Eviction

“ If any member of the family is still in the house when the seals are put on, the eviction is invalid. Consequently, those interested in possession being retained often try to hide a child in a corner, or, better still, in a hole prepared in the wall or in the thatched roof, and if this manœuvre is successful, the unfortunate landlord is obliged to obtain a fresh writ, and, with another hundred men, to attempt a fresh eviction, for it all must be done over again. ”

“ If the tenant has not had a fair rent fixed, and his landlord proceeds to evict him for non-payment of rent, he can apply to the court to fix the fair rent, and meantime the eviction proceedings will be restrained by the court. ”

“ No landlord should get one penny rent on any part of his estates, wherever situated, so long as he has one tenant unjustly evicted. This policy strikes not only at the landlord but the whole ungodly crew of agents, attorneys, and bum-bailiffs. Tenants should be the first to show their sympathy with one another, and prompt publicity should be given to every eviction, that the tenants of the evictor wherever he holds property may show their sympathy. ”

“ The substance of the provisions of the acts of the legislature of New York is: that the purchaser of any forfeited estate, in case of eviction, should be paid the value, at the time of the eviction, of the improvements he had made on the land ”

“ But an eviction is by no means the dreadful [Pg 135] hardship the reader would perhaps imagine it. To be sure, it means putting the tenant on the sidewalk with his poor household gear in any weather and at any hour; but if it is very cold or very wet weather, the evicted family is seldom suffered to pass the night there. The wretched neighbors gather about and take them in, and their life begins again on the old terms; or the charities come to their aid, and they are dispersed into the different refuges until the father or mother can find another hole for them to crawl into. ”

“ Even of those landlords who are roused, by the pressure of the times and the impending poor-rate, to action, the majority look for salvation to other means—to the eviction of their numerous tenantry, the clearing of their estates from the seemingly superfluous population by emigration or ejectment. ”

“ When a lessee is evicted or turned out of possession by his landlord, he is excused from paying rent. What, therefore, is an eviction? Any act by the landlord, or by his agent, impairing the worth of the premises to the tenant, for example, the destruction of a summer house, turning rooting pigs into the premises, the erection of a new building rendering the leased premises unfit for occupation. One of the curious cases is the lease of a distillery which could not be run because the landlord prevented the lessee from getting a license. ”

“ When a tenant's valuation does not exceed £50, the Court before which proceedings are being taken for the recovery of any debt, whether for beef, bread, groceries, clothes, or whiskey, is empowered to stay eviction, can allow the debtor to pay by instalments, and can extend the time for such payment without limit. ”

“ Here we have a rich land-owner; he demands the eviction of a cotter tenant who has not paid his rent. From a legal point of view the case is beyond dispute, since the poor farmer can't pay out he must go. ”

“ These rights, which are heritable but not transferable, protect the tenant against eviction, except for default in payment of rent, while the rent may not be enhanced except by mutual agreement or by order of a revenue court. “ Occupancy ” rights are acquired by continuous cultivation for ten years, but the cultivation need not be of the same holding. ”

“ Shee knows that well.”
To make an eviction complete and legal here, everything belonging to the tenant, and every live creature must be taken out of the house. A cat may save a house as a cat may save a derelict ship. Then the Sheriff must “walk” over the whole holding. ”

“ But, good landlord or bad landlord, no man can ever again hold that countryside at his pleasure, cowering under the threat of eviction. Rent is fixed by a court, and while a man pays his rent he is irremovable. And within a short period every man will be paying, not rent, but instalments of purchase for the land which he and his predecessors have worked—which in nine cases out of ten they have reclaimed from bog and barren moor. ”

“ In a determined fight there are no “law costs” on the side of the tenantry, and they should remain out for ever rather than pay those which the landlord incurs in fleecing them.
Ejectment is the most common of the landlord’s remedies. Every legal and constitutional obstacle which could oppose or delay eviction should be had recourse to, for every hour by which the sheriff is delayed in one eviction gives another brother tenant so much more grace. There are only 310 days in the sheriff’s year, and he must do all the evictions in a whole county within the time. ”

“ Certain it is that in the putting in force of the right to evict a tenant the landlord is very long-suffering. This last step is not usually taken until the rent is many weeks, or often months, in arrear. Even when an eviction order is granted, I have known many cases where a landlord renews the tenancy and collects the arrears at small instalments.
Eviction orders are very often asked for not in the landlord’s own interest but in the community’s. The necessity to do the sanitary requirements of public bodies is a constant source of eviction. ”

“ It is not necessary to adduce instances to prove the liability of the tenant at will or lessee to eviction, because the nature of their interest makes it obvious that they could not claim to have complete legal security. ”

“ A landlord seeking summary eviction could file an affidavit in a local court, alleging that the tenant, for one or more statutorily enumerated reasons, was unlawfully holding possession of the premises and had refused the landlord's demand to relinquish possession. ”

“ In other words, and to display the case still more explicitly in relation to the whole subject, during the only period for which we have trustworthy statistics, evictions have been effected (supposing the responsibility for them be distributed over the entire landlord class, which is the theory insisted on) at the rate of one, once in every five years, on each estate; or, to put the case geographically, at the rate of one a year over every area of 10,000 acres of occupied land. ”

