Tales Of The Rent Man

We managed a single family house on the opposite side of the county from the office. It was in a community called Seffner. We managed it for a second generation landlord who had inherited the property, along with several others from his father after his dad passed away. His father was the person who got me into the property management business in the first place. At that time, he was getting ready to retire and enjoy the rest of his life and needed someone he could trust to manage his portfolio.

The house was a little two bedroom cottage off a busy street. We had rented it to a couple of guys who split up after the first year. They both seemed nice enough. The one who stayed assured me he would not have a problem paying the rent. He made good money at his job. Things went along fine until it didn’t. We went through the usual posturing, me calling, him falsely promising, yada, yada, yada. I did what I had to do. On the day of the eviction, I went to meet the deputy at the house. They were serving what is known as the ‘Writ of Possession’ to the tenant. Even if the tenants had already vacated the premises, to be in legal possession, I must follow through with the law to make it legal.

When I drove up the first thing, I noticed was there were two Sheriffs cars instead of the usual one. I got out and introduced myself to them. They let me know they were very familiar with my tenant. Seems like he had a bad reputation around town as a drug salesman to the vermin who infested the community. It would have been nice to know that before now.

They looked at me and said to stay behind my car while they went in. That’s unusual. So was the next thing that happened. Both deputies unholstered their guns and crept up to the door, one on either side and up against the cement block wall. They banged HARD! On the door and shouted, “Sheriff’s office, come out with your hands up!” I decided to move up behind the engine block to wait. Now, my tenant was rather a large man. He unloaded freight from train cars for a living and had his drug entrepreneurship as a side gig. He towered over the deputies. Since he had likely heard this before in his life, he responded with his hands up and stepped out. The deputies were courteous to him, no police brutality in Hillsborough County. They told him to pack his shit and hit the road and never be seen around these parts ever again or they would throw him under the jail. He did and I never heard from him again. Such is the life of the rent man.

I had another experience where I had to call the law for assistance. We had a property off Green Street, near McFarland Park. It is a neighborhood of forgotten glory. At one time the Tampa gentry lived there, Senators and debutants and such. Those days are gone, and the homes have mostly gone to seed. One afternoon I was doing a security check on the house. I climbed the stairs. Each step brought a growing fecal stench. When I reached the top, I turned around at the landing and stepped to the second floor bathroom. The reek grew as I got to the bathroom. Holding my breath before I puked, I peeked inside to find an old decrepit bathtub full of shit. The toilet was dry and cleanish, considering. I quickly turned away, stifling my gag reflex as best as I could. I crossed the hallway and walked into the bedroom that faced Green Street. I found a body. Maybe it was a bum. Maybe it was a body. I didn’t stick around long enough to determine which.

Once I got down the stairs and back out into the fresh air, I went to the car and called 911. I told them the story. They said they would dispatch a car and I should stick around. Normally when I have had to call the Sheriff’s Department for a deputy, they were there within a few minutes. This house was in the City of Tampa. That’s a whole different police force. As I remember, this was summer. The City of Tampa can get quite humid. After a half an hour, I called back. “Where are they?” I queried?

“I’m sure they are on their way,” she reassured me. I bit my tongue. About ten minutes later, they finally drove up. The warily exited the patrol car, one standing on either car. “You the person that called?” The driver asked me.

“That would be me.”

Sidekick cop spoke, “Can you show us some ID? Why are you here? Do you own this house? Why are you inside it?”

Their gruff attitude was not what I was expecting. The Sheriff’s office has superior people skills compared to these buffoons. Just then another car pulled up. It was unmarked but screamed ‘COP CAR’. A guy in a suit rolled down the drivers’ side window and asked the sidekick a question or two. I couldn’t make out what was said, but the response was, “We got this covered, Sarge.” The driver nodded his head, never glanced at me, and drove off in the slow copy way.

Driver cop motioned to me then to the house. “Let’s go.”

We got inside the front door. I walked over to the staircase and turned toward them. “He’s upstairs, in the bedroom at the head of the stairs.”

Both cops pulled out their guns and held them at their sides. One, I forget which, looked toward me and spoke. “Lead the way.”

My jaw dropped. This wasn’t how they did it on Cops. They never let civilians get anywhere near the line of fire. I was uncool with this.

“Maybe it would be better if I waited out in my car.”

They were having none of it. I started climbing the stairs as they crept up behind me with guns drawn. I was already sweating because of the weather. Now I was getting clammy and short of breath. We made it to the top. Nothing happened. I pointed through the door and told them to look to the left. I stepped aside, way aside. This is where I was drawing the line to going first.

The rest is anticlimactic. The fellow wasn’t dead anyway, just asleep or passed out. Turns out he did have an extensive criminal record. In fact, there were current warrants on him. They cuffed him and stuffed him and left without even a backward glance.

