Serial Eviction: landlord repeatedly evicts tenants in quick succession, often for reasons that may seem arbitrary, financially motivated, or part of a strategy to raise rents, reduce tenant rights, or avoid long-term tenant agreements. In such cases, the landlord may regularly evict tenants after a short period of time, usually to replace them with new tenants who pay higher rents or to take advantage of financial incentives such as security deposits, illegal fees, etc.

“Some people think that the truth can be hidden with a little cover-up and decoration. But as time goes by, what is true is revealed, and what is fake fades away.”
– Ismail Haniyeh

Exposing the 2-Lease Scheme: Another Victim Speaks Out

Kindness Between Friends Caught Using a Deceptive Two-Lease Trap on Vulnerable Tenants

 

Another courageous tenant has come forward, revealing the details of the 2-Lease Scheme employed by Kindness Between Friends. This underhanded tactic has been used on at least three tenants, all of whom were deceived into signing two separate leases and later manipulated as part of this scheme.

Here’s how the 2-Lease Scheme works:

  • Tenants are forced to sign two different lease agreements at the start of their tenancy.
  • The second lease, which often includes more favorable terms for the tenant, is quietly withheld.
  • When tenants later attempt to reference or enforce terms from the second lease, Kindness Between Friends ridicules or challenges them, daring them to produce the document—knowing full well the tenant no longer has it.

In one particularly outrageous case, a tenant, after quoting terms from the second lease, was openly dared by Kindness Between Friends to send it in an email. When the tenant couldn’t provide the lease (because the organization had deliberately withheld it), they were unceremoniously evicted out of pure spite for daring to mention the lease.

Updated: 11/17/24

Statment from tenant

When Kindness Between Friends sent out a contractor to address superficial fixes for water damage caused by structural issues in the home, they requested that my fiancée and I leave the property. This was really strange to me—I’ve never heard of a landlord asking tenants to leave during such work.

When Tara Stoop from Kindness Between Friends arrived, she told us, “do you wanna leave for the day before you get blocked in,” which I thought was odd. I let her know that we would be staying. I wanted to protect our property from strangers we’d never met, and she wouldn’t need to stay and supervise.

What stood out to me as really strange was how she reacted. At first, I thought she was being kind by offering to stay and watch the contractors, but when my fiancée said hello to her, she didn’t even acknowledge her.

Then, when I told her we would stay, she became visibly angry—absolutely fuming, and it felt really sinister. I even thought at the time, “Now you can go about your day and not have to sit around babysitting the contractors,” but it was clear she wasn’t happy we were staying.

In hindsight, after we ended up responsible for paying for ceiling repairs caused by structural damage, things started to make more sense.

A week or two later, we received an eviction notice, and I firmly believe they wanted us out of the property so they could retrieve the second lease.

To explain: there were two leases we signed.

When we moved in, we had to sign two leases, which seemed odd. One lease looked like it was pieced together by a committee, and the other was a standard, official lease with all the usual legal jargon. After we signed, they put the official lease into a purple folder while we were all talking because there was a lot going on during the move.

At some point, my fiancée took the lease out of the folder and put it in one of our drawers.

When Kindness Between Friends left that day, we noticed the folder was gone(!), which seemed strange at the time. Now, looking back, we can see what was really happening—they’ve done this to other tenants, and their goal was to take the lease that gives tenants the most legal protection. With us, they clearly intended to take it, but they didn’t realize my fiancée had already removed it from the folder.

It’s also clear they were trying to get us to leave the house that day so they could retrieve that lease before moving forward with the eviction (2 weeks later) tied to the water damage we were being forced to pay for, which was caused by structural issues in the home (Story).