Story here. Basically, Ms. Westerfield was hospitalized at the end of February with multi-organ failure and spent two weeks unconscious. The day she got out, she sent the rent check to the landlord, but they sent it back and served her an eviction notice. She sued, but the mail notice of her court date came back as undeliverable (can you say, “Bad faith on the part of the landlord?”) and the judge said that that was no excuse for missing their court date. Guess how easy it is for her to rent a different apartment with an eviction on her record.
Seems like an awful lot of trouble and expense to evict a person who was already on a month to month lease. I’m also very curious as to why a judge would ignore the fact that the court date notice was returned “undeliverable”.
Not trying to diminish anyone’s RO, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more backstory here than what was in the article.
Of course her daughter claims she tried to do something but her efforts were rebuffed. :dubious:
I wonder if those those apartments are in the area covered by rent control. If so, that is likely the reason this happened.
Well, the article says, “Sandra King, manager for Midtown Apartments, declined to comment for this story after consulting with the complex’s owner”. Why couldn’t she at least give a token, “It’s more complex than Ms. Westerfield says, but due to lawyerly stuff blah, blah, blah.”
Not sure what the laws in CA are, but it can take months to evict someone here, for non-payment of rent or otherwise. A former co-worker of mine had a hellish time attempting to evict a tenant who’d given up paying rent to concentrate on his newfound hobby (smoking crack). After several months and a few court appearances (at which kindhearted judges allowed Crackhead Tenant more time to “get his life in order”) my friend was finally able to evict the guy, who left several thousand dollars’ worth of property damage in his wake.
Either things are much crueller in the Golden State, or there’s some relevant details missing from this story.
My guess is because she is told as a condition of her employment that she is not allowed to give any comment to the press regarding any situation without it being approved by central office.
Per the article she was on a month to month lease and had failed to pay rent. CA law allows for a 3 day notice in that situation.