Schenectady at its lowest point in the early 2000s, after it had lost half of its manufacturing jobs and a third of its population. The city at that time was blighted by thousands of vacant homes, and instead of spending $18,000 to demolish each one, the mayor had come up with a plan to go to New York City and recruit Guyanese immigrants who had built a reputation for fixing up derelict property. The mayor handed out his cellphone number and offered to sell houses for as little as $1, and more than 5,000 Guyanese began to move. They bought cheap homes, rehabbed them, rented them out, and then started paying property taxes that helped revive the city.

And suddenly I don’t care that the dude who lost his job paid off his debt with his stimulus checks instead of paying rent. :ohwell: Has the government ever offered to help black people become landlords for cheap?
 

dancinstallion

Well-Known Member
So I was reading this story with sympathy for the landlord until I got to this bit.


And suddenly I don’t care that the dude who lost his job paid off his debt with his stimulus checks instead of paying rent. :ohwell: Has the government ever offered to help black people become landlords for cheap?

I cant read the story because it is subscription. Can you post it please.
 

Kanky

Well-Known Member

The battle for 1042 Cutler Street​

As landlords and tenants go broke across the U.S., the next crisis point of the pandemic approaches​

Eli Saslow
May 1, 2021
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — The landlord had highlighted the first of the month on his office calendar and marked it as “Pay Day,” but now the first had come and gone, the one-week grace period was ending, and for the 13th consecutive month, Romeo Budhoo had collected less than half of his total rent. “Time to try begging for it,” he said, and he grabbed his booklet of receipts and walked out to his car.

He drove through the low-income neighborhoods of Schenectady, stopping at a half-dozen small homes that accounted for most of his income and all of his family’s savings. He cajoled $75 in cash from a laid-off hairdresser who owed him more than $7,000. “Thanks for at least trying to work with me,” he wrote on the rental receipt. He collected $200 from a renter who was $1,600 behind. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” Budhoo said, and then he continued up the street to his oldest property, a three-story home that had helped lift him into the middle class and was now sending him closer to bankruptcy.

Budhoo parked in front and flipped through his receipts. The tenant owed more than $12,000, and on the porch Budhoo saw a pile of warnings and eviction notices dating back almost a year.

“No more grace periods,” read one from last fall. “Pay now or leave.”

In the covid economy of 2021, the federal government has created an ongoing grace period for renters until at least July, banning all evictions in an effort to hold back a historic housing crisis that is already underway. More than 8 million rental properties across the country are behind on payments by an average of $5,600, according to census data. Nearly half of those rental properties are owned not by banks or big corporations but instead by what the government classifies as “small landlords” — people who manage their own rentals and depend on them for basic income, and who are now trapped between tenants who can’t pay and their own mounting bills for insurance, mortgages and property tax. According to government estimates, a third of small landlords are at risk of bankruptcy or foreclosure as the pandemic continues into its second year.



For Budhoo, the essence of his problems came down to one house: 1042 Cutler St., a three-story square box built in 1901, with faded green siding and fresh graffiti spray-painted on the windows. The house had been sold four times out of foreclosure, condemned by the city, and scheduled for demolition when Budhoo first saw it after immigrating to New York from Guyana in the early 2000s. He’d worked at a nearby pick-and-pack warehouse for $8 an hour and saved up a small down payment toward a $79,000 purchase price. He’d rewired the electricity, gutted the plumbing, installed granite countertops, and begun renting it out for up to $950 per month. Gradually those profits had paid for more distressed properties, for his daughter’s college degree, and for a small home of his own where her diploma now hung above the entryway. He’d spent two decades growing his business on the first of each month until the pandemic hit Upstate New York.

“Just a friendly reminder,” he’d written to the tenant, after the first missed payment in April 2020.

“Good morning! Are you able to pay rent?” he’d written after the second month.

“Please. I am willing to work with you,” he wrote after the government announced its first national eviction moratorium in September.

“Really? You’re still not going to pay ANYTHING?” he wrote after he read about the billions of government dollars being spent in rental assistance, for which his tenant never applied.

And now it had been a full year without payment, and Budhoo had maxed his credit cards, applied for a secondary loan on his 2015 Mercedes-Benz, defaulted on $13,000 in property taxes, and started taking medication for panic attacks and stomach ulcers. “Final collection notice,” read one of the bills that had been delivered to his own front door, and he’d begun mowing people’s lawns and selling eggplants out of his garden to neighbors for a couple dollars each.

