Absentee Slumlord Needs To Find A New Calling
By: Indigo Null
It was the Friday morning rent court docket on May 5th 2023, with Judge Catherine Chen presiding. She gave thorough intro, even explicitly mentioning that tenants could bring up habitability issues as a defense and the timeline of an eviction - but she forgot to mention tenants’ right to representation and their right to ask for a postponement to retain counsel. The courtroom was mostly full and tenants listened anxiously to her intro, with one tenant even taking notes.
The judge began calling cases. For one case, a young black woman came up, with her landlord stepping forward as well. The tenant had a lawyer with her, the landlord did not have any representation- a fairly rare situation to see in failure-to-pay-rent court. The hearing started and the tenant pointed out that both her first and last name were spelled incorrectly on all the paperwork, so Judge Chen stopped to correct them. When the question of the owed balance came up, the tenant’s lawyer told the judge the tenant applied for assistance, but it was forestalled because the landlord was refusing to provide licensure information to the assistance program.
The tenant stated that when she spoke to the landlord, he said the county assistance program didn’t need licensure information, so why should the city program? He then refused to provide his license information, blocking him from receiving the assistance she’d applied for. The tenant’s lawyer added that they discovered the property was entirely unlicensed shortly after that.
The landlord cut her off and told the judge it used to be licensed but he lost licensure “recently”, and he claimed this was the tenant’s fault. Judge Chen asked if he has proof of this, and he responded that he doesn’t, but continued to insist that it’s the tenant’s fault.
At one point he tried to show the judge his copy of the failure to pay rent filing to prove licensure, and the judge had to tell him it didn’t count. She asked when the license was lost, and he couldn’t give a clear answer. She asked when the tenant moved in, and the landlord responded it was “a few years ago”. The tenant then corrected him, saying she’d moved in 8 years ago and the license was lost 5 years ago.
The landlord continued to insist it was the tenant’s fault, saying he tried to schedule an inspection to get it relicensed and she had blocked his phone number and wouldn’t cooperate. At this point the tenant told the judge that the landlord had never contacted her, and offered to have him call her to prove she hadn't blocked him. Judge Chen asked the landlord to do so, and the whole courtroom sat in tense silence while they turned on their phones and he dialed…
After a few seconds, the tenant’s phone rang. A few people sitting in the benches snickered, and the Judge made a face and told him he could go ahead and stop calling the tenant now. The landlord hung up.
Judge Chen told the landlord she wasn’t seeing any basis to prove the tenant had been uncooperative, and dismissed the case. The landlord, looking a little embarrassed, shuffled out of the courtroom.
It’s frustrating that the landlord felt entitled to drag a tenant all the way down to the courthouse when he didn’t know the basics of her tenancy, including how long she’d lived on his property or apparently even how to spell her name. It seems we can conclude he had not been seriously involved with the property for years, ignoring it when the license expired and only getting involved again when he stopped receiving rent. This case is a great example of how citations or losing licensure does little to deter landlords from business as usual, and the only thing that can get them to pay attention to their properties is directly challenging their profits.