The Real Philadelphia Occupiers: Deadbeat Tenants

THE FOLLOWING BLOG IS INCOMPLETE. IT WILL BE FINISHED IN JANUARY, 2012. AS OF NOVEMBER 30, 2011, THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS 1,975 WORDS.

The infamous Occupy Wall Street group in Philadelphia was forcibly ordered to vacate its City Hall encampment November 30, about 50 days after the tent erections started (double entendre intentional).

This is an article, however, about the ones who are occupiers much longer than the Occupy group, and in far greater numbers.

It is close to crushing to be a landlord in Philadelphia. City Council has created a bomb of a Landlord and Tenant law; tenants are enjoying a 95% edge over the 5% landlords. It has been going on since the 1970′s. Each evicted tenant moves out owing thousands of dollars to the landlord. It is City Council’s fault. Reform is absolutely necessary.

Perhaps only landlords will care. We, the landlords, truly are victims. However, City Council considers the landlords the bad guys. It is absurd.

City Council makes it very rough, inconvenient and especially costly for a landlord to evict a deadbeat.

There may not be doubt that tenants had drawn the short straws going back more than 35 years. Some of their situations cried out for reform. However, City Council since then tipped the scales so far in the other direction, it is necessary that Philadelphia finally right one of its wrongs.

If a landlord wants to evict a tenant, the tenant still wins for much longer than is fair, logical and justifiable. City Council makes it possible for the tenant to keep living in the apartment and not paying rent, money the tenant will use eventually toward the rental of a new apartment from an unsuspecting and trusting landlord, someone who gambles to rent to this new tenant. The tenant does not write “I am a deadbeat” on the apartment application. So, yes, for the landlord, every tenant is a gamble.

In 1968, the Northwest Tenants Organization (in northwest Philadelphia) was founded as a rent strike-oriented militant group. In a couple of years, the movement grew and evolved into the Tenant Action Group, which developed as a political action and lobbying organization.

By 1974, the TAG had persuaded City Councilperson Ethel Allen, a nice lady, to introduce rent control legislation. Over the next decade, TAG successfully showed that Philadelphia had a lot of slumlords. But in the fashion of its grandiose lack of wisdom, City Council went entirely overboard. Ever since, landlords have been getting the hell beat out of them.

This is not to say that there aren’t any slumlords anymore. However, good landlords are taken advantage of by the 17-member City Council (by the way, why do we need that many Council members?). Over the years, the City Council legislation has been on the warpath through both its ordinances on the eviction of tenants and the regulations in the Department of Licenses and Inspections. The procedures regarding each, today, serve as a months-long Christmas present to unlawful tenants facing eviction and a big body blow to landlords at the mercy of so many regulations. Electrical contractors, plumbers, fire alarm companies and so on make sure the rental facility is safe. In itself, that is fine. But when you consider that many tenants trash their rooms, and their electrical switches, and faucets, the glass in the windows, and the walls and ceilings, and so on, you wonder just why they do that, and you wonder why City Council lets them virtually completely off the hook, and the landlord must spend, yes, thousands of dollars, to bring the rental property back to Code, and suitable for the next move-in.

This blog will concentrate on the eviction of tenants, but the reader should recognize that City Council has added entirely too much costly and time-consuming glob with its Department of Licenses and Inspections regulations.

The City tells you that if a tenant fails to pay his rent on time, you should, at once, proceed to the eviction process. However, the eviction process is a real doozy. When you ask the tenant for the rent, prepare yourself to hear Lie Number One (in early June). If the tenant is good-natured and seemingly reasonable, you think of the tedium in front of you if you go for eviction, and instead you roll the dice and figure the tenant is a truth-teller. You hope the rent will be forthcoming “soon”.

This process can repeat itself. The landlord is hanging on every word, and allows the tenant to skate (read this “continue to lie”). That is the easier of the alternatives for the busy and/or retired landlord.

In my case this year, the tenant showed me his H & R Block receipts showing the three IRS tax refunds (about $7,000 altogether) he was to receive “in four to eight weeks”.

After four weeks, and then in two-week intervals, you are told that the tenant’s mother is going to call him as soon as she receives the refund envelope. You wonder why the refunds are not coming to your rental property, but you mostly hope the IRS is timely.

After you have heard, say, Lie Number Eight, you realize how you have been swindled and played for a fool, and you realize you have but one avenue remaining.

Eviction, you know, is the really hard part.

First, you must send, by registered letter (in my case, the letter was just going upstairs), a notice of eviction. The tenant can think this over for 10 days.

I have yet to see a tenant move out on an eviction letter sent by registered mail.

So, after 10 days, you must go to Philadelphia Municipal Court, 34 South 11th Street, and apply for a Landlord and Tenant Complaint. In this document is listed the rental owed by the tenant, including amounts for utilities listed separately.

You pay the City of Philadelphia $100.00 for today’s action.

