If the government can’t handle the cost what makes you think landlords can?
So what do you propose?
I’m wondering how this works, but I see the logic. From the landlord’s point of view, moratorium or not, the notice to evict has to be served in timely fashion. The evicted tenant can then appeal citing the moratorium and can stay, but at least the landlord has done his part to serve notice of eviction. Whether he is allowed to carry out that order is not necessarily under his control at the moment, but as you say, once the ban on evictions is lifted, he doesn’t have to go through the legal process of debating whether he served eviction notices on time or not. He can just bring out the deputy at that point.
A couple things. It may be small numbers of squatters but if it happens to you it is a huge deal. A person has the run of your property doing God knows what and not paying you. It usually happens to vacation homes, second properties, rentals between renters, etc. but there are a few reported cases where a person took a week vacation and came home to a squatter and thus loses their own residence while they go through the eviction process.
It’s not a huge movement but it is growing based on people misinterpreting how adverse possession works. There are websites that tout squat in a house and mow the lawn and boom! free house.
Yeah, but SOMEBODY still is responsible for the property taxes, etc.
I can’t speak for what is happening during the moratorium, but under normal circumstances (in Ontario at least) evidence of discretionary spending is looked at.
I moved to evict tenants a few years ago. I introduced as evidence all the emails they’d sent me with their various sob stories and the ones that crushed their case were the ones where they admitted they’d decided to “vacation in Florida” for the month of January and had no money for rent.
That article is very generic- “people not on the lease” could be squatters, could be roommates of the person on the lease. But also what that article leaves out ( and which I have seen in other articles regarding the Roland Hawkins incident) is that
a person breaks into a house then it is considered trespassing and the police can remove them. However, if they got into the home in any other way then they are considered squatters and the laws applying to them are more complex!
I don’t see how the police can be expected to know on-the-spot whether someone who got into the house without breaking in really was invited in by the previous occupants or not.
It sounds like the moratorium on eviction is just that … not a moratorium on housing court proceedings. The proceedings are a long drawn out procedure, especially in large cities — and they can really drag on if the tenant knows how to game the system. So I’m thinking that even if you can’t get the eviction, you can have the court proceedings and get the judgement against the tenant. It’s just that you can’t send the judgement to the marshal that handles the final notice and actual eviction while the moratorium is in effect.
That said, I’m not sure that the judge is in a position to exercise leniency if the issue is non-payment. I don’t think any judge would ever rule that a tenant’s financial circumstances were a legal reason for the tenant to occupy your privately owned property without paying the agreed upon rent.
There may be other issues in housing cases - allegation of lease violations other than non-payment or allegations that the property needs repair— but simple non-payment cases are simple contract cases.
Now, a lot of these cases settle and frequently the settlement includes a waiver of past due rent obligations - usually the tenant will agree to vacate in a week or two in exchange for all unpaid rent being waived. These deals are frequently accepted but no judge can make you take that deal. Both parties can continue to work through the courts, cause even though eviction is inevitable in a simple non-payment case it takes forever.
In NYC it works like this
To begin the procedure, you need to properly serve your tenant with a 30 day notice. Then you need to wait the 30 days plus some - I’m thinking it was around 10 days. You have a limited window of time to file the case with the court. 3-4 weeks after filing you’ll get your first hearing. Even if that goes well, that won’t get you the eviction. You’ll get a second hearing about 6 to 8 weeks after that. If that goes well you’ll get your judgement.
But don’t kiss your tenant goodbye just yet. In NYC, it takes another 3-6 weeks to get the eviction warrant. Then your convey that warrant to the marshal. Then they give your tenant their final notice - I think a 3 day notice is typical but in NYC it’s 10 days. If your tenant is still around, then the marshal will come and throw them out ( you need to hire a locksmith to meet him, break in if needed and change the locks).
Then your eviction is complete. This is why landlords often give up back rent in exchange for a quick exit. Plus, all the court will give you is a judgement for back rent, you can’t squeeze blood from a stone.
