Court officials inspecting a St. Maarten Housing Development Foundation (SMHDF) rental property on Sugar Mill Estate Road on September 16. (File photo)
PHILIPSBURG–The Court of First Instance has granted permission to a group of forty St. Maarten Housing Development Foundation (SMHDF) tenants to withhold between 25 per cent and a maximum of 75 per cent of rent payments from their landlord to repair the hurricane damage to their dwellings. The judge announced this decision on Friday.
In summary proceedings filed in May 2019, in total 42 tenants in Belvedere, South Reward, Union Farm and Pond Island had called on the judge to grant them a reduction of the rental payments for their homes which were severely damaged during Hurricane Irma in September 2017, but in two of these cases the Judge rejected the claims.
In these proceedings, the tenants followed in the footsteps of 18 tenants of 14 SMHDF rental properties in Belvedere who obtained the court’s permission in September 2018 to use the maximum amount of 75 per cent of the arrears in rent or of current lease periods to repair damage to their dwellings.
Initially no fewer than 65 tenants had joined the injunction, but 23 of them withdrew their claims after it became clear that every claimant had to be registered separately with the court’s registry.
Similar to the Belvedere tenants’ complaint, the litigants in the injunction, which was heard by the Court on July 26, claimed that their landlord had failed to repair their homes since the passing of Irma, or had only partially fixed the damage.
The judge had initially set the date for a ruling on August 16, but decided to inspect the state of disrepair of 10 of the homes with his own eyes during a viewing that took place September 16. Also, the tenants’ and SMHDF’s legal representatives submitted overviews with their findings about every home visited.
Represented by attorney-at-law Azaria de Groot, the tenants claimed their homes were hardly suitable for habitation. The houses have holes in their roofs, windows and doors are broken, walls and ceilings are torn, doors are missing or are rickety, electrical wiring does not function properly, ceilings are partly missing, and so on.
As a result of these very serious defects, there is considerable water damage that continues to worsen when it rains, which causes mould formation, the tenants told the judge.
De Groot had called on the court to set a deadline for SMHDF to fix the problems and reduce the rent.
During the inspections, the judge found that all dwellings had leakages. Other common defects included missing gutters, malfunctioning windows, cracked walls, damaged doors and ceilings and heavily-worn kitchen cupboards. Most of the damage was caused by Irma, but it appeared that there also was overdue maintenance prior to 2017.
The landlord, represented in these proceedings by attorney Caroline van Hees, argued that it was in the process of repairing the defects. The tenants partially agreed, but believed that the process was going too slowly and that repairs were being carried out improperly.
Based on the established damage to their homes, the court divided the tenants into four categories. In the first category, 16 tenants were granted a reduction of 25 per cent of the regular rent as per December 17, 2018. Most litigating tenants, 20 in total, fell in the second category which obtained a rent reduction of 50 per cent. In the third category, four tenants who are living in the most severely damaged homes were granted the maximum reduction of 75 per cent. The claims of two tenants were rejected.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/92727-hurricane-stricken-smhdf-tenants-obtain-reduction-of-rent-payments
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