Eric Gudz on Tuesday gave another account from a Davis renter.
Reading to the council during public comment:
“A landlord asked me to vacate because she was bad at managing money and couldn’t afford to keep us there. She was going to Airbnb her bigger house and move into the smaller apartment herself. Because we were staying a week into the next month, she said why doesn’t she just keep the security deposit so we didn’t have to pay rent – and call it even.
“In fact this was a huge disadvantage to us. We calculated out in front of her to show her that no, she still owed us our security deposit back. She seemed uncomfortable. She eventually wrote it out. The check bounced because the account was closed.
“Whether she wrote the check and then closed the account or whether it was closed before and she wrote us money on old checks, we do not know. She hasn’t been responding to any of our messages for several weeks. We know that she’s home, because we ended up moving down the street and we see her outside all the time. We are not really sure what to do at this point.”
Simple, take her to small claims court, the landlord will either settle before and if not will most likely lose in court.
Actually in this case, the landlord committed a criminal offense by writing a check with insufficient funds, she could take this to the police or the DA’s office.
Agree, the point is we already have avenues in place for people to deal with this sort of stuff.
Part of what needs to happen is a Renters Know Your Rights program.
Intimidated, inexperienced, the city needs to quick resource guide for renters and landlords
Why should the city replicate something that is available in 100’s of places online. The state even has a web where you input a few items and it generates the demand letter automatically.
Doing this at the city level is redundant and makes as much sense as that stupid kiosk in city hall with landlord reviews that was promoted some time ago.
Did they ever build that?
The question here is one of goals. If the desire is to get back the money that is owed, small claims court is the way to go. If they are out for punishment, or revenge, sure go to the police. But be aware that this may have been an innocent overdraft coupled with embarrassment, shame and the inability to payback immediately. Seems like an unnecessarily hostile move to make.
There is a third option Tia. If the goal is to waste a lot of time and not accomplish anything then the city mediator is the way to go.
I don’t really agree with you on that Tia. The quickest way to get one’s money back is to have a police officer show up at the landlord’s door and say if you don’t issue a good check, you’ll be held criminally liable.
I agree with David, here. (Although I somehow doubt that a police officer would actually show up for this type of “crime”.) But, at least there’d be a record of the effort, which might be helpful in small claims court.
Actually, I would ask the police what to reasonably expect, as a result of the report.
The fact that the landlord is (apparently) not responding is inexcusable.
I would also contact the new “renters resource” program. Nothing to lose, and it might help.
Between the police, the renter’s resource program, and small claims court, I suspect that these people have a very good chance at getting their money back. (After expending some effort, though.)
Actually, I’d probably first confront the landlord when “seeing her outside all the time”, as discussed in the article. But, I would ensure that it doesn’t escalate into a confrontation beyond that.
What is the purpose of this article? From my college days at UCD, when there was plenty of housing stock, there were bad landlords, many more than not. Hundreds, thousands of stories as bad or worse than this. Should each one be an article?
perhaps some people think our stories need to be told.
The Vanguard will never run out of material now, that’s fo sho . . .