Dealing with a tenants that break rules

[Brandon Rauscher]

I have a tenant that recently moved in using housing vouchers (section 8). She immediately moved her boyfriend into the property on day one. He is not on the lease. This individual proceeded to smoke in our units. We have a clear no smoking policy. After sending her a Notice to fallow rules or vacate, she has moved her boyfriend out...or so she says. We performed a inspection a week after her moving in and found 4 cats on the property, two of which are not on the lease. She knew up front we do allow animals and it was a $50 a month pet fee per animal along with higher security deposit. She is not paying the pet fee or higher security deposit for the two additional cats. Honestly we would not have approved her to lease with 4 cats to begin with. Served her another notice to fallow rules or vacate and informed her there will be a $100 per day fine for the additional two cats. 

My questing is, how do you proceed with tenants like these? Do you give them a first time waiver of fines/fees or do you stick with full fines right from the start? This person has not yet been in the property 15 days. 

[John Warren]

@Brandon Rauscher section 8 isn't a bad program, but this is exactly the reason the program has a bad rep. You have two courses of action. You can either force the issue by issuing a notice about the lease violations, but be ready to go all the way in that course of action and know that the house will be left in poor repair when your tenant leaves. Hopefully you have a deposit, but in my experience this won't end up well. 

The other course of action is to take a step back and see how bad this really is. Is the tenant damaging the home by having the cats? Are you getting a lot of complaints? Maybe this isn't the end of the world and you can leave well enough alone? 

C class land lording isn't for the faint of heart, and I don't find that you can really "manage" people into better behavior. Most of the time, you screen and get what you get.