It it’s not the job of the judge to look at the tenant finances and decide if they are truly needy. If the landlord can prove non-payment the judge will decide in the landlords favor -and the procedure will take the same amount of time whether or not the tenant is destitute or wealthy.
Now this may affect the judge’s attitude towards the tenant, and the judge might push towards a tenant friendly settlement If the tenant Is sympathetic. But he can’t make the landlord accept. The tenant circumstances might determine whether the judge looks sad or gleeful when he rules for the landlord, but the outcome without settlement is a given in a simple non-payment case.
This is how the NYC eviction looks if it goes well for the landlord. But while you are fighting for eviction, the city will be doing everything they can to help your tenant stay. They will call and send them letters, offering advice, legal aid and cash grants. It’s frustrating for a landlord.
S E L L T H E H O U S E.
The lease is up and the owner has incurred financial losses which are not sustainable. The transfer of property should resolve the issue immediately…
Nope. If a house is sold a tenant goes with it as the lease remains in effect (at least in Arizona). You say that’s not the case here as the lease has expired. If it were that easy for the new owner saying, “You don’t have a lease get out of my house.” this thread would not exist.
That holds true in Indiana, too - even after a sale the lease remains in effect. I suspect that’s probably the most common situation.
I think there is a clause in the law covering leases here that a new owner could basically compensate a lease-holder tenant for the remainder of the lease and give them 30 days to get out, but I am not a lawyer and wouldn’t want to test that in court without one. That might only apply in cases of eminent domain, where the government takes over the property.
Bottom line - consult an actual lawyer in the jurisdiction where the property is located.
Per the op, the lease is up in a little over a month. It’s getting harder and harder to find good tenants so my advise remains the same. Sell the house. The time for a lawyer is past due to get the paperwork going.
Selling the house is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If the OP were tired of being a landlord altogether, he probably would have come up with that idea on his own. But I don’t get the impression that he wants out of the rental property game for good; he just wants a better tenant.
Would you advise a business owner with a problem customer to close down his business? I don’t think so.
it’s how you define the problem. If it’s a substantial loss of income then the problem is a loss of revenue. Replacing the tenant is going to take time and there’s no guarantee the next tenant doesn’t pull the same thing. If the op thinks the revenue loss will be covered in future housing prices then the solution is to get a lawyer who can expedite the eviction process.
Not only would I get a lawyer but I’d bring in a real-estate person to advise on the market.
OP here. Selling the condo is always an option but one that I’d rather not take right now. When rent is being paid, I have a positive cash flow and its part of my retirement income. My goal is to ultimately leave the condo to my daughter who has a learning disability. If I sell, I’m looking at a $20,000 tax bill. If I leave it to her, there are no taxes penalties. Due to restrictions in the master deed, once the unit transfers ownership it can no longer be rented. In NJ it turns put that you have to renew the lease on a month-to-month basis provided the rent is being paid. There are exceptions - selling the unit, family member moving in and some others. The terms of the lease can be changed and rent increased by a reasonable amount. I’m still waiting to hear back from a lawyer.
Also, I contacted her former employer and he said he had no intentions of re-hiring her but wouldn’t go any further than that.Reading between the lines it seemed he wasn’t very happy with her. I don’t even know if she was laid off due to covid (must be the case to get the rental aid) or something else.
It wouldn’t be the first time an employer used an external excuse to rid themselves of a problem employee they couldn’t fire/lay-off by some other means.
OK, I have some sympathy for you here, honestly. You’re not living in the bahamas based on her rent. She’s not treating your property well, and you have already reduced the rent payments - you are doing your part as a good landlord.
And I’d like to think that your opinions about abortion and adoption are driven by your anger rather than your actual opinions on what choices women actually have. I’d really like to think that because otherwise, what the hell?
BUT, from what you say, she’s consistently been “nearly a month behind” before. Now she’s two months behind. I bet there are a lot of tenants waaay more behind in their rent than that. Even in normal circumstances, if she’s applying for rental assistance, then it would probably be hard to evict her on those grounds, wouldn’t it? Two months is not an extraordinarily large debt. I think most landlords take out insurance for something like that.