“This is robbery,” Budhoo had written. “What you’re doing now is stealing from me."

He got out of the car and walked around the outside of the house. He didn’t dare to knock, because the tenant had accused him of harassment and police had warned him about tenants’ rights and trespassing on his own property. Through the front window he could see a big-screen TV and two space heaters with wires running in every direction. The yard was littered with a few empty cigarette packs, wrappers and beer cans. He suspected the tenant not only was living free but also was damaging his home in the process.

“So much disrespect,” Budhoo said. He kicked a beer can across the yard but then walked over to pick it up. Even if he no longer had control over his properties, he was still legally responsible for their upkeep, and he’d been fined four times for his tenants’ trash violations. He took a trash bag out of his car and started cleaning up the yard.

Trash outside Alfonzo Hill’s rented home, 1042 Cutler St., which is owned by Romeo Budhoo.
Romeo Budhoo in his garden at home in Schenectady.
* * *

Alfonzo Hill watched from inside the house until the landlord walked back to his car. “Yeah, like you need my money,” Hill said after he watched the landlord drive his Mercedes up the block, and then he came outside, lit a cigarette and sat on the porch.

He resented many things about life at 1042 Cutler: the two-foot hole in the bathroom ceiling, the lingering smell of the previous tenants’ dogs, the broken toilet that flushed only after he poured in a bucket of water. But what bothered him most was always having to repeat the same humiliations to the landlord about why he hadn’t paid, couldn’t pay, didn’t have any money to pay.

“Look, I don’t want to be living here, either,” Hill had told Budhoo at one point, but he also believed the pandemic had given him no choice.

He’d been paying rent on time for several months before the pandemic, living at 1042 Cutler with his 13-year-old daughter and his girlfriend and cooking at a Brick House Tavern for $700 a week until New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo banned indoor dining on March 16, 2020. Hill had lost his job the next day, and then, a few months later, he’d lost his girlfriend after arguments about the bills they couldn’t pay. He’d worked a job ever since he turned 14 — dog walking, cooking, cleaning, roofing, landscaping, demolition — and somehow he’d found work again in the middle of the pandemic at another restaurant, but most of his paycheck went to a babysitter for his daughter, and eventually that restaurant closed down, too.

Alfonzo Hill at 1042 Cutler St. in April. During the pandemic, he lost his job as a cook and found himself unable to pay rent.


Now he was 38, unemployed, broke, and living alone with his daughter and her two guinea pigs. She was attending sixth grade virtually in their living room, but Hill believed the best way to educate a child during a pandemic was to prepare her for reality by teaching her some hard truths. Life wasn’t a Disney movie, he told her. They were down to less than a few hundred dollars in savings. The pandemic was far from over. They were more likely to get covid-19 and more likely to die of it because they were poor and Black. And now the harsh reality he told her about the landlord was this:

“He’s basically the exterminator and we’re the rats. Do you understand that?”

“Kind of,” she said. “I guess so.”

“What I’m saying is he wants to get rid of us. It doesn’t matter what we’re dealing with. We’re not human to him. We’re money. It’s all a big game.”

So Hill had taught himself the rules, researching on the Internet about tenant rights, rent strikes in New York and the eviction moratorium. He read that almost 1 million other renters in New York state were behind on payments and that 80 percent of those renters had also reported having lost income during the pandemic. Hill watched online as Cuomo said: “The number one issue that people talk to me about probably is rent and fear about being able to pay their rent. And this just takes that issue off the table.” He listened during the presidential campaign as Joe Biden said: “There should be rent forgiveness. … Not paid later — forgiveness.” And so when Hill finally received some small unemployment payments and a four-figure stimulus check from the government, he used the money to fix the engine in his broken-down minivan, buy a little extra food, purchase some basic furniture, pay down his credit card, and surprise his daughter with a decent laptop for her virtual classes, because why would he spend what little money he had on rent that he didn’t actually have to pay?

The landlord had threatened to tow his car out of the driveway. He’d left fliers on the porch with information about homeless shelters. He’d stopped making even the most basic repairs, and now the furnace was broken and the house was so cold that the city had condemned it as unlivable, and yet they were living there still.

“I need some air,” he told his daughter, and he grabbed a beer and headed back outside.


grabbed a beer and headed back outside.

A bathroom ceiling at 1042 Cutler St.
Alfonzo Hill at the Cutler Street house.
* * *

A few more cans on his porch. More trash littered across his yard. Budhoo stopped at 1042 Cutler the next morning to survey the latest insults to his house, and then he took out his cellphone and dialed a number for “Julie Eviction.”

