On an otherwise unremarkable day last July, Artoria Smith of Little Rock, Ark. was in her kitchen with an armful of laundry when, she says, she fell through the floor. Before she knew it, her refrigerator had sunk halfway into the basement.
Thats how she learned that the floors in her townhouse, where she had lived for more than 20 years, were rotting.
According to Smith and her attorney, she called her landlord, Primo Novero, and also registered a complaint with the citys housing authority, regarding a number of unsafe conditions in the house. Novero came over, placed a plank of wood over the hole in the floorboards, and asked her for $700, which he estimated to be THE COST OF REPAIRS1. She told him she only had $400, her usual rent. He left.
THE COST OF REPAIRS1 Arkansas is the only state in the nation with no "implied warranty of habitality," meaning that the state's landlords are not legally responsible for repairs and maintenance.
Hours later, he returned, armed with a green slip Ten-Day Notice to Vacate, it said and told her that she owed $22,353 in back rent, a sum she says he came up with out of the blue as payback for reporting him.
Smith, who supports her 15-year-old son, Willie, on a fixed income, says she could not afford the deposit for a new apartment on such short notice.
After ten days, the police showed up at Smiths door, and fingerprinted her in her house. They had a warrant for her arrest, but, mainly because the city jails were overcrowded, she was not officially arrested.
Several weeks later, Smith was found guilty of failure to vacate her home. She was now a convicted criminal.
That's terrible.... both the non guarantee of habitability and resulting conviction