Posted on 04/14/2016 6:32:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
An Idaho couple is desperate to evict a squatter who made herself at home in their empty house while they tried to sell it — and she claims she signed a lease.
Brian and Renea Prindle are in a losing legal battle after a judge ruled they couldn't kick out a woman who they say moved into their Nampa, Idaho house after they moved out and put it on the market.
"We told the cops we don't know this woman," Renea Prindle told KIV-TV.
“She's trespassing," she added. "We're not landlords and she's not our tenant."
The Prindles had moved out of the single-story home in 2015 and moved in with family while they tried to sell the home. They finally found a buyer from California when they noticed the woman, named Debbra Smith, had moved in in March.
Smith, who has a drug record and has sullied the house with cigarettes and cat urine, told them she had signed a one-year lease and was given keys by a man to whom she paid $1,500 in rent and deposits, ABC News reported.
"Our home is not for rent. Our signatures are not on the lease agreement,” Renea Prindle claims.
"I believe she printed the lease off of the internet," the Prindles’ lawyer, Tiffany Hales, told the Daily News, who added that she had evicted Smith from another property down the road for failure to pay rent in February, just before the Prindles found her in their house.
In another twist to the squatting saga, Smith was arrested Monday for failure to finish probation for a drug charge, landing her in Canyon County jail for eight days.
The Prindles aren't allowed to take over the house while she is detained, however, because Smith "has to show some sort of intent to abandon the property," Hales, the family's lawyer told the News.
It's unclear whether the arrest will affect the eviction case.
Local police have told the Prindles that they have to let Smith stay.
“They told me, I have every right to stay there if I have nowhere else to go because I did have the lease,” Smith told KIVI-TV.
Worried that they might risk losing the sale of their home to the potential buyers from California, the Prindles sought an expedited eviction — a recourse available in cases where you can prove drugs are used or sold on the property — after they saw what they believe was a bag of marijuana and a pipe inside the home.
They lost the case because they weren’t able to get the drugs tested.
“I just didn’t realize the judge would ask for it to be tested,” Renea Prindle said.
“It’s kind of hard to test something when you’re not allowed to take anything from the home.”
The couple has now filed regular eviction paperwork and face mounting legal fees.
Smith has 20 days to respond to the eviction notice.
“I’m sick to my stomach,” Renea Prindle said.
That’s called blockbusting, there was a book maybe 20, 30 years ago.
the house still belongs to them correct? Walk into the house- take this idiot by the scruff of the neck, throw him out of the house, and explain to the idiot that if he sets foot in the house again that it will be taken as a threat and dealt with appropriately- problem solved!
exactly.
It would be a shame to skunk bomb your own house ... but the scent does go away after a while.
Go to the local biker bar. Explain your situation.
Or get 50’ of 1 1/2” exhaust hose and a lawn mower engine.
CO is effective on many pests and can be blamed on a faulty furnace or boiler.
The movie Pacific Heights had some useful ideas as well. Kinda 180 degrees out from this situation but they would still work.
I’ll have to look for that movie.
I like strategies that are cheap, don’t provoke much investigation and have plausible deniability. Like going in when the squatter is out and coating often touched surfaces with capsaicin. Bathroom surfaces being particularly effective.
Yes, the Hell’s Angels do have a legitimate function.
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True story - a friend of mine had a problem collecting a debt from a business, so he enlisted the help of the local Hells Angels...apparently, they have a legitimate business known as Client Hell, which will show up at the business in question, in full biker regalia, and politely and respectfully ask for payment. If they are refused, they will stay in the waiting room, and return day after day, until payment is received. Having these guys hanging around scares the Bejesus our of most ‘respectable’ business men, so they usually pay up.
I guess the law just wants violence to happen...laws used to protect people from injustice, now it protects it...
These laws are supposed to protect renters from landlords just kicking them out without notice.
In this case, it looks like a fake lease is being used but since there is no requirement that leases be witnessed or notarized, the police cannot know it is fake. If it was proven a fake, then you would think arrest for fraud and criminal trespass would be a slam dunk.
It’s a shame there isn’t a quick, cheap, foolproof truth serum. And water boarding this drug addict would probably not be allowed.
Of course, one of the few legitimate functions of government is to enforce contracts, which is tough to do if they are not registered with the local government or at least witnessed by prominent citizens.
If you know that the squatter(s) have food allergies, that can be a nifty little trick.
I like the lawnmower-and-hose idea as well, although you’d want to have a quiet-running engine...leave the hose in place beforehand and you can come by with said engine at night, hook up, and leave. Return when you’ve calculated the fuel will be exhausted, retrieve engine and hose.
If you live in an area with particularly poisonous spiders or snakes, this is also an option if you don’t have to put yourself at too much risk obtaining a specimen. (ie; don’t try to be the next Crocodile Dundee and grab a rattler barehanded)
If they’re squatting in a place that can be easily sealed off, like in a basement or storage hut, that’s an option as well. Wait a month or two and then come back, duly report what you find and tell the cops you secured the place until you had the time/money to renovate the property. There’s a certain storage yard in my city that is quite notorious for this tactic to the point that the locals call it the “Stay-Forever Inn”...try and squat in their nice heated storage bays and they’ll throw a lock on the door in the night and come back in four days. They ever catch you doing it again, they won’t come back for much longer.
And finally, if you happen to live somewhere near an abandoned mineshaft, let me just say that anything that goes down them is even more certain to stay there until Doomsday than a ship going down in the middle of the Atlantic. Especially if whatever goes down it - say, a large canvas bag - is followed by a couple cans of black powder with a long fuse and the resulting blast causes a cave-in.
The owners should have moved back in and said she has no lease.
Yep - wait until the house is empty for a few hours and bring a "For Sale As-Is" sign to pop in the yard while at it.....
Just unbelievable!
I would never put myself through this. For half the price of the eviction I could hire somebody to make the squatter an offer she can’t refuse. She would be gone the next day.
Those are some good ideas. I’m not afraid of snakes but they’re not too prevalent around here. Old mine shafts are pretty common though. The problem with dead squatters is that bodies tend to trigger more vigorous investigation. My carbon monoxide treatment is probably a bit risky.
Food allergies is good. Along those lines are any neuroses or superstitions you can exploit that make your property absolutely unbearable. Squatters aren’t likely to be the most mentally stable sort and the cops aren’t going to investigate because ghosts or aliens scared them out. lol
I knew a landlord who used to do the ‘remove the hinges from the door’ thing. He didn’t give proper notice for the fake repairs, either. One day an apartment renter returned to find the doors gone and the home vandalized and robbed so the tenant called the police.
The police showed up and charged the landlord with breaking and entering in addition to theft of property.
I can’t speak for all states, but there are some where the landlord is absolutely not allowed to enter the premises without the consent of the tenant unless it’s a life/death emergency. The tenant rents that space and it becomes the tenant’s legal home as long as there is no eviction etc.
If the landlord goes in unauthorized, he/she has committed a crime. It’s breaking and entering.
In some places, rental laws differ depending upon the type of unit being rented. Some places have laws pertaining to apartments which differ from stand alone houses which differs from a mobile home.
Laws can change depending on whether the unit is part of a Federal housing unit, receives a majority of it’s rents from Federal funding, or is entirely privately paid.
It sounds like an injustice against the tenant in the OP, but there are some pretty shady/nasty landlords out there who have no regard for tenants, either.
The old days are here no longer.
I worked with a person who had to work in another city for a year. He rented his house to a guy who moved in but paid no rent. It took over a year to get him out of the house. It was Massachusetts and the guy was a minority with a history of squatting. I’m surprised they got him out in a year.
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