Venting thread

[malloc]

Did you get a written notice? Did it state the reason for eviction?

Yes and it specifies that I failed to pay the rent.

Did it specify that you can pay the rent, and in what time period?

It says nothing about having the option of paying the rent. It says that I have 30 days to vacate the apartment and return my keys or they will take me to court. Not one word about having the option to pay rent now.

The landlord cannot evict you (i.e. force you to leave). Only a judge can do that. If you simply ignore the written notice, he can file a court case, you will be notified and have to appear in court. You have time in either case: the trial is not immediate, nor is a judge's order.

That sounds like a pointless distinction in this case. The landlord has clearly already made up his mind to get rid of me based on what the paper says. Let me stress that I have no lawyer nor any experience with court nor the time or money for such things. If it goes to court, I have no options for fighting it.

[Civil War Bugle]

I couldn't remember what state you were in off the top of my head, but that link Zompist provides seems pretty typical of rules I am aware of. You may indeed not need a lawyer at all if you're early enough in the process, and often enough, attorneys may give free or cheap consultations (under an hour) where they take a quick look at whatever paperwork you have, and tell you if it's worth their time and your money to for them to take your case and possibly a little guidance on what to do if you choose not to go beyond the initial consultation.

If this is in consequence of failing to pay the most recent rent, between usual rules on evictions and the fact that the landlord mentioned 30 days, you have some time to decide how you want to proceed and to act accordingly, as long as you pay attention to the deadlines in place. They do have to go through the court process if they want to successfully evict you without breaking any laws. Even if the landlord is deadset on finding an excuse to get rid of you, fending off this round buys you time to decide what to do next.

[malloc]

Even assuming by some miracle, I fend off eviction, this also ruins my rental history. My chances of getting another apartment elsewhere are ruined. Once they see that I missed rent and had to go to court for an attempted eviction at my last apartment, they wouldn't dream of accepting me.

[zompist]

Did you get a written notice? Did it state the reason for eviction?

Yes and it specifies that I failed to pay the rent.

Did it specify that you can pay the rent, and in what time period?

It says nothing about having the option of paying the rent. It says that I have 30 days to vacate the apartment and return my keys or they will take me to court. Not one word about having the option to pay rent now.

malloc, landlords are not the law. He may not know the law, or may hope that you don't.

You do have the option to pay and you should be communicating with him to do so right now. So far as I can see, from several sites, the landlord must accept payment in full.

DOCUMENT any communication you have with him. E-mail is better than phone or in-person, because you can show that you paid, or attempted to pay.

The landlord cannot evict you (i.e. force you to leave). Only a judge can do that. If you simply ignore the written notice, he can file a court case, you will be notified and have to appear in court. You have time in either case: the trial is not immediate, nor is a judge's order.

That sounds like a pointless distinction in this case. The landlord has clearly already made up his mind
to get rid of me based on what the paper says.

If you have no experience with this stuff, then stop assuming you know what it means and how it works.

At the very least, you have time. He needs to go to court to get rid of you, otherwise he is breaking the law.

Pay the rent; if you don't have all the money, ask to set up a plan to pay it.

You don't need a lawyer in court, though there is such a thing as free legal services. The judge will not evict you if you can show you paid the rent. The judge will be less well disposed if you spend the 30 days sitting on your hands without paying.

FWIW: if this is one month's rent, he's being an asshole, though he is within his rights under Missouri law. If it's more than one month, you need some mechanisms in place to remind you to pay rent. You may well be happier in a new place, or with a roommate. But you still need to pay the past due amount; not doing so will make it hard to find a new place.

[bradrn]

I can see nothing to lose, and quite a lot to gain, from contacting your landlord to ask ‘would it be possible for me to pay my rent now’? Best case, he will accept it and this solves your problem; worst case, your position is no different from what it is now. (And depending on the law, that might even count as evidence that he’s behaving illegally.)

[malloc]

I can see nothing to lose, and quite a lot to gain, from contacting your landlord to ask ‘would it be possible for me to pay my rent now’? Best case, he will accept it and this solves your problem; worst case, your position is no different from what it is now. (And depending on the law, that might even count as evidence that he’s behaving illegally.)

