It’s probably too late to help you now, but for future reference, HUD has a special form you can file specifically to handle unpaid rent and damages. Its fom HUD-52671-A "Section 8 Special Claims for Unpaid Rent/Damages. I have it in .PDF format and can send it if you e-mail me.
Any tenat can trash your place, section 8 or not. I know someone who had an eviction party and painted the whole place flat black.)You have to screen carefully, whatever their source of income.
(I just signed another sec 8 contract this morning. I love-em.)
Re: Secttion8 Tenants Danger Stories - Posted by Tim (Atlanta)
Posted by Tim (Atlanta) on March 16, 1999 at 19:33:30:
Make sure that you qualify and check your section 8 tenants just like you would anyone else. They must have adequate income to cover their portion of the rent. Obviously you will need to be more lenient on the credit requirements. Just don’t think that just because it is Section 8 that you will always get all of your rent on time. The government will certainly pay their portion, but some programs require monetary participation from the tenant.
Re: Secttion8 Tenants Danger Stories - Posted by Mark (SDCA)
Posted by Mark (SDCA) on March 16, 1999 at 16:29:52:
I had a Sec 8 tenant who maliciously dropped pieces of wood down the backwash pipe (think that’s the term for it) of the toilets. I got VERY lucky in that they didnt get stuck somewhere in the middle but went all the way to the bottom and caused problems there. Still had to cut out the wall, cut out the piece of pipe, replace, fix wall etc. Wasn’t great (hundreds of dollars) but could have been MUCH worse. According to the plumber, it was clearly a deliberate act. Not much I could do at that point (tenant was long gone and probably had no assets anyway…) Oh well.
