Letter To The Judge

I am running out of options AND time with this whole house thing. My crocked landlord's attorney just filed a motion to evict us immediately because our response to previous eviction summons didn't include a request to waive rental fees. I didn't know that I had to do that, and that means, that per Florida Statute 83.60 I have " absolutely waived my tenet defenses" and that the "landlord is entitled to an immediate default judgement for removal of the tenet with a writ of possession ti issue without further notice or hearing thereon."
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Are you flipping KIDDING me?
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I can't afford a lawyer, and afford to move. And since every lawyer we've spoken to tells us we have NO RIGHTS WHATSOEVER, I opted to put my money on moving.
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But if she gets to kick me out BEFORE my move-in date...
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Or what if the judge allows her to sue us for the last two months rent PLUS her legal fees? We don't have THAT, either...
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And to think...the law is on HER side...
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...this is why people don't trust government. It protects the WRONG people!!
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So, with nothing to lose, I am trying to appeal to the judge's sympathies, and wrote a letter to him personally. I am asking that all my friends and family do the same.
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PLEASE...if you like us even a little bit...PLEASE write a personal letter to the judge telling him who you are, how long you've known us, and that you think it is unfair to be forced into this situation. Tell him you'll miss us when we move away. If we already live away from you, tell him about our character, and that we don't deserve this.
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Tell him ANYTHING...but PLEASE help us plead our case. We are DESPERATE!!!
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You have to do it fast...I only have a few days. And you have to snail mail it...there is no e-mail. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE...take a few minutes and write a letter, and send it to:
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Ms. Linda O'Niel
Judicial Assistant to the Honorable Robert W. Lee
Broward County Courthouse
201 S.E. 6th Street
Room 331
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
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This is a copy of the letter I wrote:
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August 24, 2009
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Honorable Robert W. Lee
Ms. Linda O’Niel
Broward County Courthouse
201 S.E. 6th Street
Room 331
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
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Case No: 09-010368 53
Case: Nubia Hernandez vs. Jason & Shannan Johnson regarding property at
18651 SW 15th Street, Pembroke Pines, FL 33029
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Your Honor,
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My name is Shannan Johnson. My husband, Jason, and I rent 18651 SW 15th Street from Nubia Hernandez. We have rented the home for 2 years, and live there with our 5 children. Our rent is $2,175.00 a month, and we have ALWAYS paid our rent on-time. Ms. Hernandez came personally, or sent one of her sons, to pick up our rent checks every month. We never had any more contact from her than that…she changed phone numbers frequently and it always seemed that when we needed to contact her, the number we had was not a working number. A couple times she had a friend call us who spoke English (Ms. Hernandez English is limited).
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Jason and I have not been renters since we were newlyweds over 12 years ago. We have moved all over the country with his employment, and have always bought our own homes. When we moved here in June 2007, home prices were so high that we could not afford them. Unwilling to take advantage of “easy money loans” that we knew we could not afford, we chose to rent.
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Several months ago, we started receiving notices in the mail, or attached to our front door and garage, from different businesses offering foreclosure assistance. We also started receiving recorded solicitation calls from law firms and credit counseling agencies. When Ms. Hernandez would come and pick up the rent, we would question her about the notices and calls. We have several friends in the area whose landlords went into foreclosure and didn’t tell them, then “disappeared”, leaving them to be evicted by the bank. We were scared to lose our home. Ms. Hernandez assured us that nothing was wrong and that we had no need to worry…the calls and notices were just advertisements. Despite warnings from our friends who had previously been through similar ordeals, we chose to believe and trust in Ms. Hernandez.
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This went on for several months…we talked with her repeatedly about the notices…even when certified letters came to the house…she assured us that they weren’t for her, but for her sister. We discussed renewing our lease in July.
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In June 2009, Ms. Hernandez came as usual to collect our rent. We were leaving on an extended vacation to visit our only family, located in the West. I told Ms. Hernandez that I would leave the July rent at a neighbor’s. Our lease would technically be up at the end of June…and we wanted to renew…but Ms. Hernandez didn’t seem to be in a rush to sign new paperwork. She agreed to pick up the rent at the neighbors. I figured we would sign a new lease when we returned.
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A few days later, a man came to my door to serve us a foreclosure summons. Upon reading the summons, we found out that Ms. Hernandez had not paid her mortgage since January 2009. We were given 20 days to respond, so we wrote a response, and included copies of our lease and copies of all the cleared checks we had written since June 2007, and delivered it to the courthouse and to the banks’ attorney. We were terrified. This was our worst nightmare…to be forced from our home with our children and have no where to go.