That would not entirely solve my problem even if it works. I would still have the permanent blemish of late rent on my record. That ruins your credit and makes it nigh impossible to rent other apartments.

malloc, landlords are not the law. He may not know the law, or may hope that you don't.

But he has the records saying that I failed to pay rent on time. He has probably already gotten a hold of the court and started the process of evicting me. Even if not, he already has everything necessary to start the process. Certainly the letter he sent makes it sound like a fait accompli.

You do have the option to pay and you should be communicating with him to do so right now. So far as I can see, from several sites, the landlord must accept payment in full.

The office is already closed for the day and will not open until 8:30 AM tomorrow. Not much I can do about that until then.

You don't need a lawyer in court, though there is such a thing as free legal services. The judge will not evict you if you can show you paid the rent. The judge will be less well disposed if you spend the 30 days sitting on your hands without paying.

You really overestimate my understanding of law. I will definitely need a lawyer and for that matter, I will need considerable help in figuring out which kind. Not even that long ago, I expressed genuine confusion about what lawyers actually do and what distinguishes a good lawyer from a bad one because law is just so opaque to me. Anything that requires me to argue before a judge is pretty much guaranteed to prove disastrous.

[bradrn]

I can see nothing to lose, and quite a lot to gain, from contacting your landlord to ask ‘would it be possible for me to pay my rent now’? Best case, he will accept it and this solves your problem; worst case, your position is no different from what it is now. (And depending on the law, that might even count as evidence that he’s behaving illegally.)

That would not entirely solve my problem even if it works. I would still have the permanent blemish of late rent on my record. That ruins your credit and makes it nigh impossible to rent other apartments.

I’m not saying it would miraculously solve all your problems. Just that it would leave you better off than your current situation!

You do have the option to pay and you should be communicating with him to do so right now. So far as I can see, from several sites, the landlord must accept payment in full.

The office is already closed for the day and will not open until 8:30 AM tomorrow. Not much I can do about that until then.

Fine, fair enough. But when 8:30 AM tomorrow morning comes around, we’ve told you what you can do.

[Civil War Bugle]

malloc, landlords are not the law. He may not know the law, or may hope that you don't.

But he has the records saying that I failed to pay rent on time. He has probably already gotten a hold of the court and started the process of evicting me. Even if not, he already has everything necessary to start the process. Certainly the letter he sent makes it sound like a fait accompli.

You do have the option to pay and you should be communicating with him to do so right now. So far as I can see, from several sites, the landlord must accept payment in full.

The office is already closed for the day and will not open until 8:30 AM tomorrow. Not much I can do about that until then.

If the document you received is along the lines of what you describe, the landlord wouldn't be filing for eviction in court yet; the 30 days would have to pass and you would need to have failed to address the issue in a satisfactory way in the 30 days. Zompist's link alludes to this, and I think it gives a fairly good breakdown for people who aren't legal experts. The landlord's office may be closed such that there is little you can do, but you can at least assess whether you could (assuming the situation is such that this is a solution) afford to pay the back rent, and send the landlord an email making that offer. They may not read the email until the morning but it would be sitting in their mailbox ready for them to read it when they go into the office.

[Man in Space]

malloc: When I was in college, I had a few periods where I was in similar circumstances. The rental agency never refused to work with us during such periods, and I actually had multiple leases for multiple terms with them—they still leased to us even in light of those episodes. It doesn’t completely wreck your history.

(There’s more I could say to assuage you but I’m concerned of running afoul of work-related NDAs due to the adjacency of my knowledge of the sector. Suffice to say…your goose isn’t cooked.)

[zompist]

Certainly the letter he sent makes it sound like a fait accompli.

I'm sure it does, it's supposed to scare you. A lot of people ignore friendly warnings.

However, the proper response is not to freeze up and do nothing for a month. The proper response is to pay the rent (obviously, when the office is open).

I think most likely, the office will take your money and maybe say something that amounts to "blah blah don't do it again." Get a receipt. (Again, if you can't pay it all, write a check for as much as you can and give a date when you can pay the rest.)

Also most likely, they are following standard practice to, in effect, scare you into taking your rent seriously. Thus, money paid, their concern evaporates.

If something else happens, you can tell us what it is later... there's no use catastrophizing about it ahead of time. They can't do anything to you now.

