A well-managed rental community will have guidelines, policies and expectations. These guidelines, policies and expectations are essential to fostering a harmonious living environment and a first class living environment. Examples of guidelines, policies and practices might include:
- When, where and how do residents pay rent
- Where can residents place a satellite dish
- How many vehicles are residents allowed to park on the property; where can vehicles be parked
- What items are appropriate on porches, patios or balconies
- How should resident households and their guests conduct themselves
From time to time it may be necessary to bring to the attention of a resident household that a greater degree of conformity with community standards is necessary in order to remain a ‘resident / household in good standing’.
To assist managers with communicating matters of non-compliance to residents, Cambridge has developed a series of letters which can be found on Tenant Technologies Electronic Forms program. These letters seek to support and reinforce our community standards by providing managers with a consistent, professional means of communicating with residents when matters of non-compliance are noted. If you haven’t already done so, please consider reviewing the letters on “Tenant Tech” to see the variety of letters available for use.
Generally:
- Managers should use the template letters as found on Tenant Technologies Electronic Forms program; do not create custom letters without your supervisor’s consent
- When completing the template letters, refrain from inflammatory or hostile comments in those areas of the template letter that ask for a specific recap of the events occurring at your property
- Serve notices with the intention of bringing about compliance; we are in the housing business not the eviction business. If you find yourself ‘filling the file to support a future eviction’, it is time to visit with your supervisor
- Cambridge does not support an enforcement program which is focused entirely on non-compliance fees being assessed to residents; certain exceptions most certainly apply
Proudly, in the vast majority of cases the use of so-called violation letters will be effective in bringing about greater levels of compliance with community standards. If not , we must ( often reluctantly) seek to terminate a tenancy for failure to comply with community standards.
Actual termination letters should only be issued from the SERC (Site Employee Resource Center — also known as the Central Office) and are issued only after a manager provides a full duplicate copy of all prior violation letters along with a complete Request For Termination Form. The Request for Termination Form is also found on Tenant Technologies Electronic Forms program. Please take a moment and review that form.
When a Termination notice is requested from SERC, a multi-step review process is completed at the SERC before a notice is issued. Commonly, the actual Termination Notice can take 1 to 5 days to be issued from SERC staff.
Aside from evictions related to a failure to pay rent, Cambridge generally evicts only a handful of households during any given year. This is a very modest number of households considering a management portfolio of our size. We offer this statistic to reinforce our firmly held belief that effective management of difficult situations can and most often does result in renewed compliance with community standards rather than an eviction.
If you have any questions regarding the content of this email, please reach out to your Portfolio Supervisor for further insights and discussion.