“Can we meet?” he asked. “There must be something I can do.”

A few minutes later, he pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot, and Julie Horn was waiting for him with a red manila folder labeled “1042 Cutler.” Horn was a landlord with a dozen of her own properties, but she’d also spent the past six years as an eviction specialist, charging a small fee to help other landlords file court documents, notarize forms, and serve eviction paperwork to tenants. Her job had become a regular part of the housing cycle in Schenectady, a Rust Belt city of 65,000 where more than half of all residents rented their homes, most renters earned less than $30,000, and about 1,000 tenants were evicted each year. Before the pandemic, Budhoo had typically worked with Horn to evict a tenant every few months. He gave a short grace period after the first of the month, and then within five or six weeks he was usually on-site with the sheriff to evict the tenant and change the locks. He’d built the expenses into his annual budget under a category labeled “routine turnover.”

But now Horn flipped though the folder for 1042 Cutler and pulled out paperwork dating to July. The courts were still technically hearing eviction cases even with the moratorium in place, but each time Horn went to the court, the law required something new: a longer grace period for tenants, notarized hardship forms, proof that the tenant wasn’t a veteran. Even if a judge eventually decided to grant an eviction order, the sheriff’s office couldn’t carry it out until the federal moratorium was lifted, and already the sheriff had warned about a backlog of up to 3,000 eviction cases that could take months to process.

On her business card, Horn called herself “The Hit Lady,” and she was used to hiding in her van and staking out tenants so she could deliver her court documents. She had also become used to people running away, crying, begging or threatening her, but what she’d begun to encounter lately was indifference.

“The word is out,” she said. “I’m a shark with no teeth.”

“So that’s it?” Budhoo said. “We’re powerless?”

“That’s not how the city sees it,” she said. “You’re the landlord, remember? You’re the villain. You’re greedy. You’re trying to put a helpless family out on the streets.”

“This house is slowly killing me,” he said.

“Have you thought about trading cash for keys?”

“What?” he asked, and Horn explained a strategy that was becoming popular among landlords in Schenectady. They offered to pay delinquent tenants more than $500 in cash and forgive all overdue rent if the tenant agreed to move out.

“That’s crazy,” Budhoo said. “I don’t have any more money to waste. I’d rather walk off a bridge. I’m serious. I’d just as soon commit suicide.”

She looked at the file and flipped through the paperwork. “Could you sell?” she asked. “Get what you can and then pay down your debts?”

“I’ve thought about it,” he said, but he’d also thought about how much he might get in return for a 120-year-old house in unknown condition, with a tenant who refused to allow potential buyers inside. Even if he could convince someone to purchase it blind, the new owner also would have to agree to inherit a tenant who didn’t pay and had a legal right to stay in the home until the eviction moratorium ended.

“Maybe if I’m lucky I’d break even and get back to zero,” Budhoo said. “And then what? I put my whole life into this business. It’s all I have. I’d be erasing 20 years.”

Romeo Budhoo and his wife, Mena Budhoo, in Schenectady. Mena manages the financial side of their property-rental business.
* * *

A few days later, he got an invitation from another small landlord. “Going broke? It’s time for landlords to unite,” the message read, and a few hours later, Budhoo was sitting in a small office with 15 other property owners, each of whom was out at least $10,000 in rent.

He knew everyone in the room, and their stories were similar to his: Most of them were immigrants who had arrived in Schenectady at its lowest point in the early 2000s, after it had lost half of its manufacturing jobs and a third of its population. The city at that time was blighted by thousands of vacant homes, and instead of spending $18,000 to demolish each one, the mayor had come up with a plan to go to New York City and recruit Guyanese immigrants who had built a reputation for fixing up derelict property. The mayor handed out his cellphone number and offered to sell houses for as little as $1, and more than 5,000 Guyanese began to move. They bought cheap homes, rehabbed them, rented them out, and then started paying property taxes that helped revive the city.

Now those same landlords were operating at a loss, and the city was trying to survive its own pandemic budget crisis by increasing their trash fees and raising property taxes for the first time in five years.

“We saved this city, and now we need help and get nothing,” said Mohamed Hafez, a landlord who was out more than $20,000 in rent.

“I’m broke. I’m eating from the food pantry,” said another.

“Where does it stop? I’ve heard people say: ‘Housing is a basic right. Cancel rent forever.’”