[malloc]

In my defense, they really should have warned me before it reached this point. If they had sent me an email or other notice before I crossed the line, I would have paid on time. If they had set up the online payment system to allow paying before the rent is due instead of giving me a window of only one day, that would have helped. Instead they gave me a window of one day to pay that happened to fall on a holiday but also a 12-hour workday for me.

[keenir]

I can see nothing to lose, and quite a lot to gain, from contacting your landlord to ask ‘would it be possible for me to pay my rent now’? Best case, he will accept it and this solves your problem; worst case, your position is no different from what it is now. (And depending on the law, that might even count as evidence that he’s behaving illegally.)

That would not entirely solve my problem even if it works. I would still have the permanent blemish of late rent on my record. That ruins your credit and makes it nigh impossible to rent other apartments.

But if you have evidence that your landlord was targetting you and-or was forcing you out, that would counteract such blemishes in the eyes of future landlords you may have, yes?

malloc, landlords are not the law. He may not know the law, or may hope that you don't.

But he has the records saying that I failed to pay rent on time. He has probably already gotten a hold of the court and started the process of evicting me. Even if not, he already has everything necessary to start the process. Certainly the letter he sent makes it sound like a fait accompli.

Sounding like a fait accompli =/= Having a fait accompli

You do have the option to pay and you should be communicating with him to do so right now. So far as I can see, from several sites, the landlord must accept payment in full.

The office is already closed for the day and will not open until 8:30 AM tomorrow. Not much I can do about that until then.

Then...get ready for tomorrow and be all set to pay & prove the payment was made.

[Ares Land]

I don't anything about renting in the US... but the whole situation sounds absolutely insane, and I hope all the advice given helps you get through it.

[malloc]

Even assuming I can talk them out of evicting me, this still ruins my rental history and destroys any chance of getting an apartment elsewhere. There is no chance in hell that landlords in more desirable areas like Seattle would take me now. The hope of finally escaping this place and having the opportunity to make real friends was the one thing keeping me going.

[Travis B.]

You know, I once got an eviction notice due to only paying my rent and not my utilities for several months in a row (as I had not been actually reading my mail and thus hadn't realized I had been sent utility bills). After I went to my rental office and paid the amount due, they told me I could disregard the notice.

[malloc]

I did manage to talk them out of evicting me and paid the past due rent. However, they are still very mad at me and have put it down on my rental history. They said I had a 5 day grace period specified in the lease and no excuses for missing the deadline. This destroys any chance of moving away for the foreseeable future since nobody will rent to me with my bad history.

[Travis B.]

One thing I should note is that it is in your landlord's interest to scare you into paying your rent rather than to actually evict you, as the actual eviction process is a major headache for them in reality, and it leaves them with no tenant, so they will have to find a new one and will have no rent paid until they do so.

[alynnidalar]

brotha one month of late rent will not "destroy" your rental history or credit history. it was late by less than a week and a half, I'm not even sure they can report it to credit agencies until it's over 30 days overdue. just come up with a strategy so you don't forget it in the future. for example, put a reminder in your phone for the day it's due and each day of the 5-day grace period. or, if you're a pen-and-paper fella, get a calendar (or draw one on scrap paper if you don't want to/can't buy one) and write it on there for each upcoming month. or put sticky notes all over your house. it'll be fine.

[malloc]

Even without reporting it to the credit agencies, they still have the missed payment in their records. Other landlords will know about it if I try to rent from them.

Also, I ruined a wafer at work and now they are angry about all the mistakes I keep making. This plant is struggling to keep pace with other silicon wafer plants with far more automation and stricter rules for remaining workers. We risk getting shut down entirely given that so many other factories produce so much more for cheaper.

[linguistcat]

Even assuming I can talk them out of evicting me, this still ruins my rental history and destroys any chance of getting an apartment elsewhere. There is no chance in hell that landlords in more desirable areas like Seattle would take me now. The hope of finally escaping this place and having the opportunity to make real friends was the one thing keeping me going.

It LITERALLY does not. There will be a ding on you credit score and future renters might ask you what happened. And if you try to pay the rent and your landlord refuses, then what you tell future renters IF THEY ASK is: You got behind on rent ONCE, your landlord refused to work with you, and so despite you best efforts to make things right, you were evicted.

The world and people are not as cruel as you seem to think. I mean you have a handful of strangers who are trying to help you out.