Sunday 24 June 2012

Happy Mother's Day!

She was nice, clean, quiet, and a single mother of a 1-2 year old son. She moved into one of our good un-renovated one bedroom apartments and we forgot that she was there until about 4-5 months into her tenancy. It first started with a late payment of her rent. Okay…not a huge deal, sometime it happens. Then it happens again a few months later…and then again a few months later. We gave warning letters, talked to her, and then started to issue “10-day pay to stay” notices.

Now, usually people like this would not stick around very long, but we don’t like to kick tenants out right away who have children. Call it stupid, or say we are push-overs, but it is hard to do especially when you know their resources are limited. We knew her day would come so there was no rush.

Her late rent (1-2 days) became more frequent and we noticed that she was not around as much. She told us that she was spending more and more time with her baby-daddy so I made the decision to strike next time she was late.

We had received a call on our intercom phone from the police at the front door on Mother’s Day. “Hi, it’s the police, can you let us in the building”. I buzz them in and we quickly put out shoes on to go walk through the building to find out where they are going. Now, police coming to the building isn’t entirely rare. Every few months we get a call like that and they are usually here to serve someone some papers or to get a statement from a tenant who has witnessed something (always boring reasons). By the time we walked the building, they were gone. Whatevs.

An hour later it happens again…okay, random. We do the walk again and get to the third floor and hear them banging on this chicks door. No answer. They leave. I go out on our deck and look down to see 3 police cars and 4 officers milling around the front of the building….good thing I was not showing any suites that day. We hear fragments of a conversation between them talking about “beat-up pretty bad” “assault” “not home”, etc… They call us again to enter the building, knock again, no answer, call her, no answer, then asked us what car she drives, and when does she usually come home, etc. They leave.

An hour later (again) we notice that she is home and shortly after the cops are back. They buzz, we let them in and I run downstairs and hide behind the firedoor to eavesdrop. “You are under arrest for assault and battery”. Cool. Child is scream, she is crying, I have my ear plastered to the door. Now probably isn’t the best time to let our presence be known.

The whole situation took over and hour as they had to phone CPS to take the child (that was not fun to watch). We had a birds-eye view of the whole ordeal as we stood on our deck watching her get carted away in the back of the cop car hand-cuffed. 

We issued her an eviction notice the next day. Happy Mother’s Day!

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