Forgiving Debts

On Saturday our tenant, who was scheduled to move out by the end of September, informed us by email that she would not be paying her final month’s rent.

“The check you received in the mail has already been canceled by the bank,” she wrote. “Please use the security deposit for the rent.”

No. What about any damage or–more likely–unpaid bills that she might leave behind? And “canceled by the bank?” The bank had no way of even knowing she’d written the check to us; we’d not deposited it yet.

I tried to reach her by phone, but she wouldn’t return phone messages or emails, and by Monday afternoon we concluded that she was avoiding us, probably knew the legal difficulties of eviction, and had every intention of shirking her financial commitment to us. We decided to follow the recourse as outlined in our rental contract: we gave her a five day “pay or quit” eviction notice.

It felt rather heartless of us to do this, to evict her, her sister, and her two little children, even though they have close family in the area and already have their next house lined up.

But being evictors felt even more irreconcilable when we realized the irony of our own private lenders’ concurrent consideration of debt forgiveness. (The townhouse’s market value is now half what we paid for it and we’re firmly under water; the lenders are considering a short sale or some form of friendly repossession so we won’t have the expensive headache of landlordship.)

Indeed. Remember that story Jesus told? The one about the unforgiving servant who, having been forgiven his debt of 10,000 talents, went out and throttled the fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii?

I left yet another phone message for our tenant, asking her to please call so that we could discuss options other than eviction. We were fully prepared to work with whatever her needs were, even to the point of forgiving the September rent.

But we haven’t been able to talk with her. All we’ve received from her are angry emails detailing her Saturday move-out plans.

We’re still waiting for word of our lenders’ decision, too.