Life-changing decisions: Broke landlord, broken home and the tenant stuck with them both

*Editor’s note: Due to the vulnerability of her situation, this person’s name has been changed to protect her privacy.

QUINCY — Natalie Miller* spent most of March watching TV, playing Minecraft when the wifi was strong enough for it and sleeping — a lot — as she awaited her due date in a hotel room several states away. 

She did all of it alone. She gave birth alone, too.

Her boyfriend remained at the apartment they share in the southwest part of Quincy “to make sure the bills are paid,” Miller said in a text. Their landlord, John Smith, told them they’d be evicted if they miss any of their rent payments — a rather cut-and-dry sentiment under cut-and-dry circumstances. 

Miller’s circumstances, however, aren’t exactly cut-and-dry.

It’s unlikely that her apartment would’ve passed a safety inspection when she moved in nearly two and a half years ago, but the rate of its deterioration has picked up over the last several months as responses from John have stalled. John, according to his daughter Olivia Smith, is a diagnosed schizophrenic. The property’s worsening condition has paralleled the worsening condition of John himself, who lives in one of the building’s four units.

Since Miller lives paycheck to paycheck, she hasn’t saved money for a deposit on a new place while keeping up with regular expenses. Her apartment is no place for a child, she said. Since John is already claiming to be missing rent money she said she paid him in cash last month, it might not be a place for her any more either.

The ordeal is one of the main reasons she ended up in a hotel room preparing to give birth to a child who another family in another state in a more stable situation would raise as their own.

“If the house wasn’t in the position it was in … If I didn’t have to struggle to find where I’m going to go, (adoption) wouldn’t have even been a thought. That was never a thought in my life. I’ve always wanted a child, but then when things started, you know, slowly going like this — I mean, I want so much better for my kid,” Miller said with a nervous laugh. 

“It makes me livid — almost all the time.”

‘I just don’t get how he got from where he was to where he is’

It wasn’t always like this.

“When I was going over before I moved … in 2020, (my dad) was keeping up with the apartment,” Olivia said. 

John inherited the building from Olivia’s maternal grandparents upon their passing, a few years before he and Olivia’s mother divorced. John moved into one of the four units in the building after the divorce and still lives there.

“Nice clean yard. There were always flower bushes. I never heard about utilities going out or anything like that. He wasn’t struggling to pay his bills. He had a job at the time. He seemed really happy and healthy,” Olivia said.

Miller and Olivia became friends in 2019 and later moved to another state together. Upon the sale of the house they’d been renting and the death of Miller’s father, the pair returned to Quincy. Olivia moved into her father’s building in February 2022, and Miller moved in with her a few months later. They quickly realized the building’s condition had gone downhill while they were away. 

Olivia said she had to replace the broken stove shortly after moving in. At one point, a couple ceiling tiles gave way to “a gallon or more of water” that had been building up between the ceiling of her apartment downstairs and underneath the shower of the upstairs apartment. That issue has yet to be fixed, and it results in heavy water leakage to what has become Miller’s bedroom each time the upstairs tenant takes a shower.

Things had changed for John, too.

Olivia said Nicole Hines and John officially started dating after his first heart attack during the summer of 2022. 

Olivia said Hines’ two sons, Caleb and Asher Hines, occupied one of the upstairs apartments “the entire time.” To her knowledge, they did not pay rent, and John never asked them to.

Following the arrest of the Hines brothers in 2023 for outstanding warrants for delivering firearms and methamphetamine, Olivia moved into their apartment — a unit with its own list of things that needed to be fixed. Miller was still in the downstairs apartment they’d initially shared.

Olivia paid her father a year’s worth of rent upfront, roughly $4,000, which John said he would use to pay off what little remained of the building’s mortgage. The money would have been enough to pay off the building and still have some left over, but Olivia said he spent more than half of it catching up on the payments he’d fallen behind on for his truck.

“He lost the truck six months later because he fell behind on his payments again,” Olivia said.

Olivia wasn’t sure how John spent all of the money she’d given him. She remembers him showing her new things he’d bought and talking about going out to eat with Nicole Hines. She believes that, generally, any rent money John received went to his own car payments, car insurance, cigarettes and cases of beer.

John had another heart attack in December 2023. Olivia confirmed with doctors it was meth-induced.

