Free Republic

The ACLU and a taxpayer-funded group are “demanding a federal crackdown on landlords who don’t rent to tenants with eviction records,” reports Reason Magazine.They are arguing that it is racist and sexist not to rent to people who have histories of being evicted, because blacks are more likely than whites to be evicted, and black women apparently have the highest eviction rates.In a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) last week, the HOPE Fair Housing Center, which gets taxpayer money, “argues that such policies amount to illegal discrimination based on race and sex, given...

Legal aid groups in Chicago filed a lawsuit and a complaint with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development on Tuesday against corporate landlords for automatically rejecting prospective tenants with “any prior connection to an eviction case.”

Now, a New York State Supreme Court judge has ruled for Ithaca Renting, agreeing with the local business’s position that the Section 8 program’s inspection requirement was a violation of the Constitution’s protection against searches. In his ruling on June 27th, Hon. Mark G. Masler says the Attorney General’s argument “is fundamentally flawed for the simple reason that, as set forth above, a landlord cannot accept a Section 8 housing voucher as payment for rent without agreeing to participate in Section 8, which, in turn, requires that the landlord authorize warrantless searches.” Judge Masler’s ruling points out that the Housing...

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – A woman accused of releasing bees on Sheriff’s deputies to stop an eviction at a Longmeadow home this past October was in court on Wednesday. Woman given bees back after alleged attack during Longmeadow eviction Rebecca Susan Woods of Hadley appeared in Springfield District Court Wednesday morning. According to the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office, on October 12th, Woods pulled up to an ongoing eviction on Memory Lane in Longmeadow in a blue Nissan Xterra. Woods left her dog in the car and immediately went to the bee hives being towed by her SUV, and tried to...

Twitter owes three months’ rent to its Boulder landlord, and a judge has signed off on evicting the tech giant from its office there, court documents show. ..there have been numerous reports of unpaid bills. While a contractor going unpaid during a rocky transition is unfortunate but not uncommon, ceasing to pay rent altogether for months suggests Twitter’s operations may be farther gone than anyone expected. According to court documents and reporting by the Denver Business Journal, Lot 2 SBO LLC, the Chicago-based landlord that owns Twitter’s office at 3401 Bluff St in Boulder, was provided a $968,000 letter of...

Socialist lawmakers are still pushing statewide rent control, resorting to outright deception and bogus compromise in hopes of passing it before the Legislature wraps up for the year. To sneak through the so-called “Good Cause Eviction” bill, they offer to water down some provisions to attract more votes — with an eye to toughen it back up (or worse) next year or late. The lies start with the bill’s very name: Requiring landlords to have a good reason to evict anyone is fair, right? Except that the bill would make it near-impossible for landlords to evict tenants for almost any...

A New York State Assembly bill that would have banned landlords from reporting late rent payments to credit agencies was withdrawn this week, exposing potential difficulties for Democrats in achieving housing reform before the legislative session ends on June 8. The bill, proposed by Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, sought to protect tenants from credit score damage and potential issues securing future leases due to delayed rent payments. Rosenthal asserts that the bill would have leveled the playing field for renters, as landlords can still pursue fines or evictions for late payments. However, the proposal was deemed too open-ended by some Democratic...

The state is considering a right-to-counsel bill that would set up a state “Office of Civil Representation” to provide attorneys to tenants in eviction cases. The office could also contract organizations to represent people in court. The bill requires the provision of information on tenants’ rights, and non-compliance with the law could result in vacating eviction warrants. Legislators have pushed for policies like “Good Cause Eviction” to limit filings that inundate courts and shelter systems by forcing people from their homes. The cost of implementing the right-to-counsel bill is estimated at $500 million, with proponents stating that it would save...

Earlier this month, a state Appellate Court struck down the city of Albany’s “good cause eviction” law. Benjamin Neidl, the attorney who argued for property owners in the case, told Capital Tonight that the ruling effectively ends the conversation on a local level unless the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, decides to hear the city of Albany’s appeal. Albany was the first city to implement the policy, which requires property owners to give cause for an eviction and limited the amount that they could raise rent on tenants. The rent increases are capped at 5% with exceptions for...

Investigators believe Theresa Cain shot her family members, killing three of them, just minutes before deputies arrived to serve them with eviction papers as they were removed from their foreclosed home... (SNIP) When deputies pulled up to the family home on Riebel Ridge Road in Ohio Township around 9:40 a.m. Monday, Theresa Cain was standing on the patio outside, Leahy said. Deputies expected no issues. They checked with her before Monday to ensure all would go smoothly. She had been cooperative. She indicated she still had a few things to pack. She requested and received a few extra hours but...

