Tulsa to evict 70 renters due to landlord's unpaid water bill

[Newsjock]

Source: KOTV

Dozens of Tulsa families are about to be homeless for the holidays. The owner of an East Tulsa complex has not paid a $79,000 water bill, but it's the residents who will pay the price.

Residents at the Somerset Apartments were told Wednesday that their water will be shut off Thursday and they will have ten days to get out.

... Everyone who lives in the 70 occupied apartments at Somerset is in the same boat. The owner, who lives in California, has not paid a $79,000 water bill, so the city is shutting it off Thursday.

Residents won't have their deposit, or even this month's rent, returned.

Read more: http://www.newson6.com/Global/story.asp?S=13681377

[ejpoeta]

1. that is just wrong.

[NV Whino]

2. Now, that is just effing ridiculous

There have to be other solutions. And why did they let the bill get to $79,000 before doing anything?

[azurnoir]

3. wow apparenty Tulsa does not have 'tenants remedies'

in Minneapolis if a landlord is enough behind to get any utility that he pays for shut off the notices go both to the landlord and to the tenants who then have the legal option of paying their rent to the utility company in question and that is put towards to stop the shut off

[guitar man]

4. of course not

Before I bought my house I rented enough flops around Tulsa to know that all the cards are stacked in the landlord's favor here. :(

[azurnoir]

5. well other than that the cards are stacked for the landlord

such as a landlords claims are always taken as truth in court the burden of truth is on tenant years ago I had a landlord claim that I had not paid rent in a year! He had always demanded the rent in cash so I made him give a receipt always, of course he never had a receipt book so some of them were literally in crayola on a torn out page of a coloring book, but thankfully the guy had a reputation for pulling that crap on people, so the judge quite happily accepted them the landlord was flipping HUD properties buying them at auction for cheap then mortgaging them for big bucks and defaulting on the mortgage, last I heard years ago he was on trial in federal court for equity skimming

[Recursion]

7. That's one thing I like about Boston

It's very hard for a landlord to win a lawsuit. Two landlords I know don't even take security deposits because it presents the landlords with huge possible liabilities (everything in a landlord/tenant dispute is triple damages).

[sarcasmo]

6. This happened at a Condo complex last year. Have to find the link.

[Pacifist Patriot]

8. That is wrong in so many many ways!

[raccoon]

9. SC has dumbass laws like this, that punish the tenants when it's the landlord who was the wrongdoer.

Red states are like that.