Olivia confronted John about the test results, and she said he “broke down and admitted to having used meth.” She said he had a second confirmed meth-induced heart attack in February 2024 and another in March 2024 that was so severe, a ventilator kept him alive while he remained in a coma for more than a week. She said the medical staff advised her to prepare to say her goodbyes if he couldn’t breathe on his own without the ventilator.

“I didn’t want to live the rest of my life without my father, which I’ve since had to come to terms with regardless,” Olivia said. “The way that he is, I can’t afford to have him in my life.”

She said he remained in the hospital for about a month before going to a rehab facility in St. Louis at the end of April 2024 for an 8-day stay. 

Throughout the ordeal, Olivia prepared to take over management of the building.

“I was scared because I didn’t know how I was going to take care of the apartment building,” Olivia said. “I had a repairman come while (John) was in the hospital to get a damage assessment done. I was told that the wiring needed fixed and the foundation was collapsing and the basement wall needed reinforced because there were bricks falling out of it.”

The stairs needed to be reinforced because they were only being held up by an untreated wood post with a brick underneath. The upstairs porch was separating from the building. The windows needed to be replaced. The building needed at least three more water heaters in addition to the one it already had that was in poor shape.

“The upstairs light socket was an electrical switch, and it was tied to the building with a shoelace and gaming outlet cord,” Olivia said. “(A repairman) told me it was going to be, like, $50,000 or more to fix the place.”

John made a full recovery by May 2024. He said he had a friend who could make the repairs Olivia had listed. His friend wanted too much money, though, and nothing was ever fixed. 

Miller said that’s when Olivia advised her to tell John that she’d be withholding her rent until repairs were made.

The water was shut off “at least four” times, Olivia said, because John hadn’t paid the bill. She said she gave her father “extra money multiple times to put toward water and gas because they were needed for the entire apartment building.”

John put the building’s gas services with Ameren in Olivia’s name in winter of 2022 because he couldn’t pay the bill at the time. He told her it would only be for a couple months. He said he would pay the balance once he received his tax refund, but the account remained in her name until January 2025 when she called Ameren to request a stop to the services. John claimed he needed her Social Security number to discuss her account, which had never been needed throughout the previous two years the services had been in her name.

“I was not comfortable giving (my Social Security number) to him with the way things have been and refused,” she said. “He also asked me for $400 to pay the bill with. When I made the disconnection call (with Ameren), I was informed the final bill was a little over $500 that he racked up.”

Olivia estimated she gave $500 to $600 to her father for non-housing related purposes while she was living there between 2022 and 2024. She said John paid back $100 of it.

Screenshots of text messages between Olivia and her father provided to Muddy River News show he requested money from her several times — four times totaling more than $200 during the month of August 2023 alone.

“I helped him with dog food, cigarettes, food for him and his girlfriend,” she said.

Olivia believes a lack of time management and motivation also played a part in the stall on repairs.

“At one point, he bought almost an entire pallet of roofing tiles and was going to re-roof the building because he knew how to do that and had done it before. The tiles sat out back … for so long that they’re stuck together and rotting now because he never got around to it,” she said.

Olivia moved out of her apartment in the building after water damage led to the growth of mold, making it difficult for her and her boyfriend to breathe. The move was supposed to be temporary so the damp carpet and the dry rot in the wall could be removed, but nearly a year later, Olivia and her boyfriend are still living with her boyfriend’s mother. 

John never returned roughly two months worth of rent money she’d given him in advance for an apartment she could no longer live in. 

She said the apartment sat empty for months with no repairs made to it. The Hines twins eventually started showing up and receiving mail at the property again.

Multiple attempts were made via phone to contact John. He responded to only one question asking for confirmation that the property was the only one he owned and rented out to others.

“It’s really none of your business,” he said.

When asked if his girlfriend’s twins were still living on the property, Nicole Hines’ frustration at the question could be heard in the background. John ended the call soon after and did not respond to further attempts by MRN to contact him.

The living conditions John has imposed on Miller by continuing to ignore needed repairs has exacerbated the strain on his relationship with Olivia. It had already taken a turn for the worse after Hines entered the picture. 

“He has a lot of really neat skills and talents, and he used to be such a wonderful person to be around. He’s an artist … I went through a sketchbook with him once, and it was amazing,” Olivia shared with a crack in her voice. 