“Why don’t the grocery stores just start giving away food?” Hafez said.

“It’s a disaster, but what can we do? ” Budhoo said, and the other landlords started talking about how they dealt with delinquent tenants. Some were trading cash for keys. Some were cutting off their own heat or vandalizing their houses, hoping to make them so uninhabitable that tenants would leave. Others had stopped renting out vacant properties during the moratorium, believing it was better to lose income than to risk taking on a tenant who couldn’t be forced to pay.



Then one of the landlords started to tell the story of what he called an “involuntary eviction” that had happened a few weeks earlier in Albany, where a landlord had become incensed after trying and failing to evict his tenants for months. The landlord had broken into his own apartment early on a Sunday morning, held the tenants at gunpoint, restrained them with zip ties, hauled them out of his apartment, and then deposited them at a cemetery 30 miles from the property.

“When you kick a dog, eventually it’s going to bite,” one of the landlords said.

“That guy’s a hero,” said another.

“It’s not a real solution,” Budhoo said again, and they sat in silence for a moment until Hafez spoke up. He’d run for city council a few years earlier, and he knew what might get the government’s attention. “The only leverage we have is property tax,” he said, because property taxes accounted for nearly half of the mayor’s annual budget, and gathered in the room were landlords who owned a total of more than 200 rental units and paid a combined $1.2 million in annual property taxes to the city. Some, like Budhoo, had already defaulted on their taxes because they couldn’t afford to pay. Others were taking out loans or using savings to pay the city, and now Hafez suggested they stop. “Imagine what would happen if we got every landlord to hold back property taxes in protest,” he said, and he described a housing economy in which tenants didn’t pay landlords, landlords didn’t pay taxes, and a city could no longer afford to pay for its police or its schools.

“The whole system crashes down,” he said.

“And we’re going down with it,” Budhoo said.

A street in Schenectady in April.
* * *
The only immediate solution he could think of was also the most unlikely, to collect the rent, so one morning he drove back to 1042 Cutler to try again. He parked his car and watched the front door. Maybe this would be the day the tenant came outside. Maybe he’d walk over to the car with a check for the monthly rent or even for the full $12,000 that he owed. Budhoo watched as shadows moved across the curtains in the living room. He counted the empty cans on the front porch. He sent a text message to his wife: “Nothing yet,” he said. He listened to music and played a game on his phone, and after a while he glanced at his clock and realized he’d been sitting in the car for almost half an hour. “Pathetic,” he said. “More time wasted, wasted, wasted.” He couldn’t go inside the house. He couldn’t demand rent. He couldn’t kick the tenant out. He couldn’t do much of anything but sit and wait and hope, until eventually out the windshield he noticed something happening a few blocks down the street.

A woman was throwing clothing out of a house and onto the lawn. She carried a chair down the front stairs and put in on the sidewalk. It looked to Budhoo like an eviction, so he drove closer, parked and walked up to the house.

“Are you the landlord?” he asked the woman, and she nodded.

“Wow. Congratulations,” he said, gesturing at the trash piled up on the sidewalk. “I’ve been trying to get one of my houses back for more than a year. How’d you do it?”

“It’s not what you think,” the landlord said. “I didn’t evict. They just left.”

“Yeah, come on,” Budhoo said.

She laughed and then began to tell him about the ways she’d dealt with derelict tenants during the past year — how she applied pressure through eviction paperwork, stopped making repairs, filed suit in small claims court, and threatened to garnish wages until eventually a few tenants chose to vacate on their own. “I like to be reasonable, but eventually it’s either my house or theirs,” she said, and this is what victory looked like in the pandemic economy of 2021: an empty house, a family that had disappeared overnight, 28 garbage bags piled high on the sidewalk, an overturned dresser with initials carved into its side, a child’s mattress soaked through by rain, and thousands of grains of rice scattered across the street.

“I’ve been lucky,” she said. “I only rent to good people, and most have paid. It seems like every other landlord is going under, but I’m actually trying to invest. I’m looking to buy.”

Budhoo helped her pick up trash bags and then tossed them into an industrial dumpster.

“I might have an opportunity for you,” he said, already feeling defeated by what he was about to suggest. “You know 1042 Cutler? It’s a good house. I can give you a good price.”

A solitary light in a house near Cutler Street in Schenectady in April.
 

Keen

Well-Known Member
I did not read the full story. I just read the quote on the initial post. I fail to see how that has anything to do with landlords not paid rent fmonths across the country but aren’t able to evict tenants.

