Want to know how to waste two hours of your time? Get subpoenaed as a witness and then discover that the officer neglected to update you that the court date changed, that’s how.
What a pisser as I had things I needed to get done and pushed them off to do the right thing. What’s more aggravating is this same officer never returned one of my initial calls or emails when this first started a year ago. It seems to be an ongoing saga.
I understand the police are busy, I understand they are often understaffed, but here we have a chance to put a deadbeat away who stole a vehicle at knife point and we’re screwing around. Anyway, I’ll have more updates after the 1st of September when I find out the new and updated court date!
OK, just so you know, this isn’t even an eviction. I had a tenant “allegedly” steal a vehicle from another tenant last year at knife point. I know, I get to deal with great people.
Worse yet, this was part of my pilot project to help young kids get off the street by putting them in some of my shared accommodation properties. Now just to add some perspective to this, I am not Mother Teresa, or even close!, part of this was to help fill rooms and some was indeed to try and help people who needed it.
Quick recap on the project, out of 11 tenants, I evicted or assisted nine of them to leave, the other two will never be allowed back. These were 18-24 year old kids who wanted financial assistance, housing assistance and typically had problems at home. The problem with the system I see is they were never made accountable.
They didn’t have to work for their money, they didn’t have to show up for job interviews, they didn’t have to get up in the morning. Also since they didn’t pay for anything and new housing would be found for them, they also weren’t responsible for anything. No smoking, sure, whenever Bill wasn’t around, no overnight visitors, sure whenever Bill wasn’t around. Anyway you get the idea.
Anyway, I will post more either late tonight or tomorrow as the story unfolds!!!
It seems like wingnuts are flying off the shelf these days and I am receiving even more content for a potential book about tenant stories. Here is the email I received the other day in response to one of my weekly rental ads on Kijiji;
I want your condo for 2 days, i m planing on having a party. It’s going to be my Birthday Bash so yeup
let me know if you agree, also let me know how much for a day & i’ll let you know when i want it.
email me asap Please and thank you
So, what do you think, should I contact the person? Seem like a winning solution? Just to show how confounding this is,below is a section from my ad,
To ensure a great experience for our residents the property has the following rules in place;
no smoking in the home
no drugs
no overnight visitors
treat the other guests with respect
no parties
These rules help create a safe quiet environment and also discourage the types of roommates we are sure you do not want to share a place with.
I highlighted a couple spots the potential short term tenant appears to have glossed over! Bottom line, I think I will take a pass and not bother to reply, I know, I could be throwing away money, but sometimes you just have to take a chance and pass on an exceptional offer!
Great title, lousy article. At least that is how many of you will feel when you read this hoping to find an easy way to collect money from tenants you have evicted. Although some people have had success with collecting money from evicted tenants, unless the outstanding amount owed is over a couple thousand dollars you may be better off letting it go.
The time and energy you waste trying to collect could probably better serve you by spending extra time finding and screening for exceptional tenants to replace the less than stellar former inhabitants. For those of you looking to collect, though here is some information to help you with the process of either garnishing a former tenant’s wages, or potentially seizing tenant’s assets to pay outstanding deb.
If you are planning on doing this yourself, here is the link to the governments PDF on Getting and Collecting a Writ of Enforcement in Alberta. This 40 page document (yes 40 pages!!) walks you through the various forms and processes, but most importantly, it says this.
“Legal enforcement of a Judgment is often complex and difficult. Many aspects of creditor law and legal procedure have not been explained in this brochure. Court employees are not allowed to give you legal advice. Please consult a lawyer if you have any questions.”
They also include the phone number for the Lawyer Referral Service sponsored by the Law Society of Alberta which is 1-800-661-1095 or can be found at this link, Law Society of Alberta Lawyer Referral Service. You can receive up to half an hour free legal counsel by using this service. Once you have received some advice you can decide at that point whether to pay for additional advice or whether it may be worth it for you.
Due to the complexity, the other option is to have one of the collection/bailiff services do the process for you. Costs for this start at about $700 and can move upwards for additional services, so be sure you are receive a breakdown of what the potential charges will be prior to committing to anything.
Also, this is different from simply sending the tenant to a simple collection agency that attempts to collect outstanding money for a percentage of the debt. Companies like Foster and Co, Kurseshi and Company or Serv-it offer the full service of going through the courts and garnishing wages and can offload the time you would spend on the process.
If you have had experience collecting, or attempting to collect from former tenants, we would love to hear your thoughts on the process.