“I just don’t get how he got from where he was to where he is.”

List of ordinance violations noted in December inspection

Miller submitted a minimum housing complaint form against John in early December 2024, and the city conducted an inspection of her apartment the following day. Michael Seaver, director of inspection and enforcement, identified nearly a dozen violations of the Municipal Code of the City of Quincy.

In Miller’s ground-floor unit, one of four units in the building, Seaver observed:

• no smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors or window screens were present;
• the bathroom window didn’t close tightly, nor did it open enough to provide ventilation;
• the front door was not weatherstripped to “keep out the elements”; 
• an outlet in the bathroom was defective;
• the toilet didn’t drain properly;
• the upstairs bathroom was leaking; and
• “the ceiling in the bedroom and the bathroom floor have both deteriorated and are missing.”

Seaver also noted the heat was not properly functioning, and the control panel was in John’s apartment. Miller said John often keeps the temperature at a low setting to keep costs low — if he turns the heat on at all.

Outside of Miller’s unit, Seaver noted a column supporting the upstairs balcony had deteriorated mortar joints. An extension cord was supplying power to an upstairs unit. 

Many of the issues identified by Seaver have been present for most of the time Miller has lived there. Some have been more bothersome than others, like the issues with the upstairs bathroom.

“Whenever (the people upstairs) shower, it just goes through the ceiling. I can see up into their bathroom when their lights are on and stuff,” she said. “I had to move my bed, but my clothes have to sit there now because there’s no other room in here for another dresser, so I just kind of have them sitting in a basket and hope they don’t get rained on whenever they decide to take a shower.”

Despite being aware of many of the unit’s issues before Miller even moved in, John still has yet to make the necessary repairs, even after increasing her monthly rent from $370 to $400 last year. 

After making a verbal agreement with John that she would be withholding her rent to apply to the cost of repairs, Miller stopped paying him in May 2024.

By the time Miller had saved $1,000 to be applied toward repairs, she said she fell victim to a scam. It began with an alert that her Microsoft account had been locked. Upon calling the customer service number listed on the alert, Miller said a man who claimed to be a Microsoft employee gained access to her screen, then eventually hacked into the bank account he’d convinced her to log into to see if it had been compromised. The ordeal left her with only $200.

Miller said that when she informed John of the situation, he seemed empathetic and understanding. He even spoke of a time when his own bank account had gotten hacked. Under the impression that she and John were on the same page, Miller continued saving.

Tenants of John’s building are only responsible for paying their electric service, so when John failed to pay the water bill in September 2024, the water was shut off for several days. Miller finally contacted the city herself and used some of the money she’d been saving to pay the $187.27 bill for the entire building to get the water turned back on. 

She said that toward the end of October 2024, on the same day she discovered she was pregnant, John asked her to come to his apartment around 11 p.m. He presented her with an “eviction paper.”

“I was emotional that day, so I started crying. I was like, ‘What do you mean, you’re evicting me? I just paid the water bill for everybody. I only haven’t given you rent because of the reasons we’ve talked about, which you were OK with,’” Miller said.

The Residential Tenants’ Right to Repair Act says Illinois tenants can withhold half of their rent when landlords fail to make repairs they are required by their lease agreement or by law to make. John’s property is exempt, however, because it only has four units, and he lives in one of them. 

The eviction paper John gave her claimed she owed him nearly $7,000 — much higher than the $2,400 in rent she’d withheld from him between May and October. She said he assured her she wouldn’t have to go to court because the document wasn’t “an actual” eviction, just one that would help her apply for a rental assistance program that would cover any rent previously owed plus two months’ future rent. 

He told her she could use some of the money to put down a deposit on another place, but Miller wasn’t confident she could find one if she had an eviction on her record.

A few weeks later, Miller said a member of the Adams County Sheriff’s Department stopped by with another eviction notice that claimed she owed John more than $3,000. She failed to find a lawyer, so she represented herself at their first court appearance in late November 2024.

Miller claimed a man she’d never seen before showed up at her doorstep shortly after her first court appearance. He said if she gave John $200 by the following Friday, she would not be evicted.

“Weird things happen throughout this apartment (building) at all hours of the night. $200 isn’t enough to fix anything in here. It’s not enough to cover rent,” Miller said.

