I have a tenant who's overdue on rent. To date they only owe April rent, but this has been an ongoing problem since the fall, when I purchased this property. Their previous overdue rent was covered by RAFT (they've actually managed to receive double the assistance of what they were entitled for from the city by applying twice and the city not noticing it). They keep promising me for over 6 months that they'll find a job, and they haven't even tried. At the same time, they're driving a $70K+ Porsche Cayenne (I'm stating this so you better understand where their priorities lie). I've also discovered that they're illegally renting one of my parking spots to some stranger.

I've initially served them with a regular 14-day notice on the 10th (figuring they won't come up with the money anyway as new fees keep stacking), and now I've found out that Massachusetts changed their laws once again. Effective April 1, a proper eviction must start with a notice to quit that has new city-approved wording claiming it's not an eviction and must come with several pages of additional paperwork from the city telling the tenant about their rights and the RAFT program (that they've already abused the hell out of). Because of this I need to serve them with a new notice, that follows new asinine regulation: https://malegislature.gov/Laws...

Just because logic rarely seems to prevail in MA landlord/tenant laws, and this state really seems to hate landlords, I want to make sure I'm not going to get screwed over because of an edge case they didn't think to mention in the laws. If I serve the tenant with up-to-date 14-day notice via constable tomorrow, it can legally only include April rent. Once May rolls around in 6 days, common sense dictates that May rent would need to be paid as well for tenant to cure the eviction, unless they pay in full BEFORE May 1. But since this is MA we're talking about, common sense goes out the window. I want to make sure that a tenant paying just the April (but not May) portion of the eviction in May does not cure/reset the notice just because the notice made no mention of the May rent?

Basically, does the tenant need to cure full amount of rent owed to date (in which case 14-day notice makes sense) or just the amount mentioned in the notice (in which case the notice is a joke and I'd be better off with 30-day notice)?

Boston, Massachusetts

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