Section 8 nightmare turn good

[Tom C]

I recently had a Sec 8 tenant move out. He is a single father of 4 and I actually liked the guy and respected him. He was suppose to move out on 12/31. So I went over to the house at around 8 pm to make sure he was leaving and they were moving stuff out at that time. I told him that I would give him New Years day to finish up and to call me for the final walk through.

I went over New Years day and he was no where around. I went into the house and it was a mess. Trash laying every where and now that every thing was out of the house I could see that the kids drew all over the walls. The youngest boy bedroom smelled of urine, appearently he wet the bed so bad that it soaked into my carpet and hardwood floor. The older girls glued posters to the walls. They broke my storm door. The whole house had to be scrubbed and then repainted and he still had stuff in the basement and the garage.

So I went to work on the 2nd and while I was working he showed up. He asked what I was doing and we went at it at that point. He claimed that he was coming back to clean everything that day. After damn near coming to blows, I told him to get the rest of his stuff out of my house and garage and get off the property. He showed up later that night with his worthless kids and grabbed the rest of there stuff.

So not thinking I would get anything in return other then his security deposit, I sent his case worker and her manager an email describing everything that took place and listed all the damage. To my surprise, his case worker called me and insisted that I provide her with a figure on the amount of damages. When I told her roughly $800 dollars, she insisted that it could not be that low. So I told her that I would send her an itemized list of damages.

She said that he had to come in on Monday and they were going to make him put down a deposit and setup a payment plan so he could make monthly payments to me for the damages. She also stated that if he doesn't pay he will loose his section 8 and if I failed to tell them when he missing a payment, I would be barred from any further Section 8 contracts.

I'm not sure how this is going to play out, but I was very surprised that section 8 didn't even want proof of damages or reciepts. I do have a good relationship with them, but I wonder how many landlords actually take advantage of this policy.