"Robert Green" wrote in message
...
We've been thinking of renting our current home rather than selling in
this
down market while we rent in some of the places we're thinking of retiring
to. Unfortunately, movies like "Pacific Heights" where a bad tenant who
knows all the tricks of staying in a place without paying rent, haunt us.

Yesterday I saw a 'People's Court' episode where a deadbeat had managed to
stay, rent-free, in a Section 8 rental for three years by using a loophole
that says a tenant can't be evicted from Section 8 housing if there are
code
violations. Every time he was about to get evicted, he just broke
something
to forestall the eviction process, eventually plugging all the sinks with
rags and flooding the place.

How can you drive a bad tenant out from a rental in such situations? How
do
you prevent them from completely trashing the place on their way out? I
know that tenants should be checked out thoroughly beforehand, but even
so,
people can have no record of evil behavior but still turn evil. While I'd
probably NOT rent to any Section 8 tenants, I could easily see someone
losing their job or some other such tragedy and so decide they wanted to
live in my house rent-free for as long as they could get away with it.

I'll entertain all solutions, even extra-legal ones (as long as I can
implement them without getting caught!).

--
Bobby G.


For the reasons you fear, I had decided a few years ago against buying some
rental property. From my experience, with other people's rental properties,
you have two ends of the spectrum. You have low end sec 8 low lifes trashing
your property, or you have high end legally savvy dirt bags living in the
place rent free while you spend piles of money on lawyers trying to evict
them. I think that in a lot of the more "liberal" states, the laws are
designed to protect the offender and few to protect the evil, greedy
landlord, so my best advice would be to find tenants via friends in the real
estate business who are willing to "illegally" screen them for you.