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We were committed to our vacation, and having done all we knew to do regarding the foreclosure, and unable to contact Ms. Hernandez, we left. While on vacation, I received a phone call from Ms. Hernandez friend, asking me which neighbor I had left the rent with. I told the friend that I had been served foreclosure papers on the house, and that I would not pay rent until I knew that the home was secure. I asked that Ms. Hernandez resolve her delinquency and contact us so we could work together to solve the problem. I never heard from her, or her friend, for the rest of vacation.
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My husband returned to Florida earlier than the kids and I to resume work, and received a certified letter in the mail from Ms. Hernandez. In the letter, she stated that she was getting her mortgage modified, and that it was none of our business what she did. She demanded we pay her the money and leave, stating that we were out of the lease (which I thought was ironic, since she didn’t seem to care about the state of the lease when she called to collect the rent).
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Jason and I had no desire to continue renting from her, and as soon as I returned home, we started the process of looking for a new home. We figured that with her in foreclosure, there was no way we would get our last months rent/deposit back from her. We figured we had a least 2 months to find a house…one of which was already used as we had been out of the state on vacation.
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On August 7, we received an eviction summons from Ms. Hernandez, giving us 5 days to respond…which we complied with. In our response, I addressed that we have been good tenets, always paying our rent and caring for the house as our own home. We bemoaned the fact that in order to move, it was going to cost us first and last months rent, and up to 2 months security deposit to stay in the area…possibly $8,800 dollars. Not only that, but there were new utility deposits, moving expenses like boxes and renting a truck, and if we moved into a new gated community, fees for pool keys and barcodes.
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Not only are their financial repercussions, but emotional ones as well. What about my children leaving their home, and the friends they’ve made? What if they have to change schools? We have moved enough to know that these things can be traumatic for small children…now we have kids in high school and middle school, as well as elementary and preschool!! We had promised that we would not move again for a long time…now we were being forced to move because of someone else’s’ bad choices.
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After furious searching, we have finally found a place to move to. We have to increase the amount we spend a month in rent to stay in the general area…which is something we are very nervous to do…being such a large family on a single income means watching every penny. Our entire savings (including our Christmas budget) has to be used to move. We saved the two months rent we have not paid Ms. Hernandez to put down on the new home…but it was not enough. We had to buy a washer and dryer, as the new home didn’t come with one, adding to the cost.
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Although we are in the area, we were not able to find a home in our children’s school boundaries. My children are forced to change schools. Not only that, but we belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon), and our church is organized in such a way that you attend services depending on where you live…a group of people living in one area are organized into a “ward”, and there are so many “wards” in a “stake”, and so many “stakes” in an “area” (much like cities, counties, and states). We had to move out of our ward’s AND stake’s boundaries, and have to attend a whole new ward. My children are devastated to leave their friends at home, school, AND church. My husband and I are sad to leave the friends that we have adopted as “family” (since we are so far away from our own family) as well.
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All of this could’ve been avoided if Ms. Hernandez had been honest and forthright with us. We kept our end of the contract faithfully, and expected her to do the same. For 6 months she has collected a monthly $2175.00 rent from us, totaling $13, 050.00…all the while jeopardizing my family. Even after we had been served, she still tried to collect rent. In fact, she is STILL trying to collect rent from us. She doesn’t seem to have any concern for what she has put my family through, financially or emotionally. She only cares about lining her pockets.
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I know from looking on-line that she has other properties, and that several have gone into foreclosure. I am sure that she is trying to “modify” them all. Has she been collecting rent from all those properties as well, while not paying those mortgages? Can you imagine the income she has received if that is the case? I thought the stimulus package was to help hard-working people who lost their job, or had an income reduction, or an illness to keep their homes…it wasn’t meant for people who took out careless loans they couldn’t afford to take advantage of. But it appears that that is JUST what is going on.
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We are moving into our new home next month. We will b e out of Ms. Hernandezs home as of September 10, 2009.
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I received a letter on the 21st of August from her attorney stating that because we had not specifically requested to have our rent waived in our response to the eviction summons, that our rights were waived. Your Honor, we don’t have an attorney. How can we afford one when we’re being forced to re-locate our family? So perhaps I didn’t answer the summons EXACTLY right…

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…but I am asking now…Ms. Hernandez has taken our money under false pretenses. She has no problem extracting more. We do not want to live in her house any longer, and ask only to be allowed to leave with no further financial penalty. We promise to be out of the house on September 10, and Ms. Hernandez can keep our deposit /last month rent. At that point, the house will no longer be our home, and return to the care and upkeep of Ms. Hernandez.
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I humbly ask that our family not be made to suffer any further.
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Thank you for your time,
Jason and Shannan Johnson
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Please, please, please write to the judge in our defense. It is our only option now.
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Love you all,
Shannan