If she actually is pregnant, with her second child, then the chances of her getting rental assistance would increase, not decrease, I’d have thought. And maybe the father of the child, or his family, or her family, are helping out with the TV and so on. Sometimes people will help out with gifts, because it makes them feel good, even if they wouldn’t help out with rent.
Do you ever actually speak to her? If you’re too angry with her to do that, maybe ask someone else to, because if she can get rental assistance then your rent will be paid.
If that’s what you actually want, then do that. If you just want her out of your house, well, probably not the best time for it.
She might well be a terrible person who’s gaming the system and spending loads of money, but it’d probably be hard to prove it in court.
The house being sellable is something for the future. What she’s done is clog up the toilet with “flushable wipes,” which doesn’t exactly sound like a horror tenant from hell story, paint the walls and get two pets. It doesn’t actually sound like she’s making the house unsellable for your daughter in the long term.
It sounds stressful, but what you can deal with now is getting her rent paid. A landlord association in your area might be able to help you help her. It’s probably best to focus on that for now, because you’re not going to be able to evict her.
Not sure about where the OP lives, or where you live, but back when I was having financial problems I inquired about rental assistance where I live. In my area the waiting list for that is 10 years long. Which won’t help a pregnant woman.
(I have no idea if that’s improved in this Year of Covid or not, but it’s an illustration of just how unhelpful “public aid” can be.)
Hmm… I gather you’ve never had to fix a plumbing problem caused by “flushable” wipes, then? (Also menstrual products - do not flush tampons. Please.) The painting the room isn’t too bad - you can cover paint fairly easily, at worst you might need two (or even three) coats. But pets? Once had a job that involved ripping up floorboards and replacing them because the floor had been ruined by pet urine.
Don’t know if things are that bad in the OP’s case, but plumbing issues and pets can cause a lot more damage than most people realize.
End of digression.
“Flushable wipes” is excusable just by the name, unless she was stuffing the loo with dozens of them! 
I do know that they can cause problems but it’s an area where I genuinely wouldn’t blame anyone for not.
Pets can also be an issue, and it’s a breach of tenancy. In normal times especially with the other issues, it would be good grounds to go for an eviction. But it’s one dog and one cat, apparently, and it’s recent, and is via a Facebook search.
Who puts up photos of themselves in their home with their pets on a publically searchable facebook page? I know actual dogs and cats that don’t have publically searchable facebook pages. Might be best to check if there are actually pets in the residence before using that as a reason.
I’m in the UK, and rental assistance sounds like it’s like housing benefit - a payment towards the housing. What you’re describing sounds more like a home specifically aimed at people on low incomes. If the OP was thinking his tenant might get it within a few months, then I don’t think he can have been talking about the latter. The vague differences in terms (general terms, not your terms!) are not helpful at all but the OP said he’d be getting the money paid through to January if it went through.
Yeah, if I had my way I’d not allow them that name. They don’t dissolve. They can wad up and cause a clog. They can snag on the rough interior of a pipe then start collecting other stuff and cause a clog. They don’t dissolve/rot in a septic tank, causing problems there, and Og help you if they get into the drainfield of such a system. They cause a LOT of damage, and no, you don’t need to stuff dozens of them in at a time. My work with landlords has convinced me to never put anything down a toilet other than bodily waste and toilet paper. Anything else is asking for trouble.
Nope - “housing assistance” in the US is in fact a payment towards the housing. And it’s true, in my area the waiting list to get that benefit is ten years long. Actually, the waiting list is closed - there is now a waiting list to get on the waiting list, which would be funny in a Monty Python skit but is a nightmare in real life.
Which is one factor why we have such a large problem with homelessness in the US.
An additional factor in my county is that when the county runs out of money for the rent assistance it… stops paying it. Just stops sending the money to the landlords. Which is why most landlords want nothing to do with it, because you can’t run a business when 2/3 of the way through the year the money just shuts off and you just don’t get any more until the local government’s new fiscal year.
Not that I expect anyone outside the US to get that - certainly, most Europeans have a much better social safety net than the US, even if your safety nets have some worn spots and are a bit threadbare.