Landlord Removes Tenant's Door Because Of Late Rent

As the pandemic continues to rage we will see more stories like this. How many of us could lose our job or other source of income or savings and be just fine for a significant amount of time?

A Missouri woman who lost her job amid the coronavirus pandemic said this week that her landlord temporarily removed her front door after she fell two months behind on rent payments. Hannah McGee told Fox’s St. Louis affiliate station, KTVI, that she has struggled to keep up with living expenses after losing her restaurant job. 

McGee, who has lived in the same apartment in Fenton, Mo., for three years and whose mother has rented the apartment next door for over a decade, said she now owes her landlord $1,000. “He’s always been a good landlord. I guess it just took one slip up,” McGee told the outlet. “I’ve lived here without a problem, no incidents whatsoever, I’ve been on time every month, but since COVID happened, I lost my job.” 

McGee said she began using her closet doors where her front door used to be, with her 4-year-old daughter forced to stay at her grandmother’s apartment in order to stay warm. “At night it gets definitely really cold, it’s kind of unbearable without it [the door],” McGee added.

Oakland: Rental Criminal Background Checks Now Illegal!

It is my belief and often state or federal law that it's wrong to mistreat someone for an immutable characteristic. Refusing to hire or rent to someone because of race or religion is wrong. 

Assuming a young woman woman will become pregnant and declining to hire or promote her is wrong. And so on. 

Now unfortunately there are loopholes in and ways around all of those restrictions.  A racist can't legally place a "No N*****s!!!"  clause in her company's hiring policy but no one can force her to mentor Black employees with the same vigor that she does for others. Still, laws that prevent mistreatment for race, religion, ethnicity are good things. It's trickier when we make laws to prevent differential treatment for actual individual past wrong doing. The city of Oakland has banned most background check usage by landlords.

Oakland became the first city in California to ban criminal background checks in most housing applications for private and other rental units under a measure adopted by the City Council on Tuesday. The council unanimously passed a “fair chance housing” ordinance that bars landlords from conducting criminal background checks on prospective tenants. 

The ordinance in Oakland is the first to include rental units outside subsidized affordable and nonprofit housing. The measure, supporters say, could prevent homelessness and bring down the recidivism rate. 

“There is only one place in America that any one of us is guaranteed a roof over our heads and that is in prison,” said John Jones III, campaign director for Alameda County Fair Chance to Housing Coalition. “All of us seek to have safe shelter. That should not be a matter of privilege.”

Applicants who believe they were discriminated against due to their criminal background can file a complaint with the city or a lawsuit. The city can issue penalties of up to $1,000 per violation.
If a private action is filed, a court could award damages.

LINK 

Detroit Squatters

Another squatter tried to take over a home in Detroit. I strongly suspect these events happen everywhere but they seem to happen more often in Detroit. All's well that ended well in this story but the fact remains that were it not for the local Fox station embarrassing the police department into doing its job this woman could have lost her home to the aggressive transsexual hoodlum. We talked about this squatters problem before in this post two years prior. I love the memory of my city. There are even today a lot of good people who live therein. Most people are good. Or rather most people don't have the audacity to think that they can just move into someone else's home without permission. But there are also a lot of people who view any sort of niceness as weakness and who are constantly on the lookout for weakness. Such people are the human equivalent of white sharks. Once they detect "blood in the water" so to speak, they attack. There have always been people like this and there always will be. That's not Detroit's problem. Detroit's problem is that people who behave like this are ever so slightly more numerous as a percentage of the population, perhaps because the authorities are overwhelmed with more serious crimes like rape, murder, assault, child abuse, and drug trafficking. So the authorities don't take crimes like this as seriously as they should. I mean we must set priorities, no?

But even though I would agree that a squatter is not the highest priority in a bankrupt city that's awash in violence, I would also say that the city, state, and county need to make sure that squatters do not get the idea that their crime is victimless or that they somehow are not committing a crime. Because if an investor or homeowner doesn't have the belief that they will still have access to their home if they temporarily leave it or try to sell it, they may decide that the risks of owning property in Detroit are not worth the costs. And that will prevent any sort of widespread renaissance in Detroit, no matter how much money is sunk into downtown or midtown projects.

