Collections agency or bite the bullet?

[Arthur Wong]

I have a recent ex-tenant who hadn't paid utilities for about 3-years. In her lease agreements, she is responsible for water and sewer and electricity. This is specifically about the water and sewer payments. The name on the utilities is kept in my name/my LLC's name but the bill is either mailed to the property or to the property manager who then lets the tenant know about it. As the owner of the house, it ends up being my problem and I've paid it.

I'm wondering what you would do if you were in my shoes.  The tenant moved to another city after moving out on April 1 of this year.  She was heavily subsidized through Section 8 (and yes, if she was on Section 8, this is a violation but I didn't end up doing anything about it).  I've paid well over $3,000 on utilities while she lived there (she didn't pay utilities for the last 3+ years).  My original property manager tried to reach out to her and work out a deal but she basically ghosted him so no repayment schedule was set up.  She also skipped out on her responsibilities on the annual section 8 inspection so because of that and the fact that we didn't have any access to the house to fix our portion of the violations, I didn't get rent for March.  At the end of the day, I didn't end up rehabbing the house at all and instead, I just sold it.

Would you try a collections agency to try to recoup a portion of the monies owed?  If you've gone the collections route, was it successful?  I'm also not sure if this is trying to get blood from a stone.

I've never gone down this road so would love some feedback from those who have.  Thanks!