Yesterday I read a Dickinson Press newspaper article about an 83 year old woman in Dickinson who has not been paid rent from her tenants for the past thirteen months. She has taken these tenants to court twice over the past year, but they are not being evicted because of the “CDC Eviction Moratorium”.

To make matters worse, these non-rent-paying tenants who can’t be evicted, will not mow their lawn, so the City of Dickinson is fining the 83 year old woman $500. I am going to give the link to this Dickinson Press newspaper article, but I am going to cover some important things that the Dickinson Press did not know. https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/news/government-and-politics/7155890-Homeowner-hits-dead-end-as-City-of-Dickinson-threatens-fines

I believe that the Dickinson Press newspaper article states that this is not a situation where the tenants don’t have employment and are unable to pay their rent, it’s that they won’t pay their rent because they choose not to pay their rent. These tenants have not paid a total of $16,000 in rent that was due.

Some readers may think that all owners of rental properties are wealthy, greedy people who are taking advantage of others. I considered this, is this the case here? Since the end of the oil boom in western North Dakota in 2015, there has been an ever increasing surplus of houses for sale and houses for rent in this area. For the past several years, housing rent in this area has been the lowest that I have seen anywhere since the early 1990s.

Given that there has been an over-supply of rental houses with very low rents for the past several years in this area, the property owner of this rental house had no way to take advantage of these tenants. There were numerous rental houses and apartments with low rents that these tenants could have chosen initially, or at any time during this past year if they didn’t like the living situation that they were in.

So who are these people and what is going on? The Dickinson Press newspaper article refers to the property owner as a lady named “True White”, but does not ever mention the names of the tenants. I wanted to find out the names of the tenants by using the online North Dakota Court Repository to find a record of this court case. When I did a search using Last Name “White” and First Name “True” nothing came up.

I didn’t want to be giving out names of people, but in order for readers to perform their own court records search, the full name of the property owner is Carolyn True White. Readers need to learn how to type into their search browser “North Dakota Court Repository” click on the https://publicsearch.ndcourts.gov website, select the county, select “criminal court” or “civil court”, type in the litigant’s Last Name, First Name, and scroll through the results page. Here is the case number for this eviction court case 45-2021-CV-00485.

When I read the details of this eviction court case, including the names of the tenants, I used the names of these tenants to perform a Google search, and a North Dakota Court Repository search.

The tenant who appears to be the wife, an October 2016 Dickinson Press article was found where it states, “…., 35, of Dickinson, was arrested Oct. 7 for Class C felony theft of services after allegedly incurring a balance of about $2,107 at the TownePlace Suites by Marriott on the 200 block of 29th Street West in Dickinson.” In this Dickinson Press newspaper article, and later in the criminal court records that I looked at, this woman’s last name was spelled with one “m”, whereas in the civil court cases it is spelled using two “m”, if the reader does their own search.

Here is the court case number from the October 2016 Felony arrest for theft of services: 45-2016-CR-01146. According to this court record, because there is still restitution money that has not been paid, probation has been extended. However, the current non-payment of rent may not be “theft” because of the “CDC Rent Moratorium”.

If the reader looks at the other criminal court cases for the tenant who appears to be the wife, she had a Felony charge of Insufficient Funds check in the amount of about $2,500 back in 2012, and the tenant who appears to be the husband had a lesser charge of Insufficient Funds check back in 2012.

For these tenants who wrote more than $2,500 in Insufficient Funds checks back in 2012, were later charged with not paying the Marriot hotel $2,100 back in 2016, they really hit the jackpot prize this time with the $16,000 they haven’t paid their landlord and can’t be evicted from her property.