Despicable: Landlord Evicts this Disabled 83-Year Old Veteran After Massively Increasing Rents

Disabled elderly veteran searching for options after eviction, disposal of his possessions

JAN 28, 2022 | REPUBLISHED BY LIT: JAN 29, 2022

Local experts in homelessness and housing assistance say Fancher’s story is becoming all too common. Property owners have been capitalizing on record gains in housing values recently, selling their rentals or increasing rent and often leaving tenants with fixed incomes in a bind. Finding affordable housing in the tight Southeast Idaho rental market is an increasingly daunting task.

And while there are several programs offering low-income housing assistance, the people who need help most are often unaware those programs exist, and likely wouldn’t know how to go about accessing the funds anyway.

“We’re seeing a lot of that kind of stuff. We have a lot of veterans who are living in substandard living arrangements,” said Melissa Hartman veterans coordinator with Bannock County Veterans Services. “We had a veteran living with his significant other and her daughter in the Thunderbird Motel. There were three of them living in one of those tiny apartments.”

Fancher earns just $800 a month in Social Security payments. On Jan. 13, Magistrate Judge Carol “Tippi” Jarman entered a default judgement against Fancher, after he failed to respond to his eviction notice within 21 days. She ordered him to vacate his apartment by 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 16, directing the Bannock County Sheriff’s Office to enforce the eviction if he failed to move out by the deadline.

Fancher was also ordered to pay $221.81 in filing and service fees, plus $500 in attorney fees.

The eviction writ was ultimately enforced on Tuesday afternoon, with the assistance of sheriff’s deputies.

Fancher said he was given just enough time by the current property management company, Real Property Management based in Pocatello, to grab a change of clothes and his pet cat before he was locked out, with his belongings still inside of the building.

Unsure what to do, he sent a text message asking a friend he met a couple of months ago, Scoffield, for help. Scoffield, agreed to take Fancher into her own two-bedroom rental, concerned about the past week’s below-zero temperatures.

“There was no way I was letting him sleep in his truck,” Scoffield said. “I’ll help him as much as I can.”

On Thursday, Fancher watched from afar as Real Property Management workers deposited bag after bag of his belongings into a trash bin — bags filled with family photographs, his grandfathers antique tools, his clothing and his coin collection. Scoffield, who documented the spectacle with her cell phone, said she was threatened with a trespassing charge when she attempted to salvage some of his possessions from the dumpster, before the trash bin was chained and padlocked. She said an official with the company let her take a single briefcase filled with Fancher’s photos.

When the garbage truck arrived Friday morning to haul away the dumpster, however, Scoffield was waiting by her car. She followed the garbage truck to the Bannock County landfill, where officials there set the trash bin aside to let Fancher’s friends load up its contents. They managed to recover many of his things, and a friend has offered Fancher the use of a storage shed.

“We try to work with people when they lose a personal item and are like, ‘Hey I threw my wallet away. Is there any way I can try to find it?'” Dillon Evans, assistant operations manager of the landfill said, explaining he’d hate to see an elderly man lose valued possessions.

As of Friday afternoon, Fancher still had additional belongings locked inside of the garage of his former apartment.

Idaho code gives a tenant three days following a court finding in favor of a landlord to remove personal property, after which a landlord has the right to “remove and dispose of all remaining property of the tenant … without any further compensation or consideration to the tenant.”

Local attorney John Bulger, who has been offering limited pro-bono assistance to Fancher, said people with a month-to-month tenancy have very little recourse under Idaho law.

“Tenants have the right to appear before a magistrate to contest an eviction, but once a lease has expired and notice to terminate has been given, an eviction is nearly certain,” Bulger said. “Now the former tenant has a judgment of eviction on record, which makes finding new housing all the more difficult.”

He believes the state code that allowed for the disposal of Fancher’s possessions serves a purpose in a circumstance in which a tenant walks away from a rental and abandons junk. He sees no reason why any property management company would refuse to work with a former tenant who is available and eager to recover his belongings, however.

“It seems to me rather a travesty for a person’s property — in this case an 83-year-old man — for all of his worldly belongings to be disposed of and not allow him to (claim them) when he’s there,” Bulger said. “It’s inhumane.”

Karl Lewies, a staff attorney with Idaho Legal Aid Services in Pocatello, said he’d like to challenge the “72-hour” provision used to dispose of Fancher’s possessions, which was an amendment passed by the Legislature in 2020.

“Idaho Legal Aid hasn’t had a chance to challenge this yet,” Lewies said. “It can be abused. ‘Without any further compensation or consideration to the tenant’ — that’s what I’m having a problem with.”

An official with Real Property Management emphasized on Wednesday that the company didn’t handle the eviction but merely participated in serving the writ, along with the sheriff’s office. The official noted Fancher was given nine extra days before the eviction was enforced. Officials with the company, however, would not comment later when asked why Fancher was prevented from reclaiming his things from the trash bin.

“I’ve never been late on rent,” Fancher said. “I’ve upgraded that place in many, many ways over the years.”

Real Property Management has posted a “for rent” sign in the yard of the apartment building. Prior to his eviction, Fancher said the company offered him a new lease at an increase of $500 per month, which he couldn’t pay. Real Property Management officials declined to comment about any offers made to Fancher.

Bulger said he’s been inundated during the past nine months both from tenants being evicted and from landlords seeking to evict. He’s found the tenants are mostly unaware of the millions in federal program dollars allocated to states such as Idaho for rental aid.

