Eviction

Alice Norton, a 73-year old resident of Seaside Mobile Estates, stands on her patio with a handful of her neighbors. A look of grave concern is drawn on her face.

Seated nearby is attorney David Brown – also a Marina city councilman – who has come to hear her out.

Norton is facing eviction from a home she inherited from her mother and the park’s owners have been refusing to accept her rent check since spring. She owns the home itself, but not the land it sits on.

Supervisors London Breed and Jeff Sheehy announced a plan Tuesday to offer legal service to renters who are served eviction notices. It’s pitched as a right to civil counsel — similar to that which individuals accused of a crime receive.

Bruce Nicholson and Lisa Daspit thought they had found the perfect house. They spotted it from the car -- a bright yellow bungalow with white trim, partially hidden from the street by an array of palm trees on the lawn -- while exploring a favorite neighborhood in Margate, Florida, outside Fort Lauderdale. The couple had dreams of owning their own home, and this single-family rental offered both the time to save and the space to grow.

They called the number for Waypoint Homes posted on the sign out front and moved in shortly thereafter, excited to make the house their own.

One of President Donald Trump’s closest friends and confidants took advantage of the Great Recession to build an unprecedented real estate business that makes him tantamount to a modern-day slumlord – buying up homes, bumping up rents and allowing the properties to fall into disrepair.

Southern California billionaire Thomas J. Barrack is the mastermind behind the scheme, founding a company five years ago that has taken 31,000 single-family homes off the housing market and calling it “the greatest thing I’ve ever done.”

Complaints of repairs undone and evictions undeserved prompted consumer investigator Jim Strickland to speak to metro tenants of a local corporate landlord.

Waypoint Homes rents thousands of single family homes across metro Atlanta, and that number will more than double after a merger with another rental giant. This fact did not sit well with local tenants, who call Waypoint Homes an absentee landlord at best. The Better Business Bureau's d+ rating for Waypoint comes with an alert for a pattern of complaint.

The I-Team investigated the "Billion Dollar Landlords" and the tenants who say they're being bullied by them. There are allegations that the landlords are quick to threaten evictions and slow to repair.

The complaints include problems with overall living conditions, repairs, and billing disputes, as well as quick eviction threats. In a joint investigation the ABC7 I-Team and ABC News are exposing complaints connected to the new trend of "Billion Dollar Landlords."

A San Francisco woman appears to have made history as the first person to successfully fend off an Ellis Act eviction through a jury trial.

On Thursday, a jury found that Betty Rose Allen would not have to vacate her Noe Valley apartment, where she’s lived for nearly 40 years, after a lengthy and acrimonious legal battle with the building’s owners.

Philadelphia is taking steps to protect renters from unfair evictions amid what Mayor Jim Kenney has described as a “housing crisis due to a shortage of safe and affordable housing.”