Rent is also a contractual agreement just like debt. If someone choose to pay one debt over the other, just understand there are consequences.

Just because someone took advantage of a government program to own a house, does not mean they are to provide free housing (unless that was part of the agreement).
 

B_Phlyy

Pineapple Eating Unicorn
I did not read the full story. I just read the quote on the initial post. I fail to see how that has anything to do with landlords not paid rent fmonths across the country but aren’t able to evict tenants.

Rent is also a contractual agreement just like debt. If someone choose to pay one debt over the other, just understand there are consequences.

Just because someone took advantage of a government program to own a house, does not mean they are to provide free housing (unless that was part of the agreement).

I read the article and I see both side but I definitely agree with the landlord.

Even though they can't be evicted right now due to the moratorium, the notifications and court summons are still going to be on the tenant's record. You literally refused to pay anything, for a year? And you don't do basic upkeep on the property? Yes there are tenants right but those rights come with responsibilities. You can't let the property fall into disrepair, especially if you aren't letting anyone in to assess damage (that you likely caused).
 

Kanky

Well-Known Member
I did not read the full story. I just read the quote on the initial post. I fail to see how that has anything to do with landlords not paid rent fmonths across the country but aren’t able to evict tenants.

Rent is also a contractual agreement just like debt. If someone choose to pay one debt over the other, just understand there are consequences.

Just because someone took advantage of a government program to own a house, does not mean they are to provide free housing (unless that was part of the agreement).
It doesn’t have much to do with it. I am a landlord. I have been paid throughout the pandemic and I would be trying to get rid of any tenant that didn’t pay. However it was interesting to me that the mayor of this town called this particular group of people and offered them free/cheap houses. I’m sure that there are black people, some of whom are probably living in these raggedy places now, who would’ve liked to own them.
 
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Kanky

Well-Known Member
I wondered by the tenant allowed the place to look like that, he is not working and should be responsible for basic upkeep.
He is flushing toilet with buckets of water and the ceiling is falling in. That’s not the kind of thing that tenants should be fixing. The slumlord needs to fix that. The tenant should mow the grass and pickup the trash, but I can see why someone using a bucket to flush a toilet might decide that they can’t be bothered.
 

Theresamonet

Well-Known Member
In the beginning of the article it said the landlord paid $79,000 for that house.
For Budhoo, the essence of his problems came down to one house: 1042 Cutler St., a three-story square box built in 1901, with faded green siding and fresh graffiti spray-painted on the windows. The house had been sold four times out of foreclosure, condemned by the city, and scheduled for demolition when Budhoo first saw it after immigrating to New York from Guyana in the early 2000s. He’d worked at a nearby pick-and-pack warehouse for $8 an hour and saved up a small down payment toward a $79,000 purchase price. He’d rewired the electricity, gutted the plumbing, installed granite countertops, and begun renting it out for up to $950 per month. Gradually those profits had paid for more distressed properties, for his daughter’s college degree, and for a small home of his own where her diploma now hung above the entryway. He’d spent two decades growing his business on the first of each month until the pandemic hit Upstate New York.
 

Keen

Well-Known Member
He is flushing toilet with buckets of water and the ceiling is falling in. That’s not the kind of thing that tenants should be fixing. The slumlord needs to fix that. The tenant should mow the grass and pickup the trash, but I can see why someone using a bucket to flush a toilet might decide that they can’t be bothered.
Is the tenant withholding rent because the landlord is not making repairs? The tenant has rights. He/she can call the city or go to court to force the landlord to make repairs. Even without going to court, if they document well that the landlord refused to make necessary repairs, they are within their right to use the rent money to make necessary repairs (such as ensuring the toilet flushes)

From my experience, non-paying tenants don’t report repairs because they would have to pay rent.
I’m not excusing the landlord. You can’t let your property fall apart like that. If a tenant won’t let me in to fix the property, I would sue to evict on the ground the property is not safe to live in. Many cities are allowing evictions for reasons other than payments
 

lavaflow99

In search of the next vacation
I posted it. I also really don’t like that the Washington Post used the man’s address in the title of the story.
Right?? I was shocked that they posted his first and last name and full address! Like whoa.....maybe it was their technique to help the landlord evict?
 

Crackers Phinn

Either A Blessing Or A Lesson.
I'm lucky to only have a small percentage of total renters defaulting and I don't expect to recover any of that money. My income streams are diversified so I'm in a better position to take the hit but I still feel salty about it the same way anybody who is owed money feels.

