Tenants who pathologically lie
Well, it’s the beginning of the month again and sure enough, certain tenants can’t get their act together to pay the rent on time. I don’t understand what it is about the fact that a tenant can get thrown out on their ear by the county sheriff within 20 days if they don’t pay the rent that they can’t seem to wrap their heads around.
Now don’t get me wrong, I can understand and am sympathetic to genuine problems that crop up from time to time. For example, job loss, kids in the hospital, tenant in the hospital, customer not paying a big bill, etc. It’s the tenants who are in month 8 of their tenancy and have paid late 5 out of 8 times that I have no sympathy for.
In fact, one year, when I was a tenant, I was in a pretty bad auto accident where some idiot caused me to hit a very sturdy concrete light pole head-on and I ended up with a fractured sternum. Basically what that injury means is that you’re in bed for about two months. Despite this mishap, I did not miss one rent payment. In fact, the landlord did not even know that this had happened.
The tenants in particular I’m talking about are the same one’s who, for $32 in late fees, forced me to file an eviction which then cost them $120 on top of the $32 because they wanted to stay in the house. These are people who call me up on a Sunday (the 4th when rent is due on the 5th) to tell me that a partial rent payment is in the mail and “I hope that’s OK”. Today, the 7th, I get the partial payment and the envelope is postmarked on the 6th.
Sometimes, I think that they think I can’t read and don’t know what date it is today. Well, their lease is up in January and there’s practically no way that they can recover from this behavior and so their lease will not be renewed for another year.
Such irresponsible behavior reminds me of a book I ran across recently (but have not actually read yet) called Care and Feeding of Tenants by Andy Kane.
The title sounds mean spirited, but it’s clear to me that these people should be still living at home with their parents where hopefully they would learn some discipline.
