Utilities Shutoff In Rental Building Facing Foreclosure Force Tenants To Take Over Landlord's Unpaid Bills

In Miami, Florida, The Miami Herald reports:

• [M]ore than once over the past year, tenants of [a recently abandoned and in foreclosure] 11-unit Liberty City complex had come home to find the water shut off. Eventually, they stopped paying rent and took the matter into their own hands, forming a kind of rudimentary condo association to manage the property at 1575 NW 69th St.

• South Florida's foreclosure crisis is creating unique hardships for renters in some apartment buildings. Unlike tenants of condos and houses, apartment dwellers rely on landlords to collect garbage, keep up the premises and make repairs. The cost is included in the monthly rent.

• So when a landlord enters foreclosure, those services often stop, leaving residents without vital utilities and sometimes in unsafe conditions. They may be forced to move. Low-income renters sometimes have nowhere to go.

For more, see Foreclosure crisis creates unique hardships for apartment renters (South Florida apartment renters can face grim living conditions when their landlords enter foreclosure and stop paying bills. Some are taking matters into their own hands). ThetaTenantRentSkimming