Landlords still battling troublesome tenants

Netanya lawyer: Although legal changes make obtaining eviction order easier, "hard work" begins after eviction order issued.

By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY
Despite recent changes to the law designed to make it easier for landlords to evict non-paying tenants, dozens of apartment owners in Netanya are still struggling with tenants who refuse to move out and who sometimes threaten their lives, reports www.local.co.il. And a local lawyer says that although the legal changes make it easier to obtain an eviction order from the courts, the "hard work" begins after the eviction order has been issued. According to the report, dozens of apartment owners in Netanya struggle every day with tenants who simply refuse to move out and who sometimes make overt or covert threats against them. One Netanya woman said the tenant in her elderly parents' apartment had stopped paying his rent some months ago and had refused to move out, at the same time threatening her and her parents. She said she had obtained a restraining order against him and an eviction order to get him out, but the issue had become stuck there. "The existing situation is truly impossible, especially when we are speaking about a problematic population," a local lawyer said. He said the recent changes to the law had indeed made it easier for an apartment owner to get an eviction order from the courts for a recalcitrant tenant, "but in fact the hard work is with the tenant after the obtaining of the order." The lawyer said that actually getting tenants out was a "complex bureaucratic process" involving police and court executors, and that rogues often took advantage of this, sometimes even demanding money to move out. He said it could take six or more months to evict an unwanted tenant, and if an apartment owner was losing NIS 3,500 to NIS 4,500 per month on an apartment for which rent was not being paid, he might well pay to get the tenant out. "The legal system needs to protect the innocent civilian who acts honestly, and not the opposite,"the lawyer said.