According to this article in the Hastings Star Gazette, a Hastings man arrived at his trailer home around 1:30 AM to find about $1000 in damage so he did what any good, red blooded American would do and started drinking for nearly five hours to calm down before reporting the damage to police.
From the article:
Holes were punched in the drywall and the kitchen was destroyed.
[...]
He told officers he wanted to make the report so that he wouldn’t be blamed for the damages. He was being kicked out of the residence the next day for not paying rent, he said.
No footprints were visible in the snow outside the residence.
I don’t know about you but nothing makes me more level-headed and calm than five hours of drinking in the wee hours of the morning after being out until 1:30 AM, especially if I was being evicted that day. This story just makes me feel bad for the guy–especially that he did everything he could to ensure he wasn’t going to be blamed for the damage and, wouldn’t you know it, he still is. Poor guy! But hey, he should look at it this way: while he doesn’t have any money for rent, he at least has enough money for booze. The man hasn’t kept him down from that one yet.
What do you think about this one? How common of an occurrence is this sort of damage when people are evicted or lose their homes to the banks? As someone who saw homes for sale at the height of the foreclosure deal recently, it was fairly common to see high-priced homes completely and utterly destroyed inside by the previous owners. Do you think they were prosecuted for how often it was happening? Do you think this guy was framed? The police sweeping away other footprints in the snow to pin it on him? Does drinking for five hours calm you, especially in the middle of the night? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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February 21st, 2013 at 8:26 am
When I was a kid, my dad inherited a small farm house. He decided to rent it out and get a tenant pretty quickly. After about six months, The tenant stopped paying rent. My dad discovered it’s not easy to remove a renter. It takes several months and a lot of legal forms and wrangling.
After he got the renter evicted, he discovered that the guy TRASHED the house. The damage included feces smeared on the walls, BBs poured in the oil tank which required the tank and pipes be replaced, trash everywhere, on and on. The best part was the renter left a poster sized target practice silhouette that had 50 or so bullet holes in it – with my dad’s name written on it.
I don’t understand how the guy in the post or the guy that rented from my dad can translate their failure to pay rent into anger/revenge towards the landlord. I realize these guys are Stephen Hawking, but it really isn’t that difficult to understand that if I rent something from someone, I have to consistently give them the money that I promised to pay them. I guess that’s why this guy is living in a rented trailer.
February 21st, 2013 at 9:51 am
I recall looking a number of foreclosed or vacant homes. Many were in poor condition to start with, some were worse off with holes in the walls, appliances removed etc.
I believe some of the mentality of it is simple “if I can’t have it, no one else can” or at the least, they’ll spend a crapload fixing it up. More or less just being a total ass about the situation.
Never having been kicked out of home, had a car repo’d or anything, I don’t have exact personal relation to the situation, but I think it’s more of a mindset, and people not being able to find a mature outlet for their frustrations on the situation.
February 21st, 2013 at 10:08 am
I once toured a home that was destroyed by the previous owner. I was amazed at the amount of work they must have had to do in order to stick it to the likely not very offended bank that took over the house.
Every single knob and hinge was removed. The large appliances had likely been sold. The carpet was ripped from the floor and still in the home and the piece de la resistance was the part where they plugged the sink and turned on the water on the way out, collapsing the once beautiful hardwood kitchen floor into the bedroom below. 4500 square foot home that was built for over $650,000 on sale for $125K as I recall. It is amazing what people will do. I remember a movie called Pacific Heights a number of years ago that was basically about this (spoiler alert: don’t read that last sentence if you don’t want to know what those people are doing in that apartment the whole movie).
As for this guy, it is pretty funny that he called the cops on himself. I doubt the owner of the residence would have much civil recourse against a deadbeat with just enough money for Jack Daniels, but I have to give him credit for creativity whilst drunk.
Keep the drunk posts coming. Drunks are funny.
February 21st, 2013 at 5:43 pm
I saw some homes that had been foreclosed on or otherwise vacated when I was looking for a place to buy back in 2005. There was maybe the odd fixture or two missing, and perhaps some carpet stains and general wear and tear, but nothing like the deliberate trashings that some places get. Yeah, I certainly get that someone losing their home probably isn’t in a position to replace the carpet or update appliances, but the amount of effort some people put in to deliberately cause damage instead of just moving on with life is bewildering to me.
This having been 2005, of course, a place could have been utterly falling apart and still had three offers on it within a week of it going on the market. As such there were some owner-occupied homes that didn’t look so hot either, because sellers didn’t have to go to nearly as much trouble back then.
February 21st, 2013 at 7:20 pm
There is a good reason why security deposits are so high for rentals now. When I was first renting it was only about 1/3rd a regular months rent. Now when my kids were looking they had to come up up with one month rent for security deposit and last months rent of front. I assume that’s all to try and reduce damage from renters.
As far as foreclosed homes. Minnesota law effectively leaves the homeless in the banks home for as long as 6 months and sometimes longer. That’s lots of time for the person to not have mortgage payments and have time to dismantle the property. Of course there are those foreclosures that simply were in disrepair because the people couldn’t afford to keep the home up let alone make the mortgage payments. It just depends. I’m not big on property destruction, mostly because I know how big of a pain in the ass it is to fix it. (I used to be a caretaker for an apartment complex in my younger days. free rent ya know)
February 21st, 2013 at 11:56 pm
Many people live in foreclosed houses 3 years without making a payment before they have to move out. Per this CNN money article, average of 674 days to process the foreclosure, plus in MN they get another 6 months to move out after the sherrifs sale. They signed the paperwork to repay the loan, either can’t or chose not to repay, live there free for YEARS, then so many trash the house on the way out the door. Beyond belief….
http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/28/real_estate/foreclosure/index.htm