Cat Lady stymies health inspectors

Their jobs depend on free rent trick

On June 2, the famous Boston “Cat Lady” moved herself out of her apartment on the second floor of a Plymouth triple-decker. Her eviction took a year of legal wrangling even as the stench of cat urine and feces from her apartment permeated through the other apartments.

Finally, the handwriting was on the wall. The court had finally issued an execution to have her moved out on that very day – if she did not move out herself.

The building’s owner, a 90-year-old woman who lived next door, and other tenants, some of whom had been forced by the pungent cat odor to move out, were there at her departure with champagne and glasses.

Prior to Plymouth, the Cat Lady had been plaguing a succession of Boston-area landlords going all the way back to 1992. She delays her eviction with loads and loads of legal maneuvers. She claims indigency (poverty) so that she does not have to pay court fees and qualifies for aid from legal services lawyers, and she acts as her own attorney. So nothing stops her from fighting her eviction in court to the hilt.

The Cat Lady does not pay rent. In the first month of her tenancy, she immediately starts the free rent trick.She calls the health department or inspectional services department and has minor code violations cited and claims she is “withholding” her rent. Then she refuses to let in the landlord or repairmen to make repairs, delaying her eviction while she lives rent-free.

In recent years, she obtained a Section 8 voucher from the Cambridge Housing Authority (CHA), again claiming indigency as well as disabilities. She pays nothing or a mere $19 a month as her share of the rent while the CHA – us taxpayers – pays the rest of her rent. Courts and attorneys have doubted her indigency. The CHA has tried and failed over four years to revoke her voucher. Even with her rent paid by others, she still calls inspectors to complain about minor code violations caused by her to extort money from landlords.

She harasses not only the landlord but her neighboring tenants as well, yelling at them, stomping on her floor, demanding to use the washer/dryer hookups for her own machines, and any other harassment that comes to her twisted mind. The Cat Lady makes herself obnoxious not only to the landlord, but to health officials, court officials, the judge, and neighboring tenants.

Helpless inspectors  

Meanwhile, local health officials – who are very well practiced in citing landlords for code violations of all sorts and sizes – become helpless to stop the Cat Lady in her filthy and cruel habits with her pets.

In every apartment she rents, the Cat Lady turns it into one big animal cage and keeps a horde of cats and one or two Great Dane dogs, all of whose feces and urine she lets fall on the floor and seldom cleans up – except when inspectors show up. Then she uses bleach, deodorants and industrial-strength perfumes to mask the stench. Except for those limited times, the dog and cat feces and urine emit a horrible stench that spreads throughout the apartment building and even to neighboring buildings. The Cat Lady’s neighbors are so bothered that they file complaints with their landlord and with health officials. Some of them stop paying rent while others give up and just move out. The Cat Lady has also been known to keep dead cats in freezers. She herself, we suspect, sometimes sleeps in a mobile home that she owns, not in any of her stench-filled apartments.

Local health and housing inspectors easily cite landlords for things like a missing toilet tank cover, a loose toilet seat cover, a loose door hinge, a couple of missing tiles in the bathroom (these were some of the Cat Lady’s complaints in one apartment, defects the landlord says the she created herself). You would think, therefore, that inspectors would move quickly to stop such a serious threat to public health as accumulating dog and cat feces and urine with their spreading, acrid stench.

Inspectors stymied

But on the contrary, inspectors are totally flummoxed by the Cat Lady. In each place she lives, it takes one or two whole years to evict her. Health and housing inspectors generally refuse to take any strong action against the person who is responsible for this public health menace.

One landlord, who had the Cat Lady for a relatively short nine months, said he was at her apartment at least two or three times a month and sometimes twice a week trying to get inspectors to do their job and stop her. Other tenants in the building were also complaining to the inspectors.

As this landlord reported: “The inspector came and sniffed and said, ‘Well, this is a little better than last time,’ or ‘Well, this is a little worse’ and he’d go in and talk with her and come out and say, ‘Well, she’s going to try to do better now.’ Every time he got in, this is what happened.”

One little-known practice: The health or housing inspectors usually call tenants in advance of inspections. That gives the Cat Lady time to do her fast clean-up. If the Cat Lady is not ready for inspection, she simply refuses to let inspectors in.

Often the police are called because they are more effective. Or inspectors, timid on their own account, go to court to get a judge’s order, which gives the Cat Lady the opportunity to use all her legal tactics to block the inspectors.

Ignoring the code

Inspectors do have the authority to act against tenants who cause code violations or refuse to let inspectors or repairmen in. The State Sanitary Code, under which all health and safety inspections of rental housing are conducted, says that “All orders…shall be served on the persons responsible for the violation” (105 CMR 410.833). The code also provides that “The occupant of any dwelling unit shall be responsible for maintaining in a clean and sanitary condition and free of garbage, rubbish, other filth or causes of sickness that part of the dwelling which he exclusively occupies or controls” (410.602(B)).

Finally, the code authorizes access:  “Every occupant…shall give the owner thereof, or his agent or employees, upon reasonable notice, reasonable access…to the dwelling…for the purpose of making such repairs…as are necessary to effect compliance with [this code]” (410.810). Access is also required for inspectors under penalty of a fine: “Any owner, occupant, or other person who refuses, impedes, inhibits, interferes with, restricts or obstructs entry and free access to every part of the…premises where inspection authorized by this code is sought after a search warrant has been obtained and presented…, shall be fined upon conviction not less than ten nor more than $500” (410.900). Note that with a search warrant there is no need for advance notice to the tenant.

Cooperate with tenants

So why, why, why do health and housing inspectors have such a hard time citing the Cat Lady and other tenants who cause code violations and block access for repairs, as landlords have told us countless times?

The answer is that health and housing inspectors cooperate with tenants in playing the free rent trick. It is their long chain of inspection reports in each case that supplies the basis for tenants to claim rent withholding for code violations that, because tenants obstruct, take months and months to be repaired.

So inspectors rarely cite tenants for denying access for repairs, even though denying access is a constant complaint of landlords whose tenants are not paying rent. Denying access delays their eviction. 

And inspectors rarely cite tenants for causing code violations, even when a whole new set of code violations shows up the day after the inspector says everything is repaired – another constant complaint of landlords whose tenants are not paying rent. Tenants creating new rounds of code violations prolongs their rent-free living situation.

The jobs of health and housing inspectors are today largely consumed by tenants playing the free rent trick. A number of inspectors have told us that 90% of their housing inspection cases involve non-paying tenants who have not even called their landlord about needed repairs prior to calling the inspector. With that degree of job dependency on tenants playing the free rent trick, it’s no wonder inspectors cooperate with tenants and avoid enforcement against tenant violations of the State Sanitary Code.

The end?

Unless some reform is made in the laws, the Cat Lady will continue her tactics, as will thousands of other tenants across the state who play her same game in less dramatic form. By now the Cat Lady has moved on to yet another unsuspecting small landlord, perhaps elderly, always naïve, who fails to do a thorough background check. Even a thorough background check is not a guarantee against a tenant who decides now is the time to live rent-free by using the laws of the Commonwealth against small landlords in particular.

Legal services involvement

At least in her latest eviction, the Cat Lady has been aided by Greater Boston Legal Services, Cambridge-Somerville Legal Services, The Legal Service Center through Hale and Dorr law firm and the Harvard University Tenant Advocacy Project. She admitted to receiving this help in her written pleadings and in open court.