Greetings Everyone!
We
have made it again to Saturday morning. I caught an obscure story from
DeKalb County, Georgia that caught my attention:
Army officer
says squatter moved into her DeKalb home while she was on duty, now she can’t
evict him
For
those of you curious, here is the link:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/
I spent many years of my life as a tenant. I never was actually
evicted. But a part of my life was spent as being classified as homeless. I
understand what it is like to be a tenant.
Countries all over the world have enacted strong laws to protect
the rights of renters. In Elena's home country of Argentina, it can take two
years to complete an eviction. The same can be true in Brasil. Here in San
Mateo County, it theoretically takes two months to evict someone. In actuality,
it can take many months. The tenant gets a financial settlement in most cases.
Next door in San Francisco County, I have heard of owners paying tenants
financial settlements in the range of $40,000 US to leave their property.
All
this compassion adds to the homeless problem. Many property owners are wary of
renting to anyone because of the awful cost of removing a tenant when things go
wrong.
Elena and I have a spare bedroom. It was the home to Anna and Luah when they
lived here in the US. Thanks to former Congress woman Jackie Speier,
I became aware of several students at San Francisco State University who were
living in their cars. They could not afford to rent student housing or pay
$1,000 US per month to rent a room. I developed an idea for a scholarship
where we would offer a free room to a deserving homeless student. One of our
readers, Dan Miller, helped us to structure the gift in a way that would
conform to IRS regulations. A real estate lawyer killed the deal. If we got a
student who did not want to leave, we would face a legal bill more than $10,000
US.
Tell someone
close to you that you love them.
-JackW
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