Dad came home. Dad’s like me with the temper and the non-passivity. Dad’s calling Eugene, the lawyer the county keeps on retainer for us for foster kid issues.
Your parents cannot afford to be passive about this.
I do not see that the kids could be taken away from them, as long as they are trying to fix the situation. Letting it continue is what WILL get the kids removed from the home.
As MsRobyn said, document everything that has occured thus far, with as much detail as you can. Dates, times…when the guy came out, what he said, what he did, when he left.
If you want to do something entirely anonomously, do not use the home phone. Call the foster care worker from another phone and explain the “hypothetical” situation.
Most of all, putting up a fence is not a solution, and the landlord will be in VERY big trouble for this if he doesn’t fix the problem immediately.
~J
Good to hear. Keep us updated.
They brought in another, bigger backhoe, and an empty manure truck from the farm next door. I had to move my Jeep and park it on the front yard (the part that they admit is ours).
I’m trying to find a place to keep these pictures online.
No word yet on what the lawyer said, or if Dad even got him or just his secretary.
I’ll try to find a free one…
You can keep your pics online there - it’s a decent sized account, too.
Please keep us updated. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I’d love to come up there with a bounty-hunter friend of mine to have a little ‘chat’ with your landlord (well, I’d let the bounty hunter have a chat with him…).
Ava
I don’t know if this site, which is free would meet your needs or not. I don’t remember what their sign up form is like right now. The pictures may become Imagestation’s property if you put them on the site, not sure.
If your parents can reasonably leave the house under the “constructive eviction” previously mentioned, thereby protecting the kids in her care, I can’t see how the courts could remove the children if they were in other, safe housing until the landlord is forced to clean up the mess.
I also think your parents ought to get the lease they signed to see if what land is considered “theirs” is spelled out.
Esprix
Yahoo also has a photos section. All you need is a (free) account and you get 30 MBs of space.
I don’t think Yahoo is image HOSTING though. It’s just image storage. I know that I had to get an Imagestation account in order to link some Everquest screenshots to my guild’s site on guildportal for my personalized signature.
I agree on the lawyer. (As a matter of fact, while I would get the county lawyer involved for protection, I–who really do not like a lot of the lawsuits I’ve seen–would consider finding the meanest lawyer in the county to try to get some compensation from this clown.)
However, the part I quoted is utter bullshit. Unless New York has been issuing W-2 or 1099 statements to your parents for the foster stipend, the landlord will be laughed out of court for such a claim. Before we got permanent custody of our kids, we had them under the foster program and the stipend was not considered income. I have a realy hard time believing that New York is materially different than Ohio in that regard.
As a lawyer, my advice would be: consult a lawyer.
Which, it appears, has already been done.
racinchikkiboo - I have a subdomain. You can contact me on AIM (GingerOfTheNorth) or ICQ (5413208).
I bet the state lawyer would be glad to help you slime the landlord, especially given the shortage of good foster homes in NY and the fact that your parents are not at fault. PLEASE talk to Legal Aid, or another nonprofit legal services organziation, or someone who really, really knows landlord-tenant law, like a local tenants’ rights organization.
Don’t forget the power of the press. Cruel, blackmailing landlord v. poor, defenceless foster mother? This sort of story is a reporter’s wet dream.
Lawyer has been called; however, he’s just state legal for the foster system, but he assured us that this guy hasn’t a leg to stand on for most of his claims.
The neighbors saw the backhoes come in and heard the story, and now most of the neighborhood is riled up against the landlord.
More to come as the story unfolds. It’ll probably end with the septic tank in place and my parents refusing to do anything else because we can’t sell the trailer (which we own) without the land it’s on (which we rent from the motherfucker), and we can’t sell our lease on the land without the motherfucker’s permission, which they think he’ll withhold if we rile him.
Letters to the editor, and lots of them. Get the entire community, not just the immediate neighborhood, pissed off as all hell at this fuckwad.
Don’t back down from this one.
IANAEOTPL (I am not an expert on trailer park leases) but a few issues you might want to consider, that a lawyer can advise them on, is that they may not need to “sell” (or sublet) their remaining lease term in order to move. Assuming the lease specifies maintenance of the septic area as the landlord’s responsibility, if they will document what is happening/happened with the septic tank and sewage overflow situation and his lack of responsiveness, it is highly unlikely he can hold them to the lease. Many judges would void a lease for his failure to perform after hearing story like that assuming they can back up or other corroborate the facts of his lack of performance.
www.villiagephotos.com works pretty well. And your landlord is an asshole. My sympathies to your parents.
IANAL, but I do work in real estate. This is one of the single most infuriating stories I’ve ever heard regarding mobile home park landlords…
Some extra tidbits of advice:
1.) In addition to lawyers and health departments, your friendly local building code enforcement officer would be very interested in this. In fact, I’d seriously recommend bringing it to code enforcement’s attention, this is exactly the sort of thing they’re there to prevent. I wouldn’t be surprised if this jackass never even filed a building permit.
2.) Are you sure you can’t at all sell just the mobile home? Some jurisdictions do have ordinances of that sort, but not all of them. In such cases selling the mobile home is fundamentally no different from selling a sofa. It’s your private property, and you can sell it to whomever you wish, so long as the trailer is no longer on the premises after the sale. But it depends on the local ordinances. In most cases I’ve personally seen, the ordinances are geared more towards moving trailers onto currently vacant lots, rather than the other way around which is your situation.
3.) Do you have a signed copy of the lease? This is a vitally important document. For one thing, it should tell you precisely where the land your parents are leasing sits. But in any event, your parents need it handy. If you (they?) would like, I’d be more than happy to look through it (with specific names and rates and whatnot whited out, or you could post the relevant bits, or however). As I said, IANAL, but I’ve read plenty of land leases and mobile home lot leases and I know what to look for.
4.) Although I think this has been discussed pretty well already, I think it bears repeating: I can’t imagine any municipality where building and/or health code violations can only be reported by the occupants of the property. Total and complete bullshit, much like everything else that’s probably come out of his mouth. If absolutely nothing else, land use ordinances always take into consideration influences on adjacent properties. The same concept that prevents people from building zinc smelting plants in the middle of residential neighborhoods certainly ought to cover raw sewage.
Good god, this is unfuckingbelievable. This guy’s a donkey puncher of the highest order. The fact that he didn’t even bury the damn septic tank in a residential area is by itself unfathomably negligent, and I believe is contrary to BOCA (I’d have to look it up though, I work in commercial real estate). I can tell you of all the mobile home parks I’ve seen, I’ve never seen a fucking park where the tanks are above ground, and I’m appraising these things in Oklahoma for fuck’s sake. Even Shiteating-Acres Estates MHP (home of hourly rates and The World’s Biggest Nutria) at least has the common courtesy to bury the fucking septic tanks. The ruts may be filled in with broken bear bottles, and it may sit on top of a smoldering copper mine fire, but at least the only feces you’ll see were put there deliberately.
Talk to code enforcement. The triple threat of lawyers, health officers and code enforcement officers is enough to get any slumlord to shut up and start calling contractors in a hurry.