I’ve passed off the judgment to a Collections lawyer who is going to try to collect money from the settlement that my former tenants receive every year. We set up contingency compensation where they’ll receive one-third of what is collected. At this point, I just want to get this thing over with since it has been dragging on _way_ too long.
Depending on what news sites you read, you may be familiar with justin.tv (justin.tv blog). Since March 19th, 2007, Justin has been wearing a camera attached to his hat 24/7, and streaming the video and accompanying audio over the internet for everybody to watch. All of this has been run out of a single two bedroom apartment in San Francisco.
Many things have happened since the camera was first turned on. A viewer prank called the police and reported a stabbing in the apartment. Shortly afterwards, the police entered the apartment with guns drawn, amusing viewers around the world who were watching it live. The next day, somebody reported a fire and six firetrucks showed up, though to the viewers’ dismay it was not aired live (techcrunch).
Other problems are occurring too. Other tenants are complaining about the traffic at all hours of the night. Tenants have also complained that they were getting filmed in common areas without their permission (SF Chronicle).
All of this has obviously upset the landlords, Trinity Management Services, who operates over 50 apartment complexes in San Francisco. After searching the apartment a few times looking for lease violations, they eventually filed for eviction against justin.tv. Not only that, but they have stopped renting other apartments to applicants for simply knowing Justin.
As a landlord, I can completely understand why Trinity would want to get rid of these guys. It seems like the case should be pretty straightforward, if they’re violating the lease, causing the other tenants to complain, and disturbing the peace: kick them out.
However, then the situation got sticky for Trinity.
With all the publicity that the justin.tv team commands, websites sprung up to try to stop the eviction. Sites like Don’t Evict Justin were put up in an attempt to bring down the management company, using all tactics possible, including digging up dirt and court documents. Worse yet, it appears that a lot of Trinity’s business comes from young entrepreneurs/professionals, which means that by fighting justin.tv they may end up alienate a significant part of their tenant base.
I find it somewhat odd that these young entrepreneurs do not empathize more with their landlords and the other tenants. They are callously disrupting the lives of the other tenants as well as impacting the business of Trinity. It is sad to see that they’re taking the all-too-common “Landlords are Evil, Screw ‘Em” stance and ignoring everybody else.
My question for the Shmandlord readers is, what should Trinity do? How could a landlord protect themselves against this (although obviously the probability that it would happen to any given landlord is virtually zero)?
I received notice that my ex-tenants, the ones against which I received the default judgment, filed an appeal. First of all, I still don’t understand how they are allowed to appeal a default judgment when they did not show up in court the first time around, but apparently they are. What exactly are they appealing?
Anyhow, in response I had to file my formal claim against them, which has already been received by the court. The thing that was interesting about this complaint is that the court would tell me absolutely _nothing_ about how to format it, about the process, or anything. To each question, they recommended I get a lawyer or go to a law library and look up the state’s civil procedure laws. While I did not pay a lawyer to help, I was able to consult with one in order to get all the paperwork together properly.
Now that I’ve filed the complaint, the defendants are most likely going to have to get themselves a lawyer in order to take it to the next level.
I am particularly curious if they had planned this from the beginning (of the small claims process). Are they aware of how much trouble it is to file the formal complaint, and if so, chose not to show up in court with the intension of appealing?
Court went very well this morning against my Pain in the Wrist tenants.
We both signed a “Consent to Enter Judgment” agreement. This allows the tenant to remain as long as they follow the terms outlined in the agreement. If they do not, a judgment is automatically filed against them and the landlord can promptly file a Warrant of Removal without going back to court. The tenants would then be physically removed a few days later.
There was nothing for me to lose by going with this agreement. The tenants brought one month’s rent to the hearing — this was on top of the three-fifths of a month’s rent that they’ve already paid over the past few weeks. While they still have a bit of catching up to do, if if turns out that they are unable to comply with the agreement they will be evicted by the court officer within two weeks.
The terms of the agreement are:
The big question you most certainly have is: how are they going to be able to pay _more_ than their rent each month when they’ve been having trouble keeping up with the rent alone?
The answer to this question lies in a person whom I met today: the county legal advisor. The legal advisor is present at all eviction hearings and will help any tenants who come to her for help. My tenants spoke with her earlier this week, and she has been working with them on several different tactics to get out of their trouble.
First off, they’re trying a county homeless prevention program which helps people in need. It is uncertain how much money the program has left this fiscal year, but the legal advisor believes that there is at least some and will request it.
Second, my tenants were approved for some form of rental assistance program — not Section 8. The group has apparently been completely non-responsive after sending out the acceptance letter, including when I spoke with them. However, the legal services attorney was pretty confident that she would be able to get them to speed up the process. She will be working with my tenants to get them out of this mess as quickly as possible, which means getting their rent paid in a timely fashion.
