We have been living at our apartment for a year. We are now facing eviction for "nonpayment" of rent. Now, we have been late on rent quite a few times before as my husband at one time worked for FEMA (after the hurricanes) and is now starting his own company so money was not predictable and he was always out of town. This had never been a problem before, we just paid when we could with all the late fees, management understood THAT was before MBS took over our property.
MBS took over a while ago and we've had continuing problems since. For some reason, they have hired a new office staff that has been their for a month or two now. THIS STAFF TAKES THE CAKE!
First of all, rent is due on the 1st with a grace period till the 3rd. On the 5th, they sent us a: REMINDER LETTER, NOTICE OF INTENT TO LOCK OUT, AND A NOTICE TO VACATE all STABLED together! Now I know this enables us with 2 defenses from that alone, faulty notice to vacate and failure to give oppurtunity to cure. And of course we have the waiver defense since late payment was repeatedly accepted.
On the 9th someone was BANGING on my door when I was alone with my 2 children (one being an infant). I answered it to find some huge dude that said he was manitanence and some woman with a clipboard. (I had never seen either one of these people before) The woman informed me she was there to enforce a Landlord's Lien and I had to let her in to take all of our TVs VCRs DVD players and such. I told her no way, she then said she had to do a lockout if I didn't comply with the lien. Her EXACT words were, "Then we will have to lock you out." Now, I had never dealt with this before so I didn't know what to do. She specifically made it seem like we HAD to let her enforce the lien or be locked out. I was alone with my children and I was not about to let her do either so I told her to just start the eviction process to which she replied, "I can't start the eviction process until I change the locks. The courts won't even allow an eviction unless I do that first." HA! But I honestly didn't know any better, I just knew it didn't SOUND right so I still refused. She then said I could pay rent THAT day but only THAT day. I told her I would have to call my husband, who was in Florida, and she said she would wait. I called him and he said to tell her we would pay tomorrow. I told her and she was really rude and asked "What time? If you don't pay by this time we WILL be back to enforce the lien"
That's when I looked up the laws on lockouts, leins and evictions. I WAS SO ANGRY THIS WOMAN HAD JUST LIED AND THREATENED ME! However, we did not pay the rent the next day. WE COULD NOT. But we were working on getting it. After that happened, I didn't not want to talk to them until we had the money.
On the 12th my husband received a NASTY threatening message on his voicemail. Basically she said she would be there in just a few minutes to take everything in the apartment and that if I had a problem with it I could take it up with the courtesy officer. It was just an awful message that I made sure he saved should we need it in court. I called her back and she pretty much said the same thing to me and I informed her that there was no way I was going to let her into our apartment and that's when she said she was going to anyways and if i didn't like it a courtesy officer would be there. I informed her it was outside her legal means to use force and that that was the only way she was getting in. IMMEDIATELY she put me on hold and the actual manager (the other one was assistant manager) came on the line and said if I weren't going to let them then they would file for eviction and the process would be expediated and be on our credit report and they WOULD NOT ACCEPT RENT. I was already so angry I basically just said good luck. I was calling to actually arrange payment. WE HAVE PAYMENT, RIGHT NOW!
What do we do? Is there any legal action we could take against them? Somewhere to report them to? I am so shocked and so disgusted by all of this. I only THOUGHT I hated this place before ....