That said, as entrepreneurs, none of us are promised security. It sucks when a business fails, but they do and that's what's happening to landlords who are going broke.
 

Keen

Well-Known Member
I'm lucky to only have a small percentage of total renters defaulting and I don't expect to recover any of that money. My income streams are diversified so I'm in a better position to take the hit but I still feel salty about it the same way anybody who is owed money feels.

That said, as entrepreneurs, none of us are promised security. It sucks when a business fails, but they do and that's what's happening to landlords who are going broke.
Right! I have one tenant behind in rent. She still pays something because she knows I’m riding shotgun to the court house to file papers as soon as they start processing eviction.

She keep saying there’s a pandemic out there. I ask her for proof of lost income so we can work something out. I know she’s in health care and still working. That usually follows with her making some type of payment.
 

Kanky

Well-Known Member
Right! I have one tenant behind in rent. She still pays something because she knows I’m riding shotgun to the court house to file papers as soon as they start processing eviction.

She keep saying there’s a pandemic out there. I ask her for proof of lost income so we can work something out. I know she’s in health care and still working. That usually follows with her making some type of payment.
Plenty of people decided that this pandemic would be a come up for them. My friend has tenant who has been collecting unemployment that actually increased her income and still not paid a dime. The courts are so backed up that it will probably be this time next year before she can evict her. The tenant told her that she was engaged and saving the money for the down payment on her own house with her new husband. :ohwell:
 

TrulyBlessed

Well-Known Member
Smh




Apartment complex releases statement after woman says she came home to find they had mistakenly evicted her​

Brianni Bonner said she came home to find her locks had been changed - and her belongings in the dumpster.​

DALLAS — Updated at 4:31 p.m. Thursday with a statement from the Riviera Apartments.

A single mother who just moved from Chicago said her apartment complex managers mistakenly evicted her instead of the apartment downstairs.

Brianni Bonner said she came home to her apartment at the Riviera Apartments on Audelia Road in Dallas Saturday morning to find her locks had been changed.

“The maintenance man pulls up, and tells me I’m going to go to jail because it’s against the law for me to get into my apartment,” Bonner recounted

The 23-year-old is a single working mother to her 4-year-old son Izi. She said management made a mistake.

Bonner told WFAA she lives at apartment 1721, and she said management told her they meant to evict 1712.

Thursday, the Riviera Apartments released a statement about the eviction, apologizing for evicting Bonner and saying they are trying to fairly compensate her:

"Since learning about the incident involving Brianni Bonner and her young son our senior management team has been trying to reach out to Ms. Bonner to apologize and address the problems caused when our staff mistakenly emptied the contents of the wrong apartment.

"We want to offer our sincere apologies for the way the situation was addressed once the error was discovered and are attempting to contact Ms. Bonner to discuss how we can fairly compensate her and her son.

"In addition, we are reviewing our procedures to see if additional safeguards or training are necessary to help make sure this type of incident is not repeated."

Bonner said management told her they made "a big mistake."

“She told me it was a big mistake, it was an accident. They meant to evict the apartment underneath me, but they evicted me by accident,” Bonner said, adding that she found her belongings in the trash, including her medication for PTSD and anxiety.

“I can’t even explain to you the depression it’s caused,” Bonner described.

Bonner said most of her things were taken, with the rest dumped in the dumpster, including her son's teddy bears. She called Dallas police to file a report.

“I feel like everything was taken from me," she explained. "It doesn’t feel like home anymore."

Courtesy

Credit: Courtesy

A North Texas woman says her belongings were stuffed into trash bags after being wrongfully evicted from her apartment.

On Wednesday, WFAA went to the apartment complex to try to speak with the management. We called two times, and emailed them twice, as well. WFAA finally made contact with the property manager at the leasing office, but they did not want to make a comment. But, Bonner said management tried to compensate her.

“She told me, all they would be able to do for me is to give me a $200 Visa debit card. It was definitely a slap in the face,” Bonner said.

Provided

Credit: Provided

A North Texas woman says her belongings were stuffed into trash bags after being wrongfully evicted from her apartment.

Hours later, Bonner said she was allowed to get back into her apartment, but it was empty.

"They had repainted,” she said.

Bonner said she has been left traumatized and is trying to get back on her feet.

“I’m paying my rent, I’m trying to save up to go to school. It’s so stressful, and I have to start all over,” she said.

