Common tenant complaints? Attorney Lauren Sheeley of Legal Services said bed bugs, no heat, insufficient heat (the state minimum is 68 degrees after Oct. 15), mold (which typically accompanies water leaks), infestations and lack of security. She said there’s plenty of smaller complaints tenants make about holes, refrigerators, appliances and electric sockets that don’t work and having to use unsafe extension cords.
When can you not pay the rent?
State Real Property Law Section 235-B states you can withhold your rent if the conditions in your home do not meet the minimum standards of habitability set by local code, said Frank. “If someone comes to me and says they are not going to pay the rent, I say, ‘Do you have the rent?’ If yes, give it to me, and I will hold it. We are not in the business of punishing landlords because they don’t pay the rent.”
If the reason the tenant is not paying is due to medical issues, he tries to negotiate a payment schedule. Preventing homelessness is his missive, he said.
One Kingston city landlord, “Peter” (who requested we withhold his name), owns 30 residential units in five buildings, almost all of which are subsidized. Peter explained that in order to keep his units rented, he must accept DSS or RUPCO payments. “It’s hard because there’s no jobs here,” said Peter. “How can someone who makes $10 per hour afford it? Most of the tenants are on subsidy. They have to be.”
Peter said that he paints, repairs and fixes up each unit nicely enough that he would want to live there. His units are leased month to month, and when the tenant unwillingly vacates, it’s often costly to evict and repair, and the unit can be vacant several months without income. Peter said even with a judgment, it is unlikely he will be able to collect the money from the tenant, and the goal is just to get them out as quickly as possible to get a paying tenant in there.
How about when the tenants seem to multiply under your nose? According to state law, there’s a requirement that the person who enters into a lease, his significant other and their family may live there, subject to state code occupancy restrictions, which are determined by the square footage of the dwelling in question.
Another gripe is that the sheriffs’ deputies take several weeks to show up to vacate the eviction, and it’s not necessarily on garbage day. Peter and a hired crew are responsible for removing all the tenants’ remaining belongings and bringing them to the curb. “As a landlord you cannot touch the stuff for 24 hours once it’s on the curb,” said Peter. “And so the vultures show up. Everyone in the neighborhood rips everything apart looking for free stuff. So now there’s a mess in front of your property and ultimately someone calls Department of Public Works, and you will be cited for having a mess for putting shit out when it’s not garbage day. So then we get a violation notice.”
Unhappy ex-tenants
Peter said that once tenants realize they’re being evicted, they can often be vindictive and intentionally destroy his apartments. “Holes, rip out toilets, maple syrup all over the place, broken windows, to name a few,” he said. He says renters fill out applications and he checks references, but there’s nothing to prevent a friend from posing on the phone as a past landlord. The month-and-a-half’s-rent security deposits seldom cover the costs. Peter said he has also evicted tenants who have refused to even pack their own things, and one time heard a woman brag to her children that they didn’t need to pack their stuff because the landlord would pack and move it out for them. Peter said he feels jaded by tenants, and the numerous laws that protect them while he is left paying for repairs and the mortgages.
How does Peter react when he’s called a “slumlord”? With offense. “When someone moves in, I take pictures of everything, they sign a paper saying they agree this is how it looked when they moved in,” said Peter. “Six months later, this and that is now broken. There’s a hole where there was none in the picture. It wasn’t broken before they moved in.”
Peter’s concerns are not unique, explained real estate attorney Marshall Courtney. “The primary focus is on getting the tenant out, not trying to recoup the rent in arrears,” explained Courtney. “A skilled tenant can prolong the process. They can make bogus complaints about the condition of the property. I had a case involving a lady who went into the basement, shut off her hot water and made a complaint to the city that their hot water was shut off, without even mentioning it to the landlord first.” Courtney also said a bad, disruptive tenant in a building can set-off a domino effect upsetting good tenants, prompting them to leave.
There’s bad tenants and bad landlords, summarized Courtney. “There’s people who need a place to stay, and landlords willing to make the investment, so the system needs to be fair to both sides,” he said. “Even when considering the comparative glacial pace of our legal proceedings, the fact that you can put someone out of their home in such a short time period, it’s not fair for landlords to be stuck with tenants who don’t pay and without justification.”
Megan James lives on disability. She rents an apartment in a quaint suburban Kingston neighborhood, in which water streams through cracks and down some of the walls when it rains. The leaks are molding over, which is harming her health. She said the landlord has made promises, such as adding a screen door, which have never materialized. She feels powerless. “I moved in four years ago and a bunch of things needed doing that they haven’t done from previous tenants,” James said, like the stove not working. “When they did do it, they jerry-rigged it and I had to have it tagged. … It was people who bought a house thinking it was a good investment and are bitter that they didn’t make a profit.”
Evictions six days a week
Since state law mandates that all evictions are executed through the county sheriff’s department, the Ulster County Sheriff’s Department executes one eviction every single day, six days per week, said attorney John McGovern, who runs the department’s civil division. He said 70 percent of the 72-hour eviction notices that the agency serves ends up with the tenants leaving of their own free will, but that means there are 30 percent which do not.
McGovern said that the purpose of the civil division is for a neutral party to enforce the judge’s orders, rather than to have tenants and landlords hash it out among each other. He said most evictions are peaceable since all parties have already been in front of the judge and are well aware of their fates. He said his division encourages landlords to allow tenants to remove their own items out of the property during an eviction if possible to reduce friction. In the event of tension, the deputies will listen, but since there’s nothing further which can be done, they just keep the parties separated.
McGovern said that physical removals are generally scheduled for morning hours, so that if there are families or animals living in the house, proper authorities, such as DSS or SPCA can be notified and arrangements made during day hours. He said the work can sometimes be heartbreaking when there are children involved, and he has called Peter Frank or DSS in the midst of several physical removals, asking for help. “One gentleman was planning to sleep in his car during one the days the temperatures were dropping, and I said no, and called DSS for help,” he said.
In general, who causes more trouble? Tenants, said McGovern.
For a copy of New York’s tenant-landlord laws, manufactured-home tenants’ rights and a housing guide for seniors, visit the attorney general’s website at www.ag.ny.gov.
TY for writing and continue keeping citizen’s informed. Keep in mind that some folks will try to get around paying EVEN if their living conditions have improved 100 fold ! Personally i’ve watched tenants go from one apt to another playing the SAME GAME and actually creating problems within a house in order to avoid paying rent. THEY are specialists in Getting OVER on whomever they can – Sad but true! They come to you with a sad story and Whoops there it is. At the same time updating their cars, etc. ADVICE: Don’t do the FAMILY/FRIEND thing – doesn’t work, folks ! And, they look at you as IF they have NOT done a thing ! WHEN you actually got them out of a Giant HOLE ! Pls. continue to write on this BECAUSE its extremely hard to get GOOD tenants with so much negative activity and bllighted eyesores around. Clean UP the area – perhaps decent Folks wouldn’t mind paying rent. FAR TOO many IDLE folks creating trouble in the area – SAD but TRUE !
[…] or heat during a cold snap. There two sides to every renter’s story, which is why we enjoyed this article in the Kingston Times, which should be required reading for anyone considering becoming either a landlord or a tenant. […]
So after reading this article am I to understand that a landlord must include heat in the rent? Lots of places say rent plus utilities (heat, elect, phone, tv) as the agreement. Is the landlord supposed to be paying the heat?