More On Use Of Water Service "Shut-Offs" To Illegally Evict Tenants From Foreclosed Homes

In the California Bay Area, the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

• Faced with reports of landlords and banks in foreclosure cases who stop paying water bills as a way to illegally evict tenants, the East Bay Municipal Utility District is considering a proposal to place liens on landlords' property to collect the unpaid charges.

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• "It's really kind of an epidemic in Oakland and Berkeley," said Anne Omura, executive director of Oakland's Eviction Defense Center, a nonprofit legal-aid group helping poor renters. "I've never seen a time like this in terms of these foreclosure evictions. The cases are heartbreaking. We have a lot of elderly and disabled clients whose landlords have been foreclosed on."

• Several cities - including Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco - have "just cause" eviction laws that allow tenants to remain in rental properties that are sold unless the new owner intends to move in or convert its use.

• Omura said it's difficult to determine whether landlords and banks stop paying utility bills as a deliberate strategy to evict tenants, but her agency is seeing attempted eviction cases where the taps have run dry. A property owner is legally required to keep rental units habitable. [...] "Based on the evidence we are seeing in the city attorney's office, a large number of evictions resulting from bank foreclosure are deceitful, unjust and flagrantly illegal under local and state law," [Oakland City Attorney John Russo] said.

For more, see EBMUD considers helping renters in foreclosure.

For other posts involving the problems tenants face in homes in foreclosure, go here, go here, go here, go here, and go here. equity skimming unwittingly epsilon