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problem tenant

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N

needhelpbadly

Guest
This is long but please help!
We have a tenant living in the basement apartment of our house. She had a roommate who moved out when the lease expired on 12/1. She was notified 2 and a half months ago that she must also move out 12/1 which she agreed to. She has also not paid the rent for the last 2 months. The security was used for one month and I know she has no intentions to pay the rent for the other month. We are willing to lose out on the money for the month - we just want her to move out. She avoids talking to us but when I have spoken to her she claims that she can not find a place to live cause she has cats and that she has no money but that she is looking. She lost her job in the summer and was collecting unemployment. She said that she is no longer collecting unemployment but that is a lie cause we just saw a check in the mail the other day. She has lied to us before also cause she was only supposed to have 2 cats which we amended to state so on the lease but she has 3 cats. Awhile back she wrote us a card stating that she lied to us. We can not afford to have her living in our house rent free so we have taken away whatever non-essential privileges that we could (dryer & cable). We also informed her in writing that her parking privileges are revoked but she still parks on our property.
We did not want to go through the formal eviction process but it looks like we might have to cause she may be here forever. It will cost us money but I guess anything to get our house back and to maintain mental sanity.
She is also claiming that we are harrassing her and making threats which we have not done. She has called the cops on us when we had a party this past Saturday and claimed that we were banging on the floor and threating her and have made numerous threats to her. She is very delusional and paranoid cause she smokes a lot of marijuana. I wanted to report her in the past for possession of this illegal substance but I was scared of what might happen. She may have friends who are drug dealers and I was scared that something might happen to us and/or our house. Now I am scared cause she might do something to herself and claim that we did it. So I feel I might have to go ahead and tell the cops about it.
Also, someone recently informed me that the apartment we rent may be an illegal apartment. I did not know this cause we just bought the house last year. How does that play into this and what fees may I end up having to pay? I am thinking of going to the town hall today and ask that an inspector come look at the house to tell me if it is an illegal apartment and what I will need to do to make it legal.
I will be looking to get paid legal advice but any additional advice you can provide would be a big help.
By the way, I live in NY state if anything differs in law between states.
Thanks.
 


L

LorettaL

Guest
You are right to hire an attorney to help you out with the eviction process. This site has the name of attorneys in your state who can help you out. Evictions are pretty tricky; some states give lots of protections to tenants; for some general adivce read the sections relating to evictions on this website's home page dealing with landlord/tenant law.

As for the illegal apartment situation, the answer depends on how your property is zoned and what the local rules are about rental units in private homes. I would go ask the city or county planning office if they know what your property is zoned and/or if there's any pamphlets on this subject before taking the drastic step of talking to a property inspector.
 

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