10.03.14 Rent money going toward meth?

Some may remember the young family that moved into one of our duplexes in the middle of September. No rental history, their parents are tired of housing them, he is a registered sex offender, they have new jobs, and their grandma co-signed.

Since move in two things have happened. First, they approached us that they would be late with rent. The excuse is that take home pay is way less than they were expecting. We’d almost feel bad for them, except we did have a discussion about that very topic. Second, we’ve already had neighbor complaints about them. Not about the sex offender status, but about them possibly being meth users. They have been seen hanging out at a house that is supposedly going to be busted soon as a meth house.

Here are some options as I see them:

A. Tell them we have had neighbor complaints, that we suspect they could be violating our crime addendum, and maybe even park on the street some evenings/nights to do conspicuous surveillance – to collect more info and show them we are serious about following up on things. We have learned, however, that we can’t completely rely on word of mouth. Last year we set up a maintenance inspection based on information that there was a marijuana grow, and there was no evidence. On the other hand, there is usually some truth to the information; the tenants may not have been growing, but when they moved out they left plenty of drug paraphernalia in the yard.

B. Don’t tell them about our source and suspicions, but don’t give them any grace. Serve them a 3 day pay or quit to expire on the day they say they will have rent money. Be firm with late fees. Follow through on getting them out as soon as possible, serving 20 days notice on the 10th if the rent isn’t paid and the situation feels sketchy

C. Be patient and see how it plays out. They paid a little bit of rent today, they have the inside looking really nice, they need to make this housing option work (very few other options), Grandma is our safety net and leverage, and they did take on additional work to get additional money. Getting rid of tenants so soon costs money, especially if they get mad at how we’re treating them and trash the place or refuse to leave. And it’s too soon to really tell if we made a mistake accepting these applicants as tenants.

Frustrated that we are already doing scenario discussions around a new tenant. If they do fall apart, I’ll have to look at our criteria against their application to try to determine where we failed. As far as this week goes, I am in the option A camp, Bruce is in the option C camp, so we will probably compromise with a watered down version of option B.