229 renters were evicted by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department in the year ending Jan. 31, 2009.
"A woman called and said the landlord told her to clean out the chimney. So she cleaned out the chimney. She said, ‘I didn’t know the embers were hot.’ I said, ‘Where did you put them?’ ‘On the front porch.’ She burned down the whole front of her house. I said, ‘Is the rent paid?’ She said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Where are you from?’ ‘El Paso.’ I said, ‘If you think you can burn somebody’s house down and not pay the rent, get on a bus because that’s where you belong."— Susan Turetsky on her strangest call in 13 years
There’s more to the bad housing news than foreclosures. Renters are in trouble, too.
Susan Turetsky runs the New Mexico Landlord/Tenant Hotline, a service funded by the city of Santa Fe. Last month alone she got 318 calls. A greater share of her callers lately have lost their jobs and are unable to make rent, but she deals with landlords and tenants in roughly equal measure.
“The tenant calls and says, ‘That sonofagun, that sleazeball!’ I say, ‘I don’t go there because the next call is going to be the sleazeball,’” Turetsky says.
In a jam? Here’s the deal: A tenant can’t simply ignore the rent. But neither can the landlord simply kick somebody out without a court order. If the landlord tries, the tenant can sue for double the monthly rent.
After the tenant misses a payment, the landlord can give notice to pay up within three days—or get out. “That’s when the panic sets in,” Turetsky says.
If the tenant fails to pay after the 72-hour notice, and a judge orders eviction, then “get ready to roll, because the court’s going to give you a maximum of seven days [to leave the property],” Turestsky says. “If you don’t leave then, the sheriff is going to come; he’s going to say, ‘You’ve got 15 minutes to leave the property.’ He can change the locks.”
Before that happens, be sure to pack your stuff. “After three days, he can get rid of it however he wants. He can sell it; he can keep it; he can donate it; he can chop it up into little pieces—he can do whatever he wants,” Turetsky says.
What happens when a rental property falls into foreclosure? Often creditors will try to scare renters off the premises but, in fact, Turetsky says, the new owner is obliged to finish out the lease. For tenants renting month-to-month, the bank—or whoever took over the title on the home—still owes them 30 days’ notice.
Reach the Landlord/Tenant Hotline at 505-983-8447.