ARGH! Its tough being an Evil Landlord!!!

[IdaBriggs]

I'm a 4th generation landlord; we took over managing some property for my mother after my father died. It doesn't make a profit, but I was raised that it is an honor to provide good quality housing for people. We have 8 rooms that are rented out (there are two buildings) and a three-bedroom apartment that used to be where my mother lived before we relocated her to a smaller, less memory filled condominium. The kitchen in the 3-bedroom unit is amazing; it also has an office, a fireplace, and a two-car garage. We pay for the gas, electric, water, trash pickup, and outside maintenance (the two buildings are on an acre of property in a great neighborhood, and there are three deer that visit). I grew up there, and its where my father passed.

I made the mistake of moving in a family that was having some problems last June. Instead of listening to my mother, I got nervous because it had been empty for two months (this is the 3-bedroom unit), and accepted folks I shouldn't have. She was working two part time jobs, and he had a good job at a local factory; they shouldn't have had any trouble paying the modest rent.

They were late on their first month's rent payment after moving in (July); I should have evicted them on the spot, but we switched it from a monthly rental agreement to a weekly one, which they assured me they would have no problem paying. They paid mostly on time in August, and did okay in September, but then the husband was hospitalized for diabetes related problems AGAIN, and they stopped paying at the beginning of October.

He doesn't work in a union shop, so he didn't have any short-term disability. No work = no pay. I'm not sure what happened to the wife's two part time jobs, but apparently, she isn't working them anymore. I started eviction proceedings in November (delayed it while trying to work with them), and they were hours away from having their stuff put on the street two weeks before Christmas (please keep in mind they kept making promises as to when they should get some money, and I delayed as long as I could), when we struck a deal on December 10th to keep them in the place.

I shouldn't have done that. They still owe money on the judgment from the end of November, and haven't paid anything toward the 'currently due' rent since. They told me they'd catch me up with their income tax refund, and hoped to have his social security disability under control by then. (He ended up having surgery last month to remove a portion of his lung, and is back in the hospital again due to an infection.)

I'm being told they are now having marital issues (understandable with all of the stress they are going through), and he might not come home when he is released from the hospital/doesn't plan on paying me off with the income tax refund because he's leaving his family, which means either a) I get to keep supporting them, which I can't do, or b) I get to toss them out onto the street, because so far, they aren't leaving on their own. I am not sure why the wife isn't working, but apparently she can't find anything. She spends a lot of time dealing with different agencies, and chasing down stuff for his medical problems, but that isn't paying the bills, and its killing us.

My mother is doing her best to bite her tongue, because obviously, I've been an idiot. They were living on the financial edge, and now they are taking my family down with them. Its the 11th of the month, and I haven't paid the mortgage yet. I had to beg for an extension last month to keep on the heat and the electric for ALL of us!

She was served yesterday with a court date (February 24th); they will have about two weeks afterwards before the sheriff's department will put their stuff in the street. It will cost me several hundred dollars to get her out, and the odds are good we'll never see the money they owe. I'm not sure what I'm going to do to keep everything from going into foreclosure at the moment, but if I can't figure it out, everyone else is going to end up homeless, too. Trying to be 'nice' to this family has literally destroyed our credit.

The most annoying part is that I *knew* better, intellectually. There was a part of me that knew I was being fed a line of crap, but when she told me she had found a job in December, I thought there was a glimmer of hope, plus hello! Tax refund time is a good time to catch up on things, and a guy who needs to have a hunk of lung pulled out sounds like someone who should be getting disability to me. But honestly, I kind of got the idea they 'knew the system' and there were a lot of clues that they had taken advantage of it in the past.

They've got two young adolescents, plus a returning twenty-something year old living with them. They are going to end up on the street, but frankly, I need to get someone in the property who can actually PAY THE RENT which is used to PAY THE MORTGAGE. In Michigan's economy, that might take a bit of time, despite how reasonable the rent is, and how nice the place is.

We are screwed.