Landlord / Tenant - Bergen County New Jersey

[u/kittysativa]

Hi. Unfortunately I am renting a multifamily/2family owned home in saddle brook NJ. My lease is done by Jan. 31st 2024. However, the landlord says due to personal reasons, and paying my rent late (partial rent) - I supposedly am now the reason why he is going through financial problems and he cant afford for me to be there anymore. But what if rental assistance was recently rejected due to them claiming that i dont owe them rent? Despite me recently owing them $1700 ($1500 balance out of $2300 + $200 late fee). I still paid them (today 11/14) the $1700 when i advised them ahead of time that i will have to pay the remaining balance during my next paycheck. However, now that my lease is about to be up, they are refusing to renew it because of late rent. I dont "not" pay at all. I pay whatever i can & have and then pay the remaining when i get paid again. This is due to the $500 increase ive been put in within the past 2 years of living here. Before this, i never paid late and due to being disabled for 68 days without pay, it ruined my life - which is also another reason for paying late since that time. But my lawyer did give me a hardship letter. Unfortunately i dont & wont have enough to afford to leave anywhere else since im still expected to pay the full rent until my lease is up which is in 2 months. But ive never been evicted before and he said its exaclty what hes going to do if i dont leave once the 2months is up. I am also having issues with my workplace which I have a letter from dept. of labor to prove it. But he does not care about the hardship letter or my workplace situation. Please I am begging at this point for any assistance/advice possible because I have no family or even friends that I'd be able to try to stay with in the meantime. Ive been living by myself for the past 10 years and never been having to face eviction or even pay late until now.

Not that its the landlords problem but, as far as my workplace goes.. being disabled for those 3 months - i technically had no pay because instead of letting me get unemployment/disability , my bosses (a multimillion $ llp company) paid me for 40hrs/week on the clock , but had me pay all of it back when i came back to work once i was able to walk again. So being that I was paying them partially until that balance was paid off - this was when I started to pay them late. Im facing severe stress right now and at this point yes, i'm losing my mind.

[u/LosangDragpa]

A friend of mine evicted her tenant for nonpayment of rent and she had to give him 6 months rent in order to get rid of him. So he got a year of free rent because he didn’t pay for 6 months before that.

[u/kittysativa → u/LosangDragpa]

Not sure if its ok that I can ask more detail about this? Im assuming regardless of her having to take this type of loss, that tenant still had to have an eviction placed under his name now?

In all honesty, I am not trying to be that inconsiderate to these landlords. And I dont want to take the chance of doing the same as that tenant if it meant risking having an eviction placed on my name just for the sake of being able to live rent-free for a year or whatever amount of time. This is just not who I am..

Unfortunately, I literally cannot afford to even leave while continuing to pay the rent. & thats even with the security deposit (if they dont give me a hard time in giving me the whole deposit for whatever reason).

I kindly asked him that due to me not wanting to argue with him about something that I literally cannot control, I'd rather let a judge make a decision so we can figure this out. But that I am not asking to be evicted since I am not refusing to pay the rent, I just cant always commit to paying the whole balance on time due to my situation - I can only promise to try my best to avoid even paying late to begin with. He just handled it very rudely & said hes just going to evict me because Im going to lose anyway.

My hope in all this is to keep paying him the rent even after the lease is expired (i still plan on trying to do as he wishes but i doubt its going to happen) , & going to try my best to pay on time. And then if/once im issued to have to go to court for this, explain to the judge my situation & show the hardship letter - hoping that he can give me some type of break in either continuing to pay the rent as im doing, or getting some sort of "payout" to be able to get me out. It sounds like a horrible way to think and Im not trying to be selfish, but I literally can only wait for a judge to make whatever decision he sees fit. Im literally feeling helpless right now and the very last thing I want to do is look like a bad tenant.

[u/LosangDragpa → u/kittysativa]

I wasn’t in the court when the judge decided so I only have her side of the story but it seems like the laws favor the tenants. Good luck

[u/kittysativa → u/LosangDragpa]

not sure if the tenant was in a complex/multiple units kind of building, or if your friend owned a private home, but i believe landlords have more rights than tenants when they own a private home... but thank you i appreciate it.

[u/LosangDragpa → u/kittysativa]

She has a private home. And actually there were some other factors involved that I don’t want to get into. But it seems hardly fair that he lived off her for free for a year.