Hello,
I have a section 8 tenant, who is now supposed to pay a portion of the rent because of changes of her income. I have not received anything from her this month, I did let her know, but no results. I want to start an eviction, but was wondering if the rent I received from housing authority would be considered a partial rent. If so, would I have to return it before giving her notice to vacate?
Thank you for your input.
Mark
Contact the S8 case worker and tell him that the tenant has not paid their portion of the rent. They have leverage on the tenant. Meantime, I believe there is a way to get the unpaid rent from the housing authority, but not until you’ve removed the tenant. The tenant will lose their S8 voucher in the process, if I’m not mistaken.
Meantime, if you decide to evict, you cannot collect partial rents.
I’ve had this exact situation before. I evicted a woman over $52 of unpaid rent. The sect 8 rent was not considered by the court to be partial rent like what you’re thinking. The partial rent thing comes into play when you put an eviction notice up for an amount (let’s say $500 of unpaid rent in this case). Say the next day (during the notification period prior to filing eviciton), the tenant gives you $250 and promises they’ll have the other $250 next week. If you accept the $250, you can’t go file an eviction for $500 of unpaid rent at the end of the notification period. You would have to start the process over for the unpaid $250. This is why people say not to accept partial rent because the tenant can effectively kick the can down the road for the eviction if they give you anything at all.
My local section 8 office doesn’t do anything at all if the tenant doesn’t pay their portion of the rent. They can’t make them pay. All they can do is tell the tenant that they will lose their sect 8 benefits if they don’t pay and are evicted. I am unaware of any way for the LL to get the unpaid portion from the sect 8 office even after the tenant has been removed. It may work differently in other areas, but I’ve not seen that where I am.
You just have to decide if the amount you’re not getting from them is worth eviction. In my case, eviction was better for me than letting the money go because the tenant was a pain in the butt and that was my opportunity to get rid of her.
That makes sense.
In my case, the threat of losing their voucher, because of an eviction, was enough to motivate my deadbeats to pay up.
I’m guessing the ‘help’ I got was from the case worker who gave me this ammunition.
FWIW
Did you re-rent to another S8 tenant?
Yes I re-rented to another sect 8 tenant. She’s been overall pretty good except for that time where her boyfriend got in a fight with her and shot her. We saw our house on the ten o’clock news with police lined up outside in riot gear. Luckily the only damage was one broken window pane. Fixed it for about $15. Oh and she was ok too. A few stitches to her left eyebrow and she was good as new. Luckily the bullet just grazed her hand.
So, your history with S8 tenants includes evictions and shootings?
HA!!!
Two more reasons to stay away from the dependency class.
Javipa,
At this point I feel like I explored all the options including the one you suggesting.
Unfortunately, the response I got from the case worker was that was pretty much my problem.
Justin0419,
That’s the info I was looking for. Untill recently S8 was covering all of her rent and I believe the utilities, as well. Now she is supposed to pay about 40% of her rent payment. She has been a pain to deal with for a while, because her “sanitary standards” , but her rent was paid for her, so I guess I dealt with it.
Anyway, I dropped off the notice to vacate earlier.
Thanks both of you!
I dropped by earlier and left a notice to vacate.
I had the same situation before and what I did was similar to what mark says…You can also do it too…
Thanks,
Angeline