4 ms·

I am on the board of housing nonprofit. Despite being real nice, we still have to take people to court to get an eviction processed occasionally. $250 a pop. $2

by ahi 16y ago

I am on the board of housing nonprofit. Despite being real nice, we still have to take people to court to get an eviction processed occasionally. $250 a pop. $250 to fill out a form and bring copies of the lease and late notice to the courthouse. If I recall correctly we can only recover ~$60 of court/lawyer fees from the debtor so it is often cheaper for us to ignore a debt. Part of the problem for us is that our general manager is a lawyer, so he puts a premium on "building a relationship with a legal professional". I suspect this is the case for the rest of the market where in house counsel is reviewing compensation for the firm they just left.

ahi 16y ago
This is one of my pet peeves so I need to elaborate a bit. In our jurisdiction, renters have some decent protections which make it a pain in the ass to evict them (as it should be). Unfortunately, because of the ridiculous lawyer fees everybody but the lawyers lose. By the time a renter reaches eviction they have racked up so many lawyer fees that even if they can now pay rent they won't be out of the hole. Their credit is going to be ruined anyway so they skip out and don't bother paying what they owe to the landlord. So now the renter has screwed up credit and loses their home, and the landlord has an empty apt, loses out on rent and lawyer fees while the renter could have paid off the debt! In other words, the lawyers charge so much they make the law irrelevant. No one wants to get them involved at all. There are many people in my life I love who happen to be lawyers, but there are lawyer jokes for a reason.