HANFORD LAYOFFS: More people abandoning their apartment leases
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TRI-CITIES, Wash. -- More people are breaking the lease on their apartments and moving away in the middle of the night.
Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. Six months after losing his job at Hanford, Lonnie McEntire is closing up home and closing the book on the Tri-Cities.
"I didn't have time to wait for Hanford to pick up. I had to do what I needed to do to take care of my family," McEntire tells KEPR.
Action News first met McEntire a year ago when he moved in. Everything seemed so promising then, but that was before the layoffs. A year later, he and others are making a mad dash out of the Tri-Cities, and unfortunately, some are doing it the irresponsible way. People are packing up in the night and bolting from town.
Three local apartments say they've seen a spike of tenants abandoning their leases. In Pasco, four people have bolted from this The Crossings at Chapel Hill in the last month; a number that used to happen in the course of a year.
To keep more people from skipping out on those units, apartments in the Tri-Cities are doing something that would have been unthinkable a year ago; they're lowering rent prices to keep apartments more affordable. It's for those reasons why average rent has gone down $50 in the past year.
But it's little consolation for McEntire . He's moving out, but doing it the right way.
"If you give somebody your word and sign a contract, you keep your word. That's what men do," he says.
Anyone who abandons a lease is sent to a collections agency.
Most of the time, tenants are not found for months after they've broken their lease.
Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. Six months after losing his job at Hanford, Lonnie McEntire is closing up home and closing the book on the Tri-Cities.
"I didn't have time to wait for Hanford to pick up. I had to do what I needed to do to take care of my family," McEntire tells KEPR.
Action News first met McEntire a year ago when he moved in. Everything seemed so promising then, but that was before the layoffs. A year later, he and others are making a mad dash out of the Tri-Cities, and unfortunately, some are doing it the irresponsible way. People are packing up in the night and bolting from town.
Three local apartments say they've seen a spike of tenants abandoning their leases. In Pasco, four people have bolted from this The Crossings at Chapel Hill in the last month; a number that used to happen in the course of a year.
To keep more people from skipping out on those units, apartments in the Tri-Cities are doing something that would have been unthinkable a year ago; they're lowering rent prices to keep apartments more affordable. It's for those reasons why average rent has gone down $50 in the past year.
But it's little consolation for McEntire . He's moving out, but doing it the right way.
"If you give somebody your word and sign a contract, you keep your word. That's what men do," he says.
Anyone who abandons a lease is sent to a collections agency.
Most of the time, tenants are not found for months after they've broken their lease.