Bonner set up an online fundraising campaign, hoping to at least buy toys, and the necessities her son.

 

lavaflow99

In search of the next vacation
Plenty of people decided that this pandemic would be a come up for them. My friend has tenant who has been collecting unemployment that actually increased her income and still not paid a dime. The courts are so backed up that it will probably be this time next year before she can evict her. The tenant told her that she was engaged and saving the money for the down payment on her own house with her new husband. :ohwell:
Umm that’s not how it works though….. :pullhair: You don’t stop paying rent in order to save for your own home. :huh:

Where are these people raised? Whatever happened to self respect and obligation to duty? I understand if you don’t have the money at all to pay. But you are now receiving a higher income and not pay? Lawd…
 

Crackers Phinn

Either A Blessing Or A Lesson.
On Wednesday, WFAA went to the apartment complex to try to speak with the management. We called two times, and emailed them twice, as well. WFAA finally made contact with the property manager at the leasing office, but they did not want to make a comment. But, Bonner said management tried to compensate her.

“She told me, all they would be able to do for me is to give me a $200 Visa debit card. It was definitely a slap in the face,” Bonner said..
How could somebody let this come out of their mouth?
 

Kanky

Well-Known Member
I don’t know about Texas, but in FL they owe her a month rent for changing the locks. Possibly another month rent for removing her stuff. She needs to contact legal aid.
This is still not enough. Her stolen items are probably worth a lot more than a couple of months rent. I hope that she sues them and gets a lot more. The $200 gift card offer was just insulting.
 

Crackers Phinn

Either A Blessing Or A Lesson.
This is still not enough. Her stolen items are probably worth a lot more than a couple of months rent. I hope that she sues them and gets a lot more. The $200 gift card offer was just insulting.
$200 would buy a week or so worth of groceries that she would bring back to a kitchen with no pots, pans, plates, utensils, storage containers to cook, eat or store the food with. People acquire lots of stuff over time. I think it would easily cost $3K-5K minimum to replace everything in a 1-2 bedroom lived in apartment even if you bought everything including mattresses at Walmart.
 

Kanky

Well-Known Member
$200 would buy a week or so worth of groceries that she would bring back to a kitchen with no pots, pans, plates, utensils, storage containers to cook, eat or store the food with. People acquire lots of stuff over time. I think it would easily cost $3K-5K minimum to replace everything in a 1-2 bedroom lived in apartment even if you bought everything including mattresses at Walmart.
This! And if she had nice things then it could be 5 or 10x that. I wonder if she has renter’s insurance and if that would cover this kind of thing.
 

Crackers Phinn

Either A Blessing Or A Lesson.
This was timely.

Dear Quentin,

One of my oldest friends of 30 years rented an apartment from me for 8 years. She stopped paying rent during the last year when she started her own business. She kept saying she would pay me back, but by the time she moved out 3 years ago, she owed me more $20,000 in back rent and stopped taking my calls when I tried to collect it.

Out of the blue she texted me on my birthday last week, and said she missed me and would like to be friends again. However, her texts mentioned nothing about paying me back. I have already made peace with the lost money, and lost friendship, but I’ll bring up the back rent if we do speak again, which will probably be the end of that.

So what should I do? What should I say?

Bad Blood


Dear Bad Blood,

“...and I miss my $20,000.”

If your friendship is that important to your friend, she should have led with her amends. The price of that is $20,000. The most interesting, if not surprising, thing about her text message is that it focused on how she feels and her needs. It does not address the harm she has done to your friendship — possibly irrevocably.

U.S. states have a dollar limit on small-claims court cases. Unless you live in Delaware, Texas or Tennessee, it seems that your dispute with this friend exceeds that amount in other states. But that also speaks to the amount of money she pocketed. It’s a lot of money, and it should not be brushed off so lightly. Think again about taking legal action.

Enough texting. Meet her face to face. Tell her that you had to pay the mortgage while she lived there rent-free, and remind her that she is not the only person with financial responsibilities and that she abdicated her duty to you as a tenant and as a friend to pursue her needs. She used your friendship as leverage to scam free rent.

