Sleazy ex-landlord managing to elude any attempt to recoup security.

• Two years ago I moved out of an apartment, with everything in good condition and good standing. My landlord ignored my requests for my security deposit, so I sued in small claims and won. Landlord has since ignored any attempt to recoup this debt, which is now - with damages and court fees - nearly $1,500. I've exhausted any resources I have to get this money back, and I'm hoping MeFites might have ideas or encouragement to help settle this in my favor. (I realize there are other former questions on the subject, but I believe there are particulars relating to my county that make this a valid question.) I moved out of an apartment in Hamilton County, Ohio (Cincinnati) in May 2011. After leaving, the landlord - which is a shady .com company with no physical office (only a PO Box as the mailing address) and just a manager but no other indication of the owner, etc - ignored any request I made to get my security deposit back. I went to Small Claims Court that winter and won, by default because no one showed to defend their side (to which there was no defense - I had a file folder full of every kind of documentation possible to show I'd done everything right, the apartment was in good condition, and I was owed my $600 back). Since that point, the landlord has simply ignored any attempt I've made to get the money back, and the distressing thing is, this tactic seems to be working. They do this to everyone who moves out, as google is full of other former tenants who have found it difficult or impossible to get their deposits back and I've talked to other local landlords who say they have "refugees" from this company. Their MO seems to be to take in primarily undergraduates from our local university and exploit their lack of experience as tenants and the difficulty in getting a deposit back via small claims in order to keep deposits as profit. Anyhow. My attempts to get my money back have been restricted to garnishing the landlord's bank account, which is through PNC Bank in Pittsburgh, PA. However, the type of garnishment available to me in this kind of dispute in Hamilton County apparently presents at the bank as if it were a check - that is, it attempts to collect once and, like a personal check, if there are insufficient funds in the account at that time, the request bounces and no further steps are taken. I've talked about this at length with the clerk who handles garnishments for my county and she says this is the only type of garnishment I am eligible to file. Thanks to administrative connections at PNC I've been able to find out that my former landlord has a number of accounts with PNC, and essentially what they do is take rental money into one account on the first of the month - the one that former tenants might know the account # for via canceled checks - and they promptly move it to another account or withdraw it in cash, making any funds unavailable to judgment creditors (of which, according to the clerk, there are many for this particular landlord). The garnishment clerk at my Small Claims basically said that all I can do is keep re-garnishing, hoping that one of my requests hits PNC on the first or second before the money is transferred out, but due to the processes involved in the garnishment (after I file the paperwork it has to be approved by a magistrate, then processed in-house, then mailed to Pittsburgh, then processed through PNC's internal channels before it gets to their garnishment department, not to mention this is all affected by the number of business days and holidays at the end of a given month) it is a crap shoot what day of the month will actually mean my paperwork gets to PNC on time. I've done this several times now, each time spending about an hour at the clerk's office and paying to notarize the request and add a new set of court fees, meaning I have to front about $70 each time. I'm a grad student running out of funding, so this fronting of cash is becoming more and more difficult, especially as the prospect of ever getting my money back dims. I've exhausted any resources I have here. Ohio Tenant Law, as I read it, is very vague about a tenant's ability to enforce a Small Claims decision in their favor. I'm not able to talk with a magistrate again, as the garnishment clerk is designated to deal with people in my situation and all she could tell me was that she sympathizes with having to deal with such a sleazy landlord, but I can only continue to re-garnish and hope one day this works. My university has a hotline for renters who need legal advice, but they are limited to telling me what section of code applies to my situation and that I'm able to garnish - not helpful any longer. They told me to get a lawyer. I can't afford a lawyer. I'm at my wits' end, but I really - really - need this money back, not to mention it is the &(#! principle of the thing. This former landlord is a real !% scumbag and I am infuriated that this simple, despicable, but apparently effective plan of ignore, ignore, ignore makes them money on the backs of otherwise good tenants. I really hope the MeFites of the world can help me with any other tactics I haven't thought of to get my money back.

• Answer:

  Have you been to http://www.lascinti.org/ (you didn't mention, so apologies if you have)? They deal with this sort of stuff on a regular basis. They may also be able to connect you up with a tenant union or other group who you could take collective action with, so that it isn't your name in the press. Some other resources: University of Cincinnati http://www.law.uc.edu/tip, some links in http://www.ohiolegalservices.org/public/legal_problem/housing/ohio-landlord-tenant-law-what-you-should-know/ohio-landlord-tenant-law-what-you-should-know of this pamphlet, and possibly http://www.fairhousingadvocates.com/tenantlandlaws.htm. Aside from the first link, these are not lawyers, but they could help you connect up with, or organize, a group of current and former tenants who you can work together with to get your deposit back, without having your name appear in the press. http://streetvibes.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/tenants-to-3cdc-hell-no-we-wont-go/ an article about two groups of the sort that could be helpful to you that seem to have been active a couple years ago, for example. While ACORN is no longer in existence, you can look up their lawyer mentioned in http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-20274-acorn-is-gone-but-the-struggle-remains.html, who more than likely is still in touch with the activist communities that would have been connected to ACORN, and could probably also help you find a group to help you out. I suspect that the http://cincihomeless.org/about/advocacy/ may have advocates willing to help you out as well, given that this is an ongoing, larger problem with your ex-landlord. Your university, and especially student government or relevant student groups (do you have a PIRG branch, for example?), can be a good resource as well! If this is a problem affecting a significant number of students, for example, the university student resources or dean of students offices may want to put some money into lawyers and such to help out. In addition to helping you find or start a group so that you can get your problems addressed without having to do all the work and be the public face yourself - and because media listens more when it's an organized group sending out a press release than when it's just an individual with an apparently individual complaint - these groups can almost surely help you find more information about who, exactly, your ex-landlord is, and the chain of businesses and such involved - in other words, who you should be targeting for a (legal and starting with appropriate measures then escalating as necessary) public pressure/shaming campaign targeting your ex-landlord. These groups will all have experience organizing such campaigns and can be helpful resources and advocates for you in this respect, as well. An example of how this works: in my first tenant advocate experience helping someone else, the landlords in question ignored order after order from the local residential tenancies board to repair stuff at the resident's apartment. She spent over a year going through official channels, with no results and no consequences for the derelict landlord, starting on her own, then bringing us to hearings with her. After a period of escalation, sending out press releases from the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty and talking to local media (she had to be willing to talk to media and have her name appear, but those of us working with her also got interviewed, so it wasn't just her name, and the organization's name was featured most prominently; and the press releases and such got taken much more seriously by local media coming from an organization rather than an individual), with some but minimal results, we made up a flyer with photos of the resident's apartment and maintenance problems juxtaposed with the nice new house that the landlord had just purchased and moved in to. Added a little explanatory text. And distributed the flyers to the landlord's new neighbors (this was also a joint effort, though she didn't have to identify herself as the tenant in all cases when we were talking to neighbors at their front doors if she felt uncomfortable). This was, mind you, after a period (months) of reasonable escalation of tactics, not the first action that we started with. It was the last thing we had to do though - repairs got made soon after. The landlord then tried to raise the rent exhorbitantly at the next available opportunity, which we were able to successfully fight at the residential tenancies board as a retaliatory action. If former tenants who have been screwed over by your ex-landlord get together with each other, your individual voices will be much stronger. If, additionally, you get together with current tenants of this landlord, then you have some additional pressure options to keep in your back pocket in case of need, such as http://thesurrealestate.org/tag/empowering-and-strengthening-ohios-people/.