At their second court appearance on Dec. 11, Judge Josh Jones said John said Miller hadn’t paid rent since December 2023’s initial complaint. 

Text messages provided to Muddy River News between John and Miller show several acknowledgements of rent payments made to John by Miller between Dec. 2023 and May 2024, when she actually stopped paying rent. The messages also show several attempts by Miller to acquire a receipt of payment that had gone unanswered. On at least two occasions, John messaged her asking for rent money more than a week before it was due. 

Miller explained she’d applied to the rental assistance program John had instructed her to apply for through the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) and was waiting to learn if she’d been approved. Jones asked John if he’d like to proceed with the eviction hearing or wait to hear about Miller’s approval for the program.

John opted for the latter.

No gas, no water and ‘no money to fix the apartment’

At the beginning of January 2025, Miller learned she’d been approved for the Court-Based Rental Assistance Program (CBRAP) John wanted her to apply for through the IHDA. 

A polar vortex had swept across the country by the middle of the month. John hadn’t paid the gas bill, so the building lost heat for several days. Miller, several months pregnant at the time, and her boyfriend relied on space heaters to stay warm, recording inside temperatures well below freezing. 

John hadn’t paid the water bill either. Upon contacting the water company, Miller was told it hadn’t been paid since September — when she paid for it. 

John deposited on Jan. 17 a check he’d received on Miller’s behalf from the IHDA program for $4,900. Gas and water services resumed that day.

By the end of January, John had cashed another check he received from the IHDA for $5,720 on behalf of another tenant who had already been evicted and ordered to move out in November 2024, according to court records. 

Housing providers are required to sign an agreement acknowledging the terms of the rental assistance program prior to receiving any money from the IHDA. The agreement says housing providers must dismiss any pending evictions against tenants they receive money on behalf of and cannot pursue eviction proceedings until at least a month after the end of the grant’s coverage period.

The agreement also says, “As a condition to accepting the CBRAP grant award, housing provider certifies under penalty of perjury, pursuant to 720 ILCS 5/32-2 … housing provider will apply no CBRAP funds to any rent or other expenses unrelated to the rental unit that is the subject of this grant agreement.”

As issues with her apartment continued to mount, so did the “chairfulls” of packages outside John’s apartment. He hadn’t responded to Miller’s texts asking about repairs, but he occasionally sent her invites to Temu, a Chinese-operated shopping site known for its cheap goods and questionable labor ethics. Nearly 30 invites were sent via Facebook Messenger and texts in January alone.

“He has had multiple packages outside at one time — all from Temu — but claimed he had no money to fix the apartment,” Miller said in a text message to Muddy River News at the end of January.

Miller resumed rent payments in February after a discussion with John, during which she said he agreed to provide her with a paper copy of their lease, make repairs and refrain from evicting them so long as rent is paid. She also told him she would be paying half of her rent at the beginning of each month and the other half at the end of each month. She wanted to make sure she would have some money put aside in case the gas or water was shut off again if John failed to pay the bill.

She believes she’s the only one paying rent in the building. The tenant who was supposed to be evicted in November still lives upstairs, Miller said, as do the Hines brothers. (Court records indicate that Caleb paid the necessary fines to remedy his charges, and Asher is on probation after serving 26 days in jail.)

In December and January, John told the inspection department that repairs had been made and more were in the works. Miller said he told Judge Gabriel Grosboll the same thing on the day her eviction was dismissed Feb. 19.

Seaver emailed Miller at the end of February to notify her that John had been issued a non-compliance ticket for failing to make the repairs. If John pleads guilty, the city attorney will likely request that the judge order John to make the repairs by a specific date in addition to having to pay a fine of roughly $420 with all fees included.

If he pleads not guilty, fails to show up in court or is ordered by the judge to make repairs and doesn’t make them, things could become even more complicated.

“Worst case scenarios vary, but it could take months — between failures to appear, continuances, etc.  Unfortunately, there isn’t a ‘typical’ timeframe for these (situations),” Seaver said in an email to Muddy River News.

Seaver said his department is “not ‘in the driver’s seat’ for this phase,” as they can’t do anything else until the case moves in the court system. 

