Peter Avitabile sat in his pickup truck outside his Rockland townhouse — a place he hadn't set foot in for two years — fuming about the tenant who refused to pay rent and refused to leave.
At first, everything went as planned. They leased the apartment to a local hospital worker, Cassandra Schnider, with decent references. But in late 2021, she started missing rent payments, and by July 2022, Avitabile was out five months rent at $2,100 a month. And he couldn’t get Schnider to respond to calls or emails.
Avitabile said his lawyer assumed the appeals court would be unlikely to halt the eviction. But less than a week before the scheduled move-out, an appeals judge put the eviction on hold. Schnider had 10 days to start paying rent. WBUR reached out to Schnider multiple times to request an interview and hear her side of the story, but she declined. In court records, she suggested her daughter’s father had recently died, and said the eviction would be hard on the young girl. Schnider also filed eight counterclaims against Avitabile, alleging discrimination, bad conditions in the home and retaliation for not paying rent.
“The only reason these professional tenants exist and can operate is because the courts don't do that,” Quattrochi added. That means costly litigation for landlords — and protracted legal battles can lead to foreclosures and bankruptcy, Turk said. He added that there’s a trickle-down effect when landlords don’t get paid.
Mascoop said the legal landscape has changed dramatically since the early 20th century, when landlord/tenant law was all about protecting owners. Even if an apartment burned down and left a tenant homeless, they still owed the rent, he said. Today, tenants have a host of protections — including around lead paint, problems with utilities, pest infestations and discrimination — many of which can be legitimate causes for withholding rent.
They knocked on the door, and no one was home. A cranky constable stood next to Avitabile as he jiggled a key in the lock to swing the door open. Taylor Avitabile said she had to take a second job to cover the payments on the place. She looked disgusted as she surveyed the damage.