by Rudy Blalock, Activist Post:
After years of missed rental payments, one Oakland property owner was left on her own to recover her losses, despite desperately seeking help from the city, state, and local law enforcement.
Carolyn Silas-Sams, a retired paralegal and an Oakland resident, said she inherited a duplex in the city in 2006 from her late mother and has been maintaining it ever since, although she never imagined that she would face the disaster that she has over the past few years due to the eviction moratorium.
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“I’m telling you … any level of education would not allow your brain to accept that something like this could happen, because it’s not rational,” she told The Epoch Times.
After remodeling her three-bedroom unit, she rented it out in December 2019 to a woman on Section 8 housing, a federal program that provides rental assistance for low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled. The woman claimed to have four children who would be moving in.
The mother had said that she’d struggled to find housing that was suitable for four kids.
Unfortunately, her empathy led to thousands of dollars in lost rent and damages that she has now had to cover on her own.
“Initially, she did have Section 8; then, what I didn’t know is that she was in line to have her kids taken. … Fact of the matter is, the kids never even came,” Ms. Silas-Sams said.
She said her tenant lied about the children moving in to get a larger rental allowance from Section 8.
Ms. Silas-Sams asked housing officials for help but was denied.
Because of the moratorium, nothing could be done, she said. Meanwhile, the tenant’s boyfriend moved in. Fighting ensued and it was discovered that the boyfriend was selling drugs from the apartment and hiding stolen goods in it, she said. The tenant was finally evicted in October.
