Landlord Out $24K In Rent Claims Tenants Are Exploiting Eviction Moratorium And Buying Boats. Photo by Elton Sa on Unsplash.
A landlord in North Carolina said tenants are taking advantage of the federal eviction moratorium, instead using their money to buy extravagances like boats – and he’s out of pocket $24,000 in unpaid rent.
Buddy Shoup, who owns 35 properties across the state, said he’s been forced by law to absorb mortgage, maintenance and repair costs for his properties, despite tenants not paying their rent since Sept. 2020 when the moratorium first began.
“It goes way beyond the loss of rental income. We’re still bound by county rules and laws. We have to maintain the property,” Shoup said during the interview with “Fox & Friends.”
Shoup said he had to pay $4,500 to install a heating pump on a tenant’s home who has not paid him any rent but instead purchased three boats during the pandemic.
“The guy didn’t pay me rent and evidently, he was getting money from somewhere … he has three boats,” Shoup explained. “Well, lo and behold, the middle of the summer their air conditioner went out, so I had to put about a $4,500 heat pump on that house to make sure that they stayed cool and I didn’t receive any rent or anything.”
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Shoup told Spectrum News that another of his tenants was behind $12,000 dollars in rent and yet another was ordering new stuff from Amazon daily, according to Daily Mail. “They had packages every single day coming from Amazon, Rental Center, buying furniture and all of this. She had a whole U-haul of stuff. And there’s my money,” Shoup said.
He said he told tenants who are struggling to seek rental assistance from programs funded by the federal government, but only 12 percent of the $26 billion funding approved by Congress in December 2020 has been distributed, according to The Washington Post.
Shoup isn’t the only landlord adversely impacted by the federal eviction moratorium. Many others have complained about the challenges it poses.
Vanie Mangal, a physician assistant who rents out the basement of her Queens home, told the New York Times that in addition to owing $36,600 in back rent, her tenants have cursed and spit at her, keyed her car and dropped her mail by the garbage.
“It’s been really horrendous,” Mangal said. “What am I supposed to do — live like this?”
Massachusetts landlord Howard Simon said he has also felt the weight of the federal eviction moratorium. “I have mortgages, I have expenses for repairs to that particular building, I’m losing one-third of the rent just because of this,” Simon told Daily Mail. “I’m just a small landlord, and I’m not a big corporation like many of the other large rental organizations, so although the funding is very helpful, if the tenant doesn’t cooperate everything falls apart.”
The Alabama Association of Realtors filed a lawsuit to strike down the most recent extension of the federal eviction moratorium, which President Joe Biden announced on Aug. 3. Small landlords said they cannot absorb such exorbitant costs with no rental income coming in and no means of evicting tenants who are working the system.