“Once a hearing is held and depending upon the course it takes, we will likely make one or more reinspections and might give testimony if a bench trial is requested,” he said. “As with all ordinance violations, when voluntary compliance can’t be obtained, ultimately only a judge has the authority to force an action.”

Miller says a repair has yet to be made. Her fridge is broken now, and John claims he hasn’t received some of Miller’s rent payments. 

Miller texted John on Feb. 24, stating she hadn’t received a receipt for the first half of February’s rent, which she’d given him Feb. 5, and that the remaining $200 of February rent was ready for him whenever he wanted to stop by to grab it. John finally stopped by the day after Miller left town on March 7 to pick it up from her boyfriend. According to the boyfriend, John said he’d put a receipt for it in the mailbox but ultimately never did. John denied receiving the remaining $200 for February a week later on March 14.

The gas was shut off again days later. From their apartment, Miller’s boyfriend texted her — as she stayed in her hotel room — to say the space heaters weren’t working, he had no hot water and he was cold. 

Miller texted John multiple times requesting a receipt for the remaining $200 of February rent that her boyfriend had given him March 7, as well as to remind him that the first $200 of March rent was ready for him. She also asked when the gas bill would be paid and if he needed help paying it. Her messages went unanswered. 

While Miller was on the phone with her boyfriend on March 19, John stopped by their apartment to pick up the first $200 of March rent. He then went next door to write a receipt for it but quickly returned to say that he hadn’t received all of the rent money, as if he’d forgotten that the couple was paying $200 at a time. Through her boyfriend’s speaker phone, Miller stated the need to start paying rent with checks, but John walked away.

John eventually dropped off a receipt for the payment he received March 19 — the first $200 for March rent — but said it completed February’s rent payments and that he hadn’t received anything for March. 

“We gave you $200 for the second half of February, then we gave you an additional $200 for the first part of March. We owe $200 for the second half of March,” Miller wrote in a text message to John on March 21. “I genuinely want to clear this up with you … Please tell me if you need help (paying the gas bill) so we can get the gas turned on and have heat and hot water again … We want to help. Please communicate directly with me because I am the one that pays the rent, and I am the one that can help you with the gas bill. Talk to me. Please.”

John finally responded to Miller’s messages for the first time in nearly a month. He said on March 22 he had never received the second $200 payment for February on March 7 and that he needed $400 to pay the gas bill.

Miller said she and her godmother — who’s been paying for her hotel stay — could help and even offered to call Ameren on his behalf to make the payment. Upon making the call, she learned the balance was $845.78 and asked on March 27 how much John had to put toward it. She texted him again the following day stating that she’d be giving birth in a few days and she didn’t want to have to deal with it at the moment. She hoped they could figure out if she knew how much he could put toward the bill and reminded him they’d be holding onto the remaining $200 for March rent until they figured out what was going on with the gas bill.

Several days later on April 1, John finally responded.

“I have to pay $658 to reconnect,” the message read. “I only have about $40.00.”

Stuck, with no changes in sight

Miller has looked for other apartments in Quincy, but few are within her budget. She applied for a place at Indian Hills Apartments several months ago and was placed on a waitlist, which has since closed due to the high volume of applications. She was eventually told the rent would be more than $700, which also was out of her price range.

Though Miller’s boyfriend recently returned to work, health issues prevented him from working for several months. Miller was left to cover the expenses for both of them with her full-time, $15 minimum-wage job. Covering expenses while trying to save up for maternity leave and repairs for the apartment prevented her from saving money for a deposit to put down for another place. 

Until they can find a more suitable place to live, Miller plans on buying a receipt book and having John sign it each time he collects her cash payments. She said she will be taking photos and videos of him counting the cash. 

As of the publication of this story, the gas is still off. The water’s off now, too, and John still hasn’t been served with the ordinance violation Seaver issued to him more than a month ago. Miller is set to return to Quincy in the coming days.

She gave birth to a healthy baby boy on March 31.

“He is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said in a text message to Muddy River News a few days after the birth. “The adoptive parents are great … I know he will be cared for like I would care for him if the situation was different.”

Those interested in donating to Miller’s GoFundMe can do so at this link. (The GoFundMe is listed under the same alias used in this article.)

This story is the second installment of the Seeking Shelter series from Muddy River News, which focuses on Quincy’s housing crisis. Click here to read the first story.