For two years, I lived in a luxury condo in the Oakland Hills rent-free. The law, my former landlady, and all my neighbors saw me as a squatter, but I don’t see it that way; and after I tell you how it went down, neither will you.
I’d just broken up with my longtime girlfriend in San Francisco and had been looking for a place in Oakland for six months. I was getting outpriced on everything. I’d actually gone to some places with $3,000 in cash, only to be rejected during the application process. I’d tried everything from roommate referrals to Facebook to Twitter. I figured I’d be riding out this dismal housing market on my uncle’s couch in the Fillmore indefinitely.
Then, Theresa contacted me through Facebook. She was a minor acquaintance whom I’d met while hosting an open-mic series a few years before. Her place was at the foot of the Oakland Hills on opulent Park Boulevard. Provided that I took care of her two cats while she was away, Theresa offered me a six-month sublease at $600 a month. This was not an apartment; it was a house. It had a living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, full bath, backyard, and a patio — all for less than what was I was paying in San Francisco for a room. Plus, I was a 15-minute walk away from my son. I decided to call it my summer home and wrote up a small lease.
A week after I’d moved in, Theresa visited and told me that me that she was evicting me and keeping my rent and deposit for “damages.” She refused to leave, so I called the cops. For the first time in my adult life, the OPD was actually on my side. Once they looked at the lease, the two friendly officers sat down with Theresa and explained to her how her condo was not hers, at least for the next six months. They finally got her out of the house and spent about an hour and half in the car out front figuring out where to take her. The next day, I changed the locks.
About a month later, Theresa came by to get her cats and to tell me that the condo had been in foreclosure for months and that the deal was being finalized at the end of the week. This was when it all became clear: Theresa was one of those poor, unfortunate souls who had gone underwater during the era of subprime mortgages. She’d expected to take my cash, evict me, and have her lovely home back within a week. Luckily, or rather knowingly, I had a lease.
Toxic Avengers
As with all my deep and personal problems, I turned to the interwebs for guidance and succor. I’d learned that what Theresa had done was becoming a common practice for some quick cash. On the self-help law website Nolo.com, I read that since the housing bust, quite a few people who were underwater from toxic loans had taken to making a little cash on the side by renting out their already foreclosed homes: “The foreclosure crisis has affected many tenants, who learn mid-lease that their landlord has failed to pay the mortgage…new tenants are becoming the next wave of unintended victims, as landlords continue to rent to new residents in the face of looming foreclosure.”
And an article from the Los Angeles Times backed this up: “The second-largest source of mortgage money in the country — Freddie Mac — is warning about a troubling wave of post-crash fraud: scammers who illegally rent out foreclosed and for-sale homes to unsuspecting consumers.”
Though my situation was not that dire, I came to realize that this was a disturbing trend all over the country. It felt good to know that I wasn’t alone and that I had some ways of fighting back.
Coincidentally, Freddie Mac, the aforementioned lender, owned the condo I was in. I learned that though I had changed the locks and put the PG&E bill in my name, my “landlady” was the original squatter.
So what to do? Through Nolo.com, I learned that there is usually a credit agency holding the deed to foreclosed properties until they can be resold. This intermediary is called a trustee. It took some work, but I got a hold of the trustee to the property through the deed-holding bank and sent them a copy of my lease. They told me to wait. No mention of rent was made, not even six months later when the house was officially foreclosed. Though the trustee is responsible for the property in question, no one officially owned my condo. I existed in this cushy in-between space where my unexamined lease languished at the bottom of some belabored bank administrator’s bundle of bad debt.
Kicked to the Curb
Theresa tried to reclaim the space on two more occasions over that six-month period and had gone as far as calling the cops and accusing me of not paying rent. When I told the officer at my door about the foreclosure, he said, “Not paying rent just makes sense.”
Eighteen months went by before I came home to find a 24-hour notice from the “new owner.” I was just irritated. I called the phone number on the notice and said, “Bring the cops when you come, or they will be called.”
I have to say that I was surprised when a small, beleaguered-looking man in his mid-50s showed up at my front door with two cops. He showed me the documents that were supposed to prove his ownership and said that he wanted to move in by the end of the month.
That night, I went back to Nolo.com to answer the following question: “What about the tenant whose new owner terminates the lease in order to live there himself?”
Turns out, there wasn’t much I could do if what he had said was the truth. I could buy some time by waiting for a court order, and even more time by counter-suing, but that would have been costly, and the whole point of my staying in the place was not to spend money.
The following morning, I looked up the owner’s documents at the county courthouse. Turns out, the guy was a “whale,” which is someone who owns multiple properties with the intent on converting condos using the “owner eviction” clause of California law.
And that was it. I’d fought a good fight and lived rent-free for two years — what was there to complain about? I packed my shit and GTFO.
I’m hoping that what I learned from this experience will help other desperate wannabe dwellers experiencing similar situations. Remember: there are some bastard landlords out there, but there are also ways to fight back. And for God’s sake, GET IT IN WRITING!