The complaint serves to schedule your court hearing. In my case, the hearing date is 42 days away! Six weeks! All during the 42 days, you are losing additional rental and utility payments, and you know you must provide adequate heat for the fall season, for which you will not receive one penny. Your tenant is living in your apartment for free!

You calculate that your tenant is now at a more than $5,000 swindle, but soon to be closer to $7,000. And you cannot do a thing about it. City Council made it this way. And, your tenant continues to live in your rental unit.

On the day of your hearing, you are in the courtroom of Judge Barbara S. Gilbert. But actually, because of subsequent developments, you will not appear before her. With the Judge not in the courtroom, two clerk-types call off the names, case by case. Some people did not show up; some agree to arbitration in the next room, and some are to await talking with the Judge.

My name is called and an attorney stands before the bench to tell the clerks he requests a meeting with me in the arbitration room. The attorney tells me that his client, who on the complaint owes $3,800, will move out in 50 days if I will agree to waive all rentals and utility amounts owed. He explains that if I do not agree, the tenant still can stay in the apartment for more than 35 days through law-required periods of time, additional lost money time for the landlord.

I replied that as of that day, the amount owed had grown to more than $5,000. I said I would split the difference in the number of days between what the City already afforded him vs. the 50 days. We compromised on 40 days, i.e., December 18th. The key aspect here for the attorney was to achieve an agreement in which I would waive any trip to Small Claims Court to get a judgment for the $5,000, or whatever the tenant now owes. You should understand that Small Claims judgments are often ignored. Hence, the landlord gets nothing but presumed satisfaction that the tenant’s good credit rating (if he/she has one!) is torpedoed.

The tenant’s attorney then went on a computer in the arbitration office to write a “Judgment by Agreement” that would list all of the specifications of the move-out. This document was to assure me that the tenant would vacate not later than December 18th. Actually, the agreement said: “No lockout prior to 12/18/11.”

Other clauses said: Tenant shall leave the property in clean broom-swept condition and return keys to landlord. AND: Landlord waives rent, any rent that might be owed and tenant waives security deposit.

In the meantime, I must obtain a Writ of Possession. This is a court order I could file for 11 days later advising the tenant he/she has 11 days to move out.

The Writ of Possession was served on my tenant Saturday, November 28th. Cost for this was $95.00, payable to Robert H. Messerman, “Landlord and Tenant Officer” of the Philadelphia Municipal Court. Before I went to the Messerman office (ninth floor, 21 South 12th Street, around the corner from the court filing location), I had to go there (34 South 11th Street, fifth floor) to start the process and pay $4.40 for “paperwork”. For the record, the Messerman office states it will serve the Writ of Possession “no later than one week” from the day payment is received for the Writ.

Eleven days after paying for the Writ of Possession, you may apply for an Alias Writ (costs $35.00, payable to Robert Messerman) which takes care of the padlocking on Eviction Day because, believe it or not (IMK), some tenants refuse to vacate even after receiving service of the Writ of Possession. In such cases, you need a Sheriff’s deputy to padlock the apartment entrance. In such case, you as the landlord must meet the deputy outside the apartment at a specific time on lockout day. You also have to have a locksmith there to change the keying. And you sign the Alias Writ to take possession.

In its infinite wisdom, City Council requires the landlord to hold and preserve the tenant’s goods “for at least 30 days”. If the tenant does not call for the goods within 30 days, “it’s still possible that you may be responsible for them”, so says Mr. Messerman.

The wonderful City Council, always protecting the deadbeat tenants, says you don’t have to leave the tenant’s goods on the premises after the eviction…… “you may move them to storage or wherever you wish, but you are still responsible for them”. Isn’t that nice of City Council?

These latter rules, in fact, may be procedures put in place by the Landlord and Tenant Officer, but still are under the aegis of City Council. Regardless of authorship, it still is another phase of the process which favors the tenant.

The landlord who is forced to hold onto the goods, by now, is beyond furious, and only wants to trash all of the tenant’s belongings. Why shouldn’t the tenant be obligated for his/her own goods?

So, for the tenant situation of 2011, it cost $100.00 + $4.40 + $95.00 + $35.00. TOTAL: $234.40.

That does not describe everything. Each trip downtown takes three to four hours. As time is money, those hours, in effect, add to the landlord’s cost.

About a decade ago, another landlord-tenant dispute arose at my place. After the apartment was padlocked, the tenant returned with a crowbar (as they say, I am not making this up). It was amazing. The attempted break-in prompted an immediate call to 911. Three Philadelphia police cars were on the scene in what seemed like two minutes. The “former” tenant immediately was stopped in his tracks. Police ordered him to honor the court order and never come back. (He didn’t.)

One of the police officers told me: “We see this all the time. Tenants get enough money to move in, perhaps paying for both the first month and last month, plus security, and never pay again. When the first 30 days is up, they pay nothing more. That means….in this city……they have a home for free for the next four to six months. Happens all the time!”

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