Even Jail Won't Save You From The Landlord

 I wasn't expecting this particular post to get the Beyond the Character Limit treatment, and I almost thought of just adding this as a comment underneath, but in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I may as well do some more writing.

Believe it or not, I do research these ideas before I post them. That doesn't mean that the posts are 100% accurate. This page is, first and foremost, satire, with the occasional piece of actual criminal advice, but that's how I roll. my philosophy is to chuck a few rocks into the enemy trench before you throw your grenades. 

But it was when researching this that I hit a very interesting roadblock. It was easy to find out if you need to keep paying rent if the Tennant goes to jail, but it was tricky to figure out what to do if your landlord goes to jail. In fact, framing it in that way, there is no information as to whether or not you still have to pay rent if your landlord is in prison. In order to find the answer, I had to search from the landlords perspective (i.e. "Can I still collect rent in prison.") 

And the answer is...not clear...

As far as I can tell, you still owe your landlord rent, even if they're in jail. Now, can they evict you? Maybe not if they don't have someone on the outside who can navigate eviction court on their behalf. If they have no way of collecting rent, the best advice I saw was to just hold onto your rent checks and pay them when they get out of jail.

inversely, it is *very* well laid out as to what happens when a tenant goes to jail, and this just struck me as yet another bit of systemic bullshit. If you go to jail, your landlord can still evict you or demand payment of rent when you get out. But if your landlord goes to jail? It's fuzzy. And I think it just reinforces that those who can afford to own property are the least likely to spend time behind bars, even if they do commit a crime, they're more likely to be able to afford the sort of legal assistance that can keep them out of trouble. Their tenants on the other hand don't have that luxury, and when they do go to jail, they're still on the hook for rent, or they can be evicted and lose everything they own. 

Writing Financial Pro-Tip, and doing the research for these posts, has done a lot to radicalize me, I've always leaned heavily to the left, and I've considered myself a socialist for a while, but just having a reason to look into things like this, things that I am, systemically, not likely to encounter otherwise, has been an eye-opening experience. If I'm starting to come off as being helplessly naive, trust me, you're not wrong.