It was worse than a catfight. A New Jersey woman’s fight against eviction ended in a deadly blaze Wednesday when she intentionally started a fire in the home she shared with dozens of cats and refused to vacate. The woman and dozens of cats died in the massive fire, which broke out shortly after 11 a.m. in Roosevelt, authorities said. State police had served the unidentified woman an eviction notice but she refused to leave and threatened to blow up the house.

The Biden administration has become notorious for pushing clearly unconstitutional bureaucratic rules in hopes of causing maximum damage before the court system has time to work.The White House’s “eviction moratorium” comes to mind. Thousands upon thousands of landlords were harmed by a federal power grab barring evictions of long-delinquent renters. Eventually, the Supreme Court stepped in to shut Biden down, but while the moratorium went away, many landlords were left financially ruined in the process.Was there even an apology given to landlords who watched lifelong investments be destroyed by non-paying renters that squatted for years on end in some states?...

It took three years for New York City landlords to remove squatter tenants who refused to leave and refused to allow them into the property. The squatters extensively damaged the property but were finally removed by the police. Unfortunately, building inspectors immediately began issuing citations following the eviction totaling $5,000.

Security forces raided the community of Ramat Migron in the Binyamin region Thursday night and declared the outpost a closed military zone on the orders of Judea and Samaria Division commander Brig. Gen. Avi Blot. In addition, the policemen knocked on the houses of the families in the outpost and threatened the residents that if they did not vacate their homes within minutes, they would be arrested and taken to the police station. The police raid this evening follows a series of raids that took place last week on the nearby outpost of Oz Zion, during which police officers broke...

A federal judge in California denied a request by Oakland landlords to stop the city eviction moratorium. One of the reasons was because the moratorium is supposedly temporary, but after nearly 3 years it’s hard to believe that to be the case.

VALLEJO, Calif. — Two people were arrested on suspicion of murder in the death of a fellow squatter who was shot and killed by a California property owner, authorities said. The property owner was impaled by a sword during the confrontation. A witness told the newspaper that the property owner, identified as Curt Lind, 80, came to his mobile home covered in blood. “He came banging on my door with a sword sticking through him,” Patrick McMillan, a tenant who lives in a mobile home on the property, told the Chronicle. McMillan told the newspaper that Lind was his landlord...

An Orange County circuit judge erred in allowing voters to weigh in on a proposed rent control ordinance, an appeal court has ruled, siding with realtors and landlords over renter advocacy groups who argued soaring housing prices constituted an emergency. A sharply divided Orange County Commission voted 4-3 in August to let voters decide if rent increases should be capped. If approved by voters, the proposed ordinance would have imposed a one-year cap of rent hikes for potentially 104,000 apartments in Orange County at 9.8%. After the Florida Apartment Association and Florida Realtors sued to block the measure, it narrowly...

A U.S. District Court judge has granted a preliminary injunction against Los Angeles County’s pandemic-era eviction moratorium.The Oct. 19 ruling by District Court Judge Dean Pregerson requires the county to end by Dec. 1 its policy of allowing residents to forego paying rent.The Apartment Owners Association of Greater Los Angeles and the Apartment Owners Association of California filed a lawsuit in March asking the judge to stop enforcement of the rent moratorium, saying the policy was “unconstitutionally vague.” They also asked for monetary relief.“There’s no rational basis for the County keeping its eviction moratorium in effect for nearly three years...

Wanting to stop sheriff’s deputies from carrying out a court-ordered eviction last week, Rorie Woods turned to a “dangerous weapon,” authorities said. Woods allegedly pulled up to the home where the eviction was taking place, got out of her SUV and walked back to the flatbed trailer she had towed to the tony neighborhood in Longmeadow, Mass., a town of nearly 16,000 on the Connecticut state line. Then, she unleashed hundreds of bees from the hives she had brought, according to the sheriff’s office. Multiple deputies were stung before they could arrest Woods, officials said. She has since been charged...

Outside Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Murray Hill office, small landlords traded war stories Monday morning about New York’s rent relief program. “Three years and 18 months,” said one, double-fisting protest signs denoting how long he’d shouldered his tenants’ arrears. “I’m out $75,000 right now,” another said. “Three years. One house.” Terri, an organizer of the “landlords rights protest” who asked that her last name be omitted for fear of retribution, said her tenant hadn’t paid rent since November 2020. Tired of waiting, she’d agreed to settle, eating $40,000 of arrears in an agreement that should have seen the renter evicted in...