“In this time, people are getting opportunities to get rid of their real property for a greatly increased value. It’s a hard deal; it’s a really hard deal,” Bulger said.

Steven Taggart, an attorney representing Jacob Grant, which initiated the eviction before Real Property Management assumed management duties, believes the situation speaks to the need for a larger and more varied local housing inventory. He sees potential to creatively expand housing options for low-income renters by incentivizing the creation of basement apartments, loft apartments over garages and small homes behind existing homes, for example.

“It really needs to be a push for creating more and more varied housing,” Taggart said. “We need single-family homes, but we also need four-plexes and 16-plexes. We don’t have the numbers and we don’t have the variety.”

Lately, Idaho Legal Aid clients who have been evicted have had an extremely tough time of finding new housing accommodations, Lewies said. Idaho Legal Aid, which has 23 attorneys working from seven offices throughout the state, can be reached at 208-233-0079.

Sunny Shaw, a former director of the Housing Alliance & Community Partnerships in Pocatello who is now with Twin Falls Housing Authority, considers a warm home to be a basic human right. Shaw referenced the recent report of a 45-year-old man who was found dead along a Pocatello canal, apparently due to exposure following a cold night.

“Given what has recently happened in Pocatello with a death due to cold temperatures, this brings even heightened attention to the need for services and shelter for individuals in the community,” Shaw said.

The current HACP executive director, Sarah Van Cleve, believes the property management companies involved with Fancher’s former apartment should have assisted in finding him local services to ease his transition.

“Come on, he’s a senior,” Van Cleve said. “That’s what we should do for our senior citizens.”

Taggart said his client, Jacob Grant Property Management, generally makes an effort to direct tenants to available resources prior to an eviction whenever the tenant is willing to engage in a dialog.

Van Cleve said Idaho Housing and Finance Association has COVID-related rental assistance funding available. One challenge in obtaining the funding, she noted, is that participants must have a current lease for housing to qualify.

Van Cleve said her program also offers housing vouchers to subsidize rental costs for renters with low incomes. Homeless people are given preference.

The program also rents its own low-income units, though there’s currently a waiting list for them. Van Cleve noted people like Fancher who have an eviction on their record have a harder time qualifying to rent an apartment, though her program turns a blind eye to past evictions.

Van Cleve recently presented to the Pocatello City Council about addressing the problem of low-income local residents getting priced out of their rentals. She said HACP will be working with the city on introducing language regarding income discrimination in the rental market. For example, landlords might be prevented from turning down housing vouchers or enacting policies requiring renters to earn at least three times their monthly rent.

HACP can be reached at 208-233-6276.

The local Valley Mission warming shelter, 408 N. Arthur Ave., can’t currently provide lodging for local homeless people due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the program has been offering lodging vouchers for a night’s stay at local motel. The vouchers can be used whenever the temperature dips below 20 degrees and there’s inadequate space at the local Aid for Friends homeless shelter.

Karl Pettit, director of Valley Mission, said the program has already given out about 96 vouchers. The program gave out 62 vouchers all of last season. Funding for the vouchers comes from a United Way grant, a donation from Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center and contributions from Salvation Army and Grace Lutheran Church.

The vouchers are distributed by Aid for Friends, local police, St. Vincent de Paul Society, Salvation Army, the Southeast Idaho Crisis Center and Valley Mission. Pettit believes part of the reason for the increase in demand for vouchers is that Aid for Friends has capacity constraints due to COVID-19.

He added, “Also I think the need is greater with the housing crisis, rent going up, and people are struggling to find an affordable place to live. There’s a lot of people in transition.”

Valley Mission can be reached at 208-232-6305.

Aid for Friends Executive Director BJ Stensland said the shelter serves as a location where assessments are conducted to determine if applicants qualify for federal Housing and Urban Development programs.

Stensland said there were moratoriums on evicting tenants who couldn’t pay rent for part of the pandemic, but those moratoriums have expired.

“Our rental rates have skyrocketed and overnight landlords have been upping rent significantly,” Stensland said. “It’s crazy that somebody on a limited income that’s their sole reason for losing housing, because they raised the rates beyond their capacity.”

Aid for Friends can be reached at 208-232-0178.

Regarding veterans in need of housing assistance, Hartman, with Bannock County Veterans Services, said there’s a pension to help cover housing costs for veterans who served during wartime.

Bannock County Veterans Services can be reached at 208-282-4245.

For homeless men who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces, Southeastern Idaho Community Action Agency operates a special transitional housing facility, called Freedom LZ, 641 N. Eighth Ave. The facility’s phone number is 208-234-0966.

Sy Williams, a licensed clinical social worker with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, offers housing vouchers for veterans through a program called HUD Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing. It’s available to low-income veterans who are eligible for the VA health care system.

In the Pocatello area, there are now 43 veterans who are supported by HUD VASH vouchers.

Williams said there’s no time limit on participating on the program, which he described as a longterm solution. However, participants must still find housing to rent in a market in which affordable rentals have become scarce.

“We’re seeing a lot of this where the rent is going up and it’s going above the payment standard for the housing vouchers,” Williams said. “That’s the challenge we face, especially lately. If the veteran gets a housing voucher, it’s not a guarantee they’ll find a place that’s within that price range or will accept a voucher.”