She cannot repair the friendship until she has repaid the debt.
 

naturalgyrl5199

Well-Known Member
The biggest problem is what Crackers mentioned upthread, diversification of income. Or LACK OF

Many people have ALL their income in rental properties, which will ALWAYS be subject to health of housing in the country. Many MANY landlords are actually able to handle this pandemic because they receive income elsewhere. They are digging into their savings and paying the taxes and upkeep with an understanding that they will evict immediately when allowed. These landlords are also the ones able to afford to take them to small claims court (lets say the tenants cause some serious damage and due harm) or take the time to push things into collections for wage garnishment. For me, if you are verified to still be working cause you are in healthcare, then YES, I will be pushing all legal ramifications for wage garnishment and to move things into collections. Working folk pay taxes and their bosses pay payroll taxes so income can be traceable. THOSE FOLK are looking for a come up and are (like many people) using misinformation to get over. But the bill ALWAYS comes due. So in 5 years they gone wake up and realize their credit is jacked because some owed money is sitting in collections. Especially when they try to rent a new property or buy a home. And Landlords can remind their working folk about this. Or, their tax refund that year will be really low.

The other problem is---millions of renters are already on the EDGE of homelessness. Like one check away from it. And this pandemic was it.
The gov. knew it and made the moratorium. With no relief for landlords...because like the city above, those land taxes are good revenue and keep city workers (police, firemen, etc.) paid and working....and they never extended help to landlords who are now taking out loans to pay them. Poor folk don't understand that land lords have a lot of other bills to pay to keep the renters in the homes outside of receiving rent. Finally, you base a GOOD chunk of your livelihood on renting to poor folk, and yeah, you ASKING for disaster. And yeah, like any other business....renting for income is a business subject to utter failure in a perfect storm of disasters. High risk = Higher reward.
 

Kanky

Well-Known Member
The biggest problem is what Crackers mentioned upthread, diversification of income. Or LACK OF

Many people have ALL their income in rental properties, which will ALWAYS be subject to health of housing in the country. Many MANY landlords are actually able to handle this pandemic because they receive income elsewhere. They are digging into their savings and paying the taxes and upkeep with an understanding that they will evict immediately when allowed. These landlords are also the ones able to afford to take them to small claims court (lets say the tenants cause some serious damage and due harm) or take the time to push things into collections for wage garnishment. For me, if you are verified to still be working cause you are in healthcare, then YES, I will be pushing all legal ramifications for wage garnishment and to move things into collections. Working folk pay taxes and their bosses pay payroll taxes so income can be traceable. THOSE FOLK are looking for a come up and are (like many people) using misinformation to get over. But the bill ALWAYS comes due. So in 5 years they gone wake up and realize their credit is jacked because some owed money is sitting in collections. Especially when they try to rent a new property or buy a home. And Landlords can remind their working folk about this. Or, their tax refund that year will be really low.

The other problem is---millions of renters are already on the EDGE of homelessness. Like one check away from it. And this pandemic was it.
The gov. knew it and made the moratorium. With no relief for landlords...because like the city above, those land taxes are good revenue and keep city workers (police, firemen, etc.) paid and working....and they never extended help to landlords who are now taking out loans to pay them. Poor folk don't understand that land lords have a lot of other bills to pay to keep the renters in the homes outside of receiving rent. Finally, you base a GOOD chunk of your livelihood on renting to poor folk, and yeah, you ASKING for disaster. And yeah, like any other business....renting for income is a business subject to utter failure in a perfect storm of disasters. High risk = Higher reward.
This is why I rent to middle class people and people in the military. They pay their bills and are not living on the edge financially. Of course the properties are not the type where you can get a house for $1 and then have someone using a bucket to flush the toilet but still sending you a check every month. I would be too ashamed to do that to someone, and it takes a lot to shame me when it comes to making money. :lol:

If I were going to rent to poor people then I would rent to section 8 folks because at least the government will make sure that you get your money. But the government will also insist that you make basic repairs, so that’s probably why the landlord in the OP didn’t do that.
 

Kanky

Well-Known Member
Umm that’s not how it works though….. :pullhair: You don’t stop paying rent in order to save for your own home. :huh:

Where are these people raised? Whatever happened to self respect and obligation to duty? I understand if you don’t have the money at all to pay. But you are now receiving a higher income and not pay? Lawd…

I told my friend that even if the freeloader is not planning on paying the military might make her fiancé pay up after they get married. I know that military folks have to pay their bills to avoid trouble, but IDK if they’d make him pay for something his wife did before they got married. Still worth a shot. Suing probably won’t help because they are in Florida.

She only admitted to all of this after someone saw her post about getting over on Facebook and told the landlord that she isn’t actually broke. The replies to the post were mostly people congratulating her on her come up, so I guess duty and obligation are dead.
 
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