The parting thought occurred to me as I went back into the house. They didn’t bother to clear the house. TV cops always cleared the house to make sure there were no surprises lurking behind them. It was left to me. My tax dollars at work. I'm still here, it worked out. Never heard another think about this whole affair. And such is the life of the rent man.

A final lawman story. When I am forced to evict a tenant, it is a last resort situation. It is expensive on many levels. First, the owner will never see the money owed. Then there is the cost of the eviction itself. The court system does not work for free you know. Neither does the Sheriff’s department. It also requires the services of a process server. They are not a charitable organization. I don’t blame them. Serving legal papers to someone in trouble is the second worse job I can think of.

Florida is a quick eviction state. In some states, it can take a year to remove a nonpaying tenant from a property. I can get a nonperforming tenant out in about 30 days. Still, there goes another month with no rent. Once the tenant is kicked out, you will spend an additional month getting the property into rentable condition again, maybe longer. you spend another month waiting on the new tenant to go about the process of moving. Anybody that comes to me telling me they want to move in right away sets off so many alarm bells, my answer is going to be ‘No’ or ‘Hell No!’.

Many property managers charge the owners of the rental properties big bucks to go through the eviction process. I never did. I figure it’s my fault when we get a bad one. I should feel some of the pain. I caused it. We have had many tenants who would get behind for many reasons. Some have serious illness strike them. Some lose their jobs through no fault of their own. Some have deaths in the family. I would work with anybody that was upfront and honest with me. You could count on people like that to follow through and do what they say. Their word was good. I have had folks who took more than a year to get caught up, but they did. Tenants like that were the gold standard, and they are out there. It’s the ones who lie and duck your calls, either by phone or house calls when their car is in the driveway that brings out my bad side.

We had a house that a messy little old lady lived in for many years before I took over. She stayed for many more before she passed away. She was one of those who would get behind from time to time and then get caught back up. We left her alone. One of the reasons we were so liberal with her was the condition she kept the house in. Though she wasn’t a hoarder, she may as well have been one. It couldn’t get much worse. I have had people who would fuss at me for allowing someone to live in a house in that deplorable condition. They have never been a rent man. We are talking about adults here. I cannot tell them how to live nor can I enforce that. This one was a good example of that. We did all the necessary maintenance on the house. It didn’t matter. This nasty lifestyle had been going on for so many years that the owner left her be. Once she passed away, her kids continued living there and we were stupid enough to let them. We’re talking about middle aged people with half grown kids of their own. Believe it or not, they were worse. I didn’t find that out until after we were forced to evict them, how slovenly they truly lived. I was unable to get them to pay. Threats did no good. Nothing did. They were not serious people. Point in case, when I did what I had to do, I met the Deputy Sheriff there at 7:30 in the morning on the day of eviction. These folks had received a 48 hour personal service from the Deputy to be out. None of this was a surprise to them, no matter how dumb they acted. Almost all tenants in this situation were gone by the time the Deputy and I came to call, leaving a vacant house that was often a mess.

When we showed up at 7:30 am and he banged on the front door as only a cop can do, they eventually stumbled out into the front yard. Mom and the kids were all in their PJ’s, yawning and stretching up a storm. The excuse? “Oh, we thought you meant 7:30 tonight.” He lined every one of them up against the front wall of the house and gave them his best drill sergeant voice. “Now hear this: you have 30 minutes to get all your stuff packed and out of this house and leave or I will take you to jail.” He proceeded to write each one a trespassing citation to go in effect in 30 minutes. He then told them to get their stuff out of the house as I would be changing all the locks.

They scurried back to the house. What do you think they returned with? Clothes? Food? Treasured family memories? Wrong, wrong, wrong. All any of them brought was boom boxes, music CD’s and videos, and the clothes on their backs. (This was back in the day.) Nothing else.

The Deputy hustled them into the decrepit family van and sent them on their way. He then sent me in to change the locks. When I pushed the front door open, dozens of roaches fell from the door frame. Some missed me, but not many. The place was crawling with roaches. They had completely destroyed the carpet in the living room that had been replaced by us right before their granny passed away. There was furniture throughout the house that they abandoned. There was also dog crap on the bare cement floor in the living room. When I looked over the couch, I saw a long dead dog carcass in the middle of the room. Trust me, I don’t need to make this stuff up. Anybody who doesn’t believe me, I got pictures!

The story almost ends here. Once all the locks were changed and the house was secured, the Deputy and I left. I did go back a couple of hours later to write an assessment of the repair work I needed to do to rehab the house. I found that the front door had been kicked in. When I took a peek inside, I found most everything else was gone. Did I call the cops? Not a chance. They just saved me big money in junk hauling fees. I figured it was the least they could do for me. And such is the life of the rent man.