Our property management company has been able to help many tenants struggling with the financial crisis.  To date, our company has collected $245,000 to help our owners, equivalent to a full month’s rent of our portfolio.  This has been a blessing to many but now is becoming a curse for the following four reasons.

1. We have multiple tenants that have gone on vacation and not paid rent.  In each of the cases, I was able to make the tenants whole through the UniteCT program but vacations to Puerto Rico and Europe is really not appropriate when you are not paying your rent.  Got to love where your tax dollars are going!

2. We have multiple tenants that specifically stopped paying rent because they knew that they would get more money by not being responsible with paying what they could afford to pay and instead saving while they waited.  This puts the owners in a tough financial position to pay for upkeep of a property, the mortgage, taxes and other expenses.  It also adds significant amount of work to me as I have to continually reach out and make decisions surrounding evictions.

3. We have multiple tenants that have received the UniteCT money and have made no attempts to better their financial situation through new employment or better savings and have already burned through the three additional months of pre-paid rent and are already trying to reapply and recertify to the property again.  These tenants know how easy the handout was and have made no attempt to pay additional months of rent and now we are in the tough decision to start evictions or not (owners cannot charge back legal fees if they collect money from UniteCT).

4. We have multiple tenants that have received the maximum amount ($15,000) from the UniteCT program and still cannot make payments and are trying to get more money from the program.  It is unclear if any eviction will be expedited and now these tenants are very knowledgeable about the legal aid programs out there.

It is unclear to me what additionally could have been done and overall, I’d say the program has been successful but no government program goes off without people abusing it for their gain.