I’d like to say that I am not a landlord, but that wouldn’t be technically true. My wife and I own one two bedroom house that we rent out, but it is rented within the family. The tenant, my wife’s sister, pays us rent, which we use to pay the mortgage.

More, when we bought our current property, meant as our retirement home, we were both still working, and not planning to retire for a few more years. We couldn’t just let the house sit empty, so we rented it out for three years, and while the tenant paid his rent, on time, being a landlord was not fun. We made very little money, as there were always things going wrong, things needing to be done. Being a landlord is not an occupation I would suggest for anyone.

Landlord-tenant officer shoots woman in head during eviction, police say

Landlord-tenant officers are not sworn law enforcement personnel.

by Jesse Bunch, Max Marin, and Ryan W. Briggs | Wednesday, March 29, 2023 | 5:23 PM EST

A Philadelphia deputy landlord-tenant officer shot a woman in the head while trying to enforce an eviction Wednesday morning, drawing a rebuke from housing advocates and raising alarm over the court system’s use of a deputized security force to eject renters.

The incident took place inside the Girard Court Apartments in Sharswood shortly after 9 a.m. Lt. Jason Hendershot, of the Police Department’s officer-involved-shooting unit, said the woman was at home with her husband in their first-floor apartment when the landlord-tenant deputy arrived in plain clothes to serve a court-ordered eviction.

A struggle ensued in the hallway, allegedly involving a knife, he said. The deputy discharged a weapon and struck the 35-year-old woman, who was taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in critical condition. It was not immediately clear if the woman, whose name has not been released by authorities, was holding the knife.

Hendershot said the deputy appeared to have a head injury, though it was unclear if he required medical treatment.

Court records show the landlord alleged more than $8,000 in unpaid rent, but ultimately reached an agreement with the tenants last May that no money was owed, the tenants would move out by January, and the landlord would make necessary repairs. The tenants sought to postpone their eviction in October, alleging the landlord had failed to fix the property as promised. A judge denied their petition last month.

Officials have not released the name of the deputy landlord-tenant officer and details on the timeline leading up to the shooting remained hazy.

Unlike other jurisdictions, Philadelphia courts rely on a private attorney, appointed by Municipal Court’s president judge and known as a landlord-tenant officer, to execute evictions. This attorney deputizes private security contractors to perform on-site lockouts in exchange for the right to collect millions in related eviction fees.

Of course, it didn’t take the furthest left Democratic mayoral candidate, Helen Gym Flaherty, to politicize it. She tweeted:

While details are still coming to light, I’m appalled by today’s shooting at Girard Court Apartments and my heart is with the impacted families.

I’ve raised alarm bells for years about our city’s terrible eviction practices and worked to reform them.

So, what did we have? The family were more than $8,000 in arrears on their rent, which was apparently forgiven by the owner, in lieu of an agreement that they’d move out by the end of 2022. But the family wanted to stay, and petitioned the court to extend, for an unspecified period of time, a petition which was denied. If the eviction was being carried out on March 29^th, the tenants had stayed three months beyond their agreed evacuation date.

Mrs Flaherty, of course, always takes the side of the tenants facing eviction, but never seems to consider the property owners. If my sister-in-law stopped paying her rent, we would still owe the mortgage payments on the place, and mortgage companies don’t just give property owners a break because the rent that was due wasn’t paid. The county expects the property taxes to be paid, and the tenants not paying their rent won’t stop the county from seizing the property if the property owner doesn’t pay the taxes!

It’s a good thing that Philadelphia evictions are privately handled! If Mrs Flaherty was elected Mayor, she would be pressing Sheriff Rochelle Bilal — who is independently elected — to refuse to evict anyone.

That’s todays left: they pander to the tenants, and are perfectly willing to f(ornicate) over property owners.