‘Deplorable demonstration of landlord greed’: Tenants sue company for ‘mass eviction’
In March, 20 tenants of an East End Boise apartment complex were told they had to leave their homes due to inadequate heat in the buildings.
Nearly a month later, the group is suing Commercial Northwest Property Management, which runs the apartment complex, for the “mass eviction” and the company’s failure to maintain proper heat in the apartment complex.
Wrest Collective, a community-funded nonprofit law firm, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the tenants of the Cambridge Dorchester Apartments last month. The lawsuit, according to a news release from Wrest Collective, seeks damages for the landlord’s alleged breach of the families’ leases, failure to provide safe and healthy housing, and unlawful attempts to cancel the tenants’ lease agreements.
Company sends mixed messages to tenants
Commercial Northwest Property Management, which operates dozens of apartment complexes across the Treasure Valley, sent mixed messages to the tenants of the Cambridge Dorchester Apartments, beginning March 1, about what they needed to to do leave the 52-unit apartment complex, located at 300 S. Straughan Ave, south of Warm Springs Avenue. According to Wrest Collective and Idaho Statesman interviews with the tenants, the company told tenants in an evening email on March 1 that they had a 30-day notice to vacate their homes. The emails said the move out date was “non-negotiable.”
Wrest Collective said the notice “had no valid or legal basis under their lease agreements or Idaho law.”
Over a week later, Commercial Northwest Property Management rescinded the 30-day notice, saying the renters could continue to live in their homes. But the next evening after 6 p.m. on Friday, March 10, the company sent a final email explaining that the heating in the apartment building was inadequate, and that their lease agreements were “canceled immediately.” They would need to return their keys three days from then, the company said.
Wrest Collective said the three-day notice again had no valid basis in the lease agreement or Idaho law.
In a YouTube video posted March 14, Commercial Northwest CEO Natalie Hernandez said no tenants were being evicted.
“No one is being forced to leave without suitable accommodations,” she said in the video.
Commercial Northwest did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the Idaho Statesman.
‘We just want what we’re owed’
“The affected tenants were left completely uncertain with respect to the stability of their housing, what efforts Commercial Northwest Property Management would take to provide them with adequate housing, or what would happen next,” said Casey Parsons, attorney for Wrest Collective, in the news release.
Some tenants secured stable housing and have moved out of the Cambridge apartments, Parsons said. But many still live there with few other affordable housing options, like Nate Barnes and his family.
Barnes is a disabled veteran with a spine injury, and he relies on his monthly disability check to pay his family’s rent. He lives with his wife, Alaina Russell and 10-year-old daughter in a two-bedroom, 1½-bathroom apartment, for which they pay about $1,650 a month.
When Barnes first got the email asking tenants to leave, he tried to relocate to a different Commercial Northwest property. Moving into another Northwest-managed apartment building is the only option for Barnes’ family because they do not have money for a new security deposit, he told the Statesman in March. But they had not yet been able to relocate.
“We just want what we’re owed,” Barnes said. “We want the company to pay to move us, especially the disabled who can’t move themselves, and we want the housing that we are owed.”
Parsons called Commercial Northwest’s actions “a deplorable demonstration of landlord greed” in the news release.
“The families involved in this litigation coming together to ensure that Commercial Northwest Property Management is held to account for its failure to provide safe, habitable housing is a powerful demonstration of the efficacy of collective tenant organizing,” Parsons said. “I think anyone in Boise can understand how scary it is to have their landlord decide to just take away their housing one day.”
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