Eviction Defense Another type of wrongful eviction- Can anything be done at this point?

[dmdleesh]

I live in a house owned by a church. I had rented a previous house from them and left in good standing to move into this larger more expensive house with a roommate. My roommate left and I was no longer able to pay the rent here. Although I had never missed a payment previous to this for over 4 years, the management company rushed to evict me after being 10 days late. I spoke with a representative from the church, who said that he wanted to help me. He told me that I could stay in the house and pay a reduced amount of rent and then he told me that I would not have to leave for another 4 months while I looked for another place to live. This angered the management company representative who preceded to harass me (with phone calls, notices, even showing up at my house trying to force me to leave, and lying about the church's desires) but I was told by the church representative "She works for us and has to do what we say!" I asked about the pending eviction at that time and was told by the church that they would have the management company stop the eviction. With that I trusted that the matter had been taken care of. A week later, I received documentation from the court that the management company had been awarded a default judgement for the amount of the rent for that month plus court costs. I was devastated and went to the church's representative for an explanation. I was told that he was going to have her look into what could be done to overturn the judgement and with that I paid the reduced rent for that month and the next. I know that I should have taken matters into my own hands at that point by I trusted that the church was handling matters as they said. Now my move out date is approaching and nothing has been resolved. I understand (now) that I had only 5 days following the judgement to appeal but I was wondering if it was possible to get the judgement overturned. I had bad rental history before now and this was my opportunity to turn that around...I'm just heartbroken.

 

[army judge]

The eviction was in no way illegal.

 

[ElleMD]

So not only did you ignore the court date but you missed the appeal deadline? Why did you not appear at court to explain to the court that the matter was being worked out privately? How was the court supposed to know that? It still doesn't explain why you would not have immediately appealed. You can see if the church is willing to agree to write a new lease for you to rent one of their properties but they are under no obligation to do so. They also are not obligated to reduce the rent when your financial circumstance changes. If your room mate moved out and you could not afford the rent without a room mate, then one would think you would be advertising for a new room mate.