Watch the two videos and let us know what you would have done were you the homeowner. Because I would have woke up this morning and got myself a gun but I've been accused of being hotheaded...

Fox 2 News Headlines




Fox 2 News Headlines

Detroit woman forced to live with house squatter

Believe it or not I really don't like writing negative blog posts about my home town. So this will be the last one for a while. There's good people in Detroit. You should know that. But there are also some dirty no good bottom feeder parasites. Every time I think I am finished writing about foolishness, lo and behold here comes another story. This story touched a nerve because I think it provides a perfect example of what plagues Detroit. This situation has a legal twist. Hopefully The Janitor or Old Guru can explain it because I am simply not understanding what is going on here.

Imagine that you left town for an extended period of time to work, have a baby, take an overseas vacation, visit a terminally ill relative, settle an estate, wait for repairs to be made on your home, wander the earth or whatever. Let's say that upon your return, you discovered that someone (a previous tenant? mentally challenged write-in presidential candidate?) had moved into your home, changed the locks, altered the wiring and plumbing, taken out liens, thrown out or sold your belongings, and otherwise taken possession of the home that you bought and paid for. Now I think that even the most peaceful person on the planet might get a little upset. And let's say that when you called the police, fully expecting that that they would remove this insolent interloper and drag them away to a richly deserved jail cell, the police said "Hey this is a civil dispute. We're not qualified to make decisions about who owns what. Tell it to the judge. Don't do anything rash. Stop bothering us. Don't call us again!"

If this happened to me I think that someone (not me) would have a rather serious problem. I don't want to think about what other people I know who are not as levelheaded, peaceful and calm as I am would do in that situation. This hard to believe event allegedly occurred in an area I know very well. Watch the video.


To be blunt, this is why many people have fled Detroit. In Detroit, there is a serious chronic problem with lack of respect for law and for other people's property. I have occasionally considered investing in Detroit property or in certain Detroit business opportunities. However I would have to spend an inordinate amount of money on lawyers, insurance and security. All else equal, who would do that if they could invest in another city where there's some basic understanding of the difference between yours and mine?

So when a burglar enters your home, don't call the police. Call a lawyer to start a case to prove you actually own the home??? Does that make any sort of sense? There may be excellent reasons for society not to allow violence to be automatically used in so-called civil disputes. I am sure our legal experts can think of many. But squatters don't squat in places where they will be immediately ejected and subjected to pain for even trying. Say what you like about the Koch Brothers or any other millionaire or billionaire but I bet that they don't have to worry about this problem because anyone trying it would get removed and/or hurt just as soon as they did. If you attempted this in a rich area security would immediately toss you out and maybe throw you a beating before the cops arrived to take you away.

Must we all hire private security to watch our homes and cars 24-7? Squatting lends credence to the idea that law is whatever the strong say it is. Therefore, increasingly people will just ignore the law. If you don't then you're just a sucker looking to get taken. Whichever woman is lying here, she's a predator. She's sought out a weak herd member and is trying to bring them down. You simply can not have a functioning market place without the ability to make and keep contracts and own property. You can't. Economic activity will move to places where people don't think that they somehow deserve to just take your property. I don't mean to sound like a crazed Ayn Rand disciple but even a broken clock is right twice a day. It's almost enough to make you vote for Mitt Romney.* If this attitude spreads, and it has, Detroit will remain largely bereft of good businesses, good schools, and young families. Property tax revenue will continue to dwindle and Detroiters will wonder why their city continues its long decline. About a decade ago area home prices were close to eight to ten times the price quoted in the story. I wonder if increased crime, poor city services and squatters had anything to do with that price fall? Nah. Couldn't be. Could it?

Questions

What's your take? Can you believe this? Can this story be real?

What's the difference between a home invasion and a squatter?

Should the proper owner take the law into her own hands?

*Grand Central that's a joke....