“ By making the landlord’s bidder run it up to the amount of debt and costs, and leaving it on his hands, the sheriff cannot follow the tenant further. No auction fees should be allowed. A farm held on a lease for a life or lives, any one of which is extant, cannot be sold by the sheriff. After sale a tenant is still in possession [265] of holding until a fresh writ is served and a judgment for title marked against him. All this involves the landlord in fresh costs. The eviction may then follow, and the observations above recorded in case of ejectment or eviction apply here. ”

“ It is not necessary, to constitute an eviction, that the purchaser of land should be actually dispossessed. (11 Rob., 397.) It was also ruled, in the same case, that an eviction may take place when the vendee continues to hold the property under a different title from that transferred to him by his vendor. In this instance, Mulhollan's representatives held the title to a part of the land, originally bought by him from Davis as a whole, by the purchase of James and Coleman Calvit's undivided eighth. ”

“ The tenant having no neighbouring house to go to clings to the undesirable shelter he has got until the forces of the law turn him out in the interests of hygiene. Another curious cause of eviction is a woman’s tongue. A lady with what is technically known as “a tongue” will set all her neighbours by the ears; houses on each side of her domicile rapidly empty, and at length the whole street comes to the landlord [Pg 235] demanding that she shall go or threatening to depart themselves. ”

“ The rents are paid as soon as the crop is harvested, and, being seldom in arrear, evictions are rare. The laws are all in favor of the tenant, who pays no taxes or rates, and takes everything, including his house. ”

“ Continuation of existing tenancies.The right of a tenant to the use or occupancy of any rental property, hotel or apartment, existing at the time this Act takes effect, or thereafter acquired, under any lease or other contract for such use or occupancy or under any extension thereof by operation of law, shall, notwithstanding the expiration of the term fixed by such lease or contract, continue at the option of the tenant subject, however, Eviction restrictions.to any determination or regulation of the commission relevant thereto ”

“ He has now been ten years in the office, during which 'the rents have been paid without murmuring or complaints worth noticing.' 'The pressure of legal remedies for these rents has been very little used; the number of evictions absolutely trifling; and of between 400 and 500 receivers, who collect these rents, not one has ever been assailed, or interfered with, or threatened in the discharge of his duty, as far as I have been able to discover; and I am the person to whom the receiver should apply for redress if anything of the kind occurred. ”

“ Many a landlord has made a hard bargain for himself; and I happen to know of one case in particular, in which a family has long been, and is still, kept out of the enjoyment of a very valuable estate, as to any benefit of importance, purely by the circumstance that a weak-minded possessor of the property fancied he was securing souls for paradise by letting his farms on leases for ninety-nine years, at nominal rents, with a covenant that the tenant should go twice to a particular church! ”

“ That act provides that an owner of a large estate may sell to his tenants the holdings they occupy, and his untenanted land to any one who desires to buy it, in such tracts and at such prices as may be agreed upon, corresponding to the income now derived from that particular property. No landlord can sell a few acres here and there of good land under this act, although, of course, he is at liberty to dispose of any part of his estate at any time at any price that he may consider proper. ”

“ If a tenant has to be evicted for a demand of £10, will he be able to live in comfort if he pay only £8? Shall one tenant live in comfort on a farm, the rent of which has been reduced him from £100 to £80, and another, the reduction having been from £20 to £16? ”

“ The landlord, or person letting the estate, is called lessor; and the tenant, or person to whom the land is leased, is called lessee. Leases for a term longer than one year, are usually required to be sealed, and in some states, proved and recorded also, as deeds and mortgages.
§3. These limited interests in land are divided into estates for life, estates for years, estates at will, and estates by sufferance. An estate for life is an estate conveyed to a person for the term of his natural life. Life estates held by lease, however, are not common in this country. ”

“ A tenant for life, having power to grant a lease, should grant it only in the terms of the power, otherwise the lease is void, and his estate may be made to pay heavy penalties under the covenant, usually the only one onerous on the lessor, for quiet enjoyment. The proprietor of a freehold—that is, of the possession in perpetuity of lands or tenements—may grant a lease for 999 years, for 99 years, or for 3 years. ”

“ You think that an exceptionally economical landlord might indeed be able to say so much for himself; and that the increasing of their estates has at least been held a desirable thing by all of them, however Fortune, and the sweet thyme-scented Turf of England, might thwart their best intentions. Indeed it is well to have coveted—much more to have gained—increase of estate, in a certain manner. ”

“ It has, accordingly, been solemnly proposed in the Legislature of New York, that the statute of descents should be so far altered, that when a landlord, holding lands subject to certain leasehold tenures, dies, or a descent is cast, that it shall be lawful for the tenants, on application to the chancellor, to convert these leasehold tenures into mortgages, and to obtain the fee-simple of the estates in payment of the debt! In other words, A leases a farm to B forever, reserving a ground-rent, with covenants of re-entry, etc., etc. ”

“ We know of a lot of twenty acres, mostly hill, well situated, contiguous to the town, and under cultivation; there is likewise a substantial dwelling-house, in a commanding situation, which, from its original cost, could not be rented under forty dollars a month, at least: this sum, in twelve months, amounts to four hundred and [198] eighty dollars; but the quit-rent, if a permanent lease be taken out, would be two hundred dollars a year, which leaves two hundred and eighty dollars only to pay the interest of the money originally spent on the property, exclusive of other charges. ”

“ Under a hard one, the tenant revenges himself upon the land, and runs away with the rent. I would raise my rents to the present price of all commodities: for if we should let our lands, as other men have done before us, now other wares daily go on in price, we should fall backward in our estates. ”