Lt. j.g Stephanie Fisher knew where her next posting would be — Hampton Roads — but couldn’t get time for house-hunting. She handled it all online, came into town on a Saturday, stopped by the rental office to pick up keys, and was handed a paper all too familiar to people in the military:
A waiver of her rights under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.
Fisher is a lawyer, and as she read through the vague wording while the rental agent kept pressing her to hurry because another appointment was coming, she tried to run a line through, to say she didn’t agree.
“And they said, ‘We will not give your keys unless you sign this in full and it can’t be altered.’ And it was like, well, I have nowhere to go. I’m brand-new to the area (and) I don’t have anywhere to live,” she said.
The waiver that Fisher saw — and signed, because she needed a place to live — means a member of the military gives up a right to have a 90-day freeze on legal action if they are sued.
Without it, the U.S. Congress decided when it enacted the relief act in 2003, landlords or creditors could get court orders to garnish pay or freeze bank accounts while members of the military were deployed and unable to go to court to defend themselves.
Navy lawyer Dwain Alexander, who focuses on helping sailors with housing issues, says it is virtually impossible for members of the military to rent decent housing in Hampton Roads if they don’t sign the waiver.
That’s prompted Del. Kathy Tran, D-Fairfax, and state Sen. John Bell, D-Loudoun, to add one line into their 38-page bills adding military personnel and their families to the list of people protected under Virginia’s public accommodation, employment and housing laws.
It bars leases from saying a tenant “agrees to waive or forgo rights or remedies under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, 50 U.S.C. § 3901 et seq.”
That’s about as specific about what the service member is giving up as is the usual language in lease documents, Alexander said.
In theory, a sailor who just arrived in Hampton Roads could whip out a phone and call up the relief act and scroll through to paragraphs 31 and 32 to realize he or she could be hit with a default judgement while at sea — but that doesn’t happen very often.
And not all young people in their late teens or early 20s know that a default judgment means a court says you owe money and the person who sued you can garnish your pay or freeze your bank account, Alexander said. Even a lawyer might need to look up the relief act and think for a bit about what the waiver meant, Fisher said.
Congress provided protections against default judgments for service members to protect their constitutional rights to due process — notice and opportunity to be heard, Alexander said.
Beyond that, it is a readiness tool, ensuring that service members and their commands are ready to carry out their missions when called upon, Alexander said.
The protections include a 90-day stay of proceedings during which the court appoints an attorney to locate and notify the service member of the proceeding.
The waiver allows landlords or creditors to obtain quick default judgments while a service member who is deployed or moved out of the area has no way to defend him- or herself.
“I think it’s just patently a problem ... a lot of times at this point, by the time we’re signing a lease, we’ve put down nonrefundable money,” Fisher said.
“If you make me waive my rights before ... I even know what the rights are or how I’m gonna use them or have an understanding of it, we’re not on an equal playing field,” Alexander said.
Not having a chance to contest a landlord’s claim for rent or damage to an apartment or other charges opens the door to financial shock for military men and women when they’re deployed. For a sailor who set up automatic bill payments, as many do while at sea, “it can be 30 days before you know there’s a problem, by which time bills have bounced checks ...You’ve got a spiral of debt created by lack of notice; in essence, a lack of the protections that the federal government gave the service member,” Alexander said.
Before granting a security clearance, the military checks credit reports and a bad report can make getting a clearance difficult. The paperwork for promotions includes a section describing an individual’s judgment and character.
“I mean, can you imagine you get the note from your security officer about a judgment against you. And we’re doing an investigation to find out why this happened so we’re gonna start, we’re gonna look into your background to see .... what’s the issue with this, this inability to pay your debt,” Alexander said.
“And if you’re out of the area, how do you deal with that?” he added.
It all hurts mission readiness, Alexander said.
Patrick McCloud, chief executive officer of the Virginia Apartment Management Association, said that line in the Tran and Bell bills would gut a landlord’s ability to ask for waiver. He said the waiver can be a way to save military personnel money, since during the 90-day stay of court proceedings, lawyers’ fees and court costs will mount.
Virginia’s landlord and tenant law also provides for protections for military people, he said, and landlords work hard to offer housing to people in the military, who account for a large portion of the market in Hampton Roads.
“We have made strides to ensure that Virginia is one of the best states for our service members and their families. But more needs to be done. We must combat the injustice of employment and housing discrimination against active duty military members and their families,” Tran said.
Besides the federal relief act’s protection against default judgments, it sets a 6% cap on interest rates incurred prior to military service, allows for terminating without penalty a lease when a service member is transferred and has protections against eviction, mortgage foreclosures or repossessions by a lender that provided a car loan.
The act covers full-time active duty members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard as well as reservists on federal active duty and members of the National Guard on federal orders for a period of more than 30 days.