Metro Apartment Manager, July 2006

Q: I gave my tenants a 30-day no-cause termination notice but they say they’re going to fight it. So it looks like I will have to evict them. Can you tell me what to expect?

A: Yikes. Isn’t this the same question we dealt with last month? Well, yes it is. And we said we’d talk a bit about negotiated settlements.

Oregon courts (and others around the country) are pushing litigants (that is people suing one another) to work things out without using the court process. After all, judges are quick to point out, a judgment by the court will be viewed as arbitrary; it’s sort of a zero-sum game where one person wins only because another person loses. Settlements that are not imposed, but agreed to — however reluctantly — by the parties are the opposite. Neither gets everything desired, but both get something, so it is a non-zero-summed game.

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Metro Apartment Manager, January 2005

Q: We have a couple who have been late with rent for most of the past year. They always pay after we give them a 72-hour notice and have paid most of the late fees. But I’m tired of the constant lateness and I’d like to give them a no cause notice. But he recently got called up by the Guard and is on his way to Afghanistan. Of course, I can just serve the notice on her, but is there some special way I should serve them with him in the military?

A: The type of service required for notices in Oregon is called “abode service.” In landlord-tenant issues, you only need to serve the abode — the residence — and not individual tenants. That’s why process serving for tenancy issues is relatively cheap. The process server only has to stick the notice on the door, not chase people around to serve them personally. That also makes it simple for landlords: you can just mail a notice or, if you deliver by hand, give it to any one of your tenants. They don’t each need to be served separately. So in your case you can mail them a no cause notice, or post and mail, if your rental agreement allows for that, or hand the notice to her.

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