I have a total night mare of a section 8 tenant,..we have been trying to get rid of her for 2 years,but this is Ma and its not easy to evict someone,.

So I;m wondering if I could send notice that as a certain date (I thinkwe have to give 90 days) that we will no longer participate in Ma section 8 program,..

She certainly will not pay for market rent.

potter,

I think the people who voted in the politicians who made these insane laws should have to pay this woman's rent until the judge evicts her.

Here's what I tried and it backfired: I did not complete the repairs from the Sec8 inspection so the house would purposely fail, and be dropped from the program.

All they did was stop paying the rent and now I had no rent and deal with an eviction with the complaint "He won't do repairs". Judge said she did not have to pay or leave until I fixed the home.

Good luck.

BRAD

potter, as Brad basically said if at this point you decide to stop participating in the S8 program about the only thing that you can be sure of is that the PHA (public housing authority) handling your tenant will stop paying their portion of the rent. IMO you'll be even worse off than you currently are, as you will be getting 0 rent for this unit & you'll still be dealing with a difficult non-paying tenant.

You need to thoroughly read & completely understand both the existing rental agreement that you have with your tenant as well as the contract that you signed with the local PHA that handles your tenant's voucher. You should organize all of the notices / paperwork / rental agreements / contracts that you've either given to or received from the tenant, the PHA, BOH, the court, the lawyers, etc. This paper trail will be very helpful once you find a good lawyer.

I doubt very much that your existing contract says that it can be canceled just by giving 90 days notice. If you really want to remove the local PHA, you could give proper notice in accordance with the time frame stated in your PHA contract that you are increasing the rent above what they will approve for this unit. I believe that in previous posting you've mentioned that this property is located in western MA, if so IMO a $1,000.00 rent increase should be enough to get the PHA to terminate their contract.

You do realize that if the PHA stops being involved that she will then be solely responsible for the rent & that you will still have to go through the non-payment eviction process to get her out? In case you haven't done a non-payment eviction it's not that easy here in the People's Republic of MA. You will need to serve her with a 14 day NTQ or possibly even a 30 NTQ, then allow time for her to apply to RAFT which can easily add another 4- 6 weeks to the process, summons her to court which can take a another month or so, have the case postponed for all sorts of reason before you actually get before a mediator & eventually a judge. You do realize that the judge can give her months to find a new place even if she isn't paying or escrowing the rent. At some point you'll get an order to have a constable & a bonded mover remove her & put her "treasures" in to a bonded storage facility. Of course you will be paying for all of this.

If before you start this whole process, she makes a complaint to the local board of health about the conditions in her unit or the common areas, you'll won't be able to evict except for limited reasons it will be considered a retaliatory eviction & you won't be able to evict for 6 months.

Lastly, it seems to me that you've already been dealing with this mess for many many months if not years, I highly recommend finding a new lawyer who actually has a proven track record with handling these kinds of LL / tenant / PHA / BOH issues.

potter, if you don't already belong I suggest that you join the state wide LL group.

(://masslandlords.net/).

I also suggest that you get & read H John Fisher's Property Management for Massachusetts Rental Owners. It was written by someone from western MA.

(://www.amazon.com/Property-Management-Manual-Massachusetts-Rental/dp/0692293353)

I wish you the best of luck dealing with this unfortunate situation.

I did this many years ago and it worked. My lease contract AND the sect 8 office required a minimum 60 days notice of an increase.

I gave 90 days notice.

Section 8 said they wouldn't allow an increase of this much.

They said if I didn't lower the increase to their preference, the tenant would have to move out to find another more affordable place. (Happy!)

That's how I gently booted a PIA tenant. In NJ it's all but a written rule that an increase cannot exceed 10%.

So many things are state sensitive these days especially post COVID that you may want to ask around to see if this might work for you.

In the past 5 years I gave another PIA tenant a mild increase (mostly covered by sect 8) AND I made a "reasonable lease change" requiring the tenant to directly pay their electric bill. Electric is separately metered and I initially included it in the rent. Tenant asked what the average electric bill was, I answered, and they promptly gave me 30 days notice to vacate. Happy Tony!

I never understood the "issue" with removing S8. Simply raise the rent to a level housing will not pay at the annual renewal. They will stop paying and help her move while the eviction is proceeding.

Easy peasy.

As I said on another thread ... I evicted a S8 in southern NH for non-payment of HER portion. NEVER told housing so they continued to pay their portion.

Raising the rent to get a Section 8 tenant out really depends upon how easy it is for them to find another place that will take their Section 8. They aren't going to move easily if they can't find a place to move to.

When I was testing these waters I had the head of housing tell me " if we can't agree on the rent rate, YOU have chosen to terminate the contract with us. WE will STOP payment on the rent."

That was fine by me, eviction for non-payment is easy peasy.

Evicting an S8 tenant is very difficult unless you have a well-documented "for cause" reason.

As a result, I would always bite my tongue and simply serve (via sheriff) the HA and tenant a Notice of Non Renewal.

Check the existing lease and make sure you are not within the 90 day of the lease renewal date.

When they (or ANYONE) asks why, you simply state "I have other plans for the unit". Repeat this over and over to ANYONE (even the judge).

It's important you don't forewarn the tenant via any eviction filings. Just let the lease Non-Renew and when the tenant refuses to move out, THEN file for eviction.

However, actually going to court for that eviction is HIGHLY unlikely. The tenant will risk loosing her S8 Certificate (ie, get kicked off the S8 program). The vast majority of S8 "clients" would rather give up a kidney than give up their S8 Certificate.

What may happen is the HA Counselor may call you and plead that "she has no other place to go". Your answer to the HA Counselor is the same answer you gave to everyone else, "I have other plans for the unit".

I agree with you GKARL.

I stopped accepting any of these so called assistance programs because I was able to see thru the smoke screen and realized they were just there for the free money.

I even accepted a tenant and her minor child who was in a battered women's home. The person who ran it talked a good talk.

The woman was a dope head. Once the program ran out of assistance for her she moved her baby daddy in. Pretty sure he was the reason she was in the home to begin with.