Rolling Hills Apartments in Jennings markets itself as a place where tenants with low credit scores or former evictions can get a second chance. To some former tenants, however, the apartment complex was an unwelcoming environment with arbitrary rules and the apparent goal of evicting residents as soon as possible.
Robert Swearingen with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and Kalila Jackson of the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council have filed several lawsuits on behalf of clients who feel they have been mistreated by Rolling Hills’ landlord, Robert Keith Bennett.
Swearingen said the lease signed by Rolling Hills tenants is the worst he’s seen in his 35-year legal career.
“The lease is designed, or at least has the effect, of making it very difficult and expensive for people to assert their rights in court,” Swearingen said.
Many of the provisions of the lease, Swearingen said, are legally unenforceable or unconscionable, meaning so unjust or one-sided that they would not hold up in court. The main effect of these provisions, he said, is simply to intimidate the tenants.
“He’s trying to create a lease that he has all the rights, all the privileges, all the power, and the tenant has none,” Swearingen said.
The lease agreement signed by tenants of Rolling Hills contains several provisions aiming to charge tenants additional money if they attempt to go to court against its proprietor, Robert Keith Bennett. The lease asks tenants to agree that they are not allowed to ask for a change of judge in any court case, that any counterclaims they have must be tried separately and that they will pay Bennett’s attorney’s fees, the cost of filing a lawsuit and additional “administrative fees” amounting to over $10,000.
The lease attempts to limit Bennett’s own liability to twice the amount of the security deposit. Another provision states that the tenant’s obligation to pay rent is “mandatory and not dependent on the landlord’s performance of any covenant.”
The lease also defines “rent” to include numerous additional fees, applied at Bennett’s discretion. This also allows him to reclaim the tenant’s security deposit, which can legally only be used for back rent and property damage, for almost any reason.
In the first few pages of the lease, tenants must initial provisions to waive their rights to a jury trial, waive their rights to a change of judge and define Bennett’s responsibility in a legal case to the “preponderance of evidence” standard, while tenants must meet the higher “clear and convincing proof” standard.
Swearingen and Jackson said these provisions are not legal, but that does not mean that a tenant reading them would not believe them.
In an email, The American asked Bennett if all the provisions in his lease were legal and enforceable in court.
“Probably not every single one,” Bennett replied. He said he had already removed the provision redefining “rent,” though he felt it was a reasonable attempt to cover losses incurred by tenants’ actions.
“The vast majority of the lease provisions were taken from my interpretation and understanding of Missouri case law as found in the Restatement of the Law (2d) – Landlord and Tenant,” Bennett wrote. “Some of the provisions are not found in the case law, per se, but they have parallels in the law – I believe there are good appellate arguments for the vast majority of provisions and/or there is existing case law in support of those provisions.”
Most of Rolling Hills’ clients, Jackson said, are low-income and African-American, with some facing a choice between signing this lease and homelessness. Bennett confirmed that 98 percent of his clients are African-American and most have low credit scores.
Bennett said in a statement that renting to clients with poor credit scores leads to difficulties, including financial ones for him. Bennett said he invests substantial money back into the apartment complex, where he also lives.
“My goal in life, for the last eight plus years, has been to restore and transform this property from something that was about to implode with drugs, violence, and lots of chaos, into something where my North County residents feel safe and content, and also appreciative that their landlord actually cares about them and the community at large,” Bennett said in his statement.
Bennett has a colorful past. In February, he was acquitted of shooting at a man who was searching for scrap metal at Rolling Hills. Bennett claimed he shot at Reginald Tucker, a black U.S. Army veteran who said he made a living “scrapping,” in self-defense and was scared he might be armed. A jury acquitted Bennett; he was represented by Scott Rosenblum, the high-profile defense attorney most recently in the news representing NFL player and accused domestic abuser Ezekiel Elliott.
Bennett is now aiming to avoid further legal trouble with modifications to his lease agreement.
“All lease provisions are intended to protect the apartment complex while being fair and informative to the tenant with high-risk credit,” Bennett said. “Some provisions are intended to prevent people from manipulating the court process, while not paying rent. The provision requiring that a bond be posted for attorney’s fees has already been eliminated. All other provisions are being reviewed with counsel, and a new and improved lease will be forthcoming in the near future.”
Swearingen said this is a step in the right direction, but the policies of Rolling Hills would require substantial modifications to be fair to tenants.
Tinisha Love is one tenant at Rolling Hills who feels she was evicted without cause. Love, who moved into the complex last December, received a 30-day notice to leave on July 17. She said she was up to date on her rent and her only conflict with Bennett was over where she once parked when coming home from a night shift.
Love, who lived at Rolling Hills with her two children and girlfriend, said it was an attractive living option because Bennett was willing to work with tenants who, like her, had been evicted before.
When she went in to sign the lease, she said, Bennett pointed to a board filled with the names of over a thousand former tenants he had taken to court, warning her to take the lease terms seriously.
Bennett confirmed that he has a printout on his wall of all his court cases from 2011 to 2013 and uses it as a warning to clients.
Love saw this as an attempt to intimidate her, but decided to move past it. She did not initially see any problems with the lease, but quickly started to notice the complex’s strict rules. She said there was nowhere her children were allowed to play outside, and guests were not allowed to smoke cigarettes on the balcony of her apartment. Bennett denies both of these allegations.
Bennett also strongly objects to visitors, Love said.
“We got a warning saying no one [whose name is not on the lease] can turn the keys to your apartment, no one can sit in your apartment while you go to the store and get some eggs,” Love said. “So you mean to me if I’m cooking and I want to go to the store because I forget some cornbread, I need to take my whole family with me?”
Bennett confirmed these provisions of the lease.
Love said she did not receive any warnings before being evicted, although Bennett did schedule a meeting with her, which he then canceled when he sent the 30-day notice.
“I guess that was the warning, but we never got a chance to hear it,” Love said.
No warnings other than the 30-day notice to vacate are required by Missouri law.
During her time at Rolling Hills, Love said she was twice cited for violations during inspections Bennett performed under the guise of spraying for bugs in the apartment. She was cited once because her stove was in the process of being cleaned and another time for having grease cooling in a deep fryer.
She was charged $25 for each of these incidents, a charge not mentioned anywhere in the lease.
Love is now a client of Legal Services and said she hopes Bennett will face some consequences for his actions. Rolling Hills, she said, targets African Americans and tenants with credit problems only to evict them as soon as possible.
“I feel violated,” Love said. “There’s no warning. It’s like I have no time to find another place for my kids.”
Bennett said the evictions of Love and Legal Services’ other clients were within the rules of a month-to-month lease agreement and that they committed multiple violations of their lease agreements. During the application process, he said in his statement, all of these former tenants were made aware of his strict lease provisions and chose to move in.
“It seems to be lost on Mr. Swearingen and Ms. Jackson that I am the one actually helping the ‘little guy,“ Bennett said in his statement. “My property provides housing to folks that have extremely limited access to decent, affordable housing – most large properties will not rent to many people that I do rent to. My lease is designed to protect against worst-case-scenario tenants, of which I have seen far more than a few.”
Swearingen and Jackson’s clients have settled with Rolling Hills, but they remain concerned about Rolling Hills’ lease practices.
“That, unfortunately, we’re going to have to save for another time,” Swearingen said.
For lawyers like Swearingen and Jackson, