Living Rent-Free: Part II

I’m sure there are tons of you out there who are frequently more than a month late on your rent, and you’ve never seen the 3-Day Rent Demand I wrote about last week. Instead, you get the banging on the door on a Saturday, the non-stop phone calls, the Soprano-style assurances that the long arm of the law isn’t nearly as powerful as the clinched fist of your landlord.

This, more than anything else, is why it takes so long at times for a non-payer to be evicted. Not the bureaucratic system, but the tardiness of many landlords to start using it. Because even if you haven’t paid in three months and you keep swearing to your landlord the money will be coming soon, then avoiding him until he finally realizes your word—and your personal checks—aren’t so good, he will have to start from scratch with the courts. There’s no speeding it up just because he waited so long to start the process. Once he wises up, you’ll get that 3-Day Rent Demand. And then, if you still don’t pay, the Dispossession Notice.

Once you’ve gotten the Dispo—hope you can follow the lingo—you should probably start paying attention. It will have a court date on it, and by law you should be receiving a call asking if you’re a member of the military. This is the most ridiculous phone call for many a Management Office employee, asking the Italian fashion student who pays late every month because she spends the money Daddy wires her on handbags if she is a member of, or a dependent of someone who is a member of, the U. S. Military. I’ve seen many an eviction case delayed because somebody kept putting off making that phone call and filling out the affidavit.

If you ignore the Dispo entirely and skip the court date, your Landlord is going to get a Warrant for your eviction. I’ve seen this happen more than six months after the last rent check—a long time to be living rent free. But rest assured, it’s gonna catch up with you soon. The Warrant will be your last chance to pay before the Marshall comes and takes your apartment away from you

I recommend going to your court date, and even if you don’t have all the money, ask for a Stipulation, a payment schedule where you’ll pony up an agreed upon amount each month, on top of your monthly rent of course, until you’ve caught back up. If it’s even remotely reasonable, the judge will usually force the Landlord to accept

If you can’t come up with the money by now, three to six months after that first rent check was due, well, then I think we can all agree that you probably don’t deserve to live there. The Marshall will evict you. All your belongings will be put in storage, which you can retrieve only after you’ve paid the moving and storage costs. Your credit will be ruined. And, um, you will be homeless. It’s a messy scene.

But you can’t say I didn’t warn you.