There is one other note that I want to address. Despite my earlier advice, I did not use a lawyer for this eviction case. I didn’t because the circumstances were very different than last time, where I was very afraid of my potential liability due to the dogs. This time, I wasn’t using eviction to protect myself from civil suits, but instead to help collect rent. If I were to hire a lawyer, I would definitely have to shell out at least a few extra hundred in legal fees. I could collect the fees from the tenant, but this would unnecessarily complicate the situation. Instead, I was using the eviction to help encourage the tenants to pay the rent, and in fact wasn’t sure we would even make it to trial. I also felt comfortable with the paper work because I had already had experience with the process. I would still recommend that a landlord hire an attorney for his or her first eviction proceedings.
Anyway, I am very content with the way things went right now. I am just hoping that the legal advisor will finish helping them out of this mess.
Picture: mike_ormsby
After finding my old tenants, I filed a small claims suit against them. The court date is set to February 20th, although the tenants haven’t been served yet. I spoke with the constable today and he seems to take pride in his ability to serve. He assured me that he has several tricks up his sleeve which he will use if necessary.
At this point, if I do not hear anything from the court then it means that they were served and the court date is on. If not, I’ll hear something within two weeks.
My fingers are crossed!
As you already know, I am having trouble with another set of tenants [read].
When they started receiving their checks from worker’s comp, it turns out the amount was less than they initially told me. Apparently, they’re only able to pay 60% of their rent each month. Obviously this is unacceptable, so I filed for eviction and the hearing will be on Friday February 2nd.
The key points in the situation are:
Ugh.
Well, I have some very exciting news:
I’ve located my ex-tenants. They’re living at a hotel in the neighboring town. I promptly filed the small claims suit today. It turns out that in this town there are two options for serving the papers. First, the court documents can be sent through certified mail, but this requires that the recipients sign the return receipt. I know from experience that they never sign for any of their mail, so this method is out of the question. The second method is to have the constable do it. The court clerk said that the constable is very good at finding and serving people, so I have my fingers crossed.
Unfortunately there is no way that I or another third party can serve the papers. Now I just have to wait to hear what happens. I am confident that even if they were to move again, I’ll be able to track them down. They owe me a lot of money and I feel obligated to make them pay.
I am personally aware that they’ve done this to several landlords before me. Do people not follow through (I understand it is a hassle, but if nobody tracked them down then why would all tenants not do this?) If anybody has evicted tenants before, did you end up getting paid? Did you have to file a civil suit?
I’ll keep you up to date.
There is a situation unfolding that has me very nervous.
The tenants who helped with the renovations are hitting some hard times. The father had an incident in early 2006 where he fell while working as a contractor, seriously hurting his wrist. He had a cast for a while and then seemed fine when it was removed, but apparently over the past few months it has become very painful. To make a long story short, he just had surgery a few weeks ago, and will be in a cast for the next four months. This presents the problem of how will they pay rent.
To flesh out the history, they own their own power-washing company. Power washing, I’ve learned, is a very seasonal business. Over the winter, they both do odd jobs to pay the bills. When the incident first occurred in January, he was unable to get another contract position and it was too cold to power wash. They stopped paying rent. I filed for eviction, and a week before our court date they explained to me that they were really in financial trouble. I let them slide on the rent for several weeks until power washing season. I was concerned that I would not collect, but they really were down on their luck and had no other options (if I evicted them, it would be unlikely they’d find another place to rent). Either way, I believed that they would pay me back and they did. Once the summer came they started giving me a check after every job, and were able to catch up within a few hundred dollars by September/October. They paid off the next two months by helping with the renovations (on which they did an amazing job).
This brings us to mid-November, whose rent they’ve only paid half. Again, the surgery was in the last week of November. Since then, they’ve been waiting for their worker’s comp checks to come in the mail, and of course it hasn’t. So I’ve been waiting, unsure how to proceed. As of today, they have still not received it, and I am basically at the end of my patience.
So what do I do?
Well, today I called the workers comp office to find out what’s really happening. The woman wouldn’t go into detail because I wasn’t authorized (I made it clear I was the landlord, to avoid any legal complications). But after speaking with her, it seems to have prompted my tenants to get in touch with her (they said they were trying, but for some reason couldn’t get in touch with her). Anyway, it looks like the first check is coming tomorrow to cover the past few weeks — since the surgery. From this point forward, checks will arrive every week. With the first check, they’re going to pay rent through the end of November. After that, they’re going to give me a quarter of the month’s rent each week from their checks.
I will still be a little behind, which I will collect when the wife gets her winter job (she couldn’t get it earlier because “she needed to take care of her husband”). Overall, I am cautiously trying to help them through. I certainly don’t want to get burned, and will protect myself. On the other hand, I would like to keep them as tenants (assuming they don’t get more behind. Enough is enough). They keep the place very neat, they fix things when needed, and they’re very nice.
We’ll see…
Pete emailed a follow-up to what he found at the apartment:
Here is Pete’s second blog post about what happened today in court: