Tenants These Days Have No Respect For Rental Properties.

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I read this in our newspaper today. I think it is terrible how some people can do something like . Whatever happened to respect? TROY — Debbie Plante says the tenants who recently left the River Street apartment she rents left it not only with thousands of dollars in damage, but in such decrepit condition that city code enforcement officials condemned it. When she called the Rensselaer County Department of Social Services—which paid the couple’s $650 deposit and first month’s rent when they moved in over a year ago—Plante was told the agency had already hooked the couple up with a new place and paid the deposit and first month’s rent there. “They said they can’t have people going homeless. I understand that,” Plante said. “But my house is destroyed. Totally, completely and literally destroyed.” Plante, who lives above the rental apartment on the block between Glen Avenue and 101st Street, said the $650 deposit is woefully short to cover the damages, which she estimates at $5,000. She says she can’t afford to take the former tenants to court—she thinks they wouldn’t be able to pay her back anyways—and she thinks the county should be on the hook. After she described the damage to Social Services over the phone, they asked if she was going to return the deposit, she said. Plante told them no. That money will go towards repairing holes in walls, replacing carpets and ceilings and painting over crayon writing on the walls, she said. Randy Hall, the county’s commissioner of social services, said it’s “very rare,” but possible, for the agency to decline to pay a family’s deposit and first month’s rent because of complaints about their past treatment of apartments—something Plante, as a property owner and taxpayer, takes issue with. Hall said when a deposit is not returned to the department by a landlord, that amount is docked over time from future benefits to the recipients to recover the funds. The agency is not responsible for any further damages, he said. He said privacy policies prevented him from discussing the specific assistance provided to Plante’s tenants, who lived with their children and, unknown to Plante, a slew of pets, including rodents. Plante said she had complained about an odor coming from the apartment for some time. The tenants would not let her in, she said. The issue came to head on July 14. “I opened the main door to walk into the halfway, and I literally vomited because the odor was so bad,” she said. Plante threatened to call code enforcement if the tenants didn’t clean. When she carried through on that threat, code enforcement came and condemned the apartment. The order they posted declares the first floor “unfit for human occupancy” under Section 176-9b of the city’s code of ordinance and ordered it be vacated immediately. Plante said she’s had the help of her family in her clean-up, and by late in the week she said it was mostly clean. As for the former tenants, she said they must be living nearby because she saw them carry some of their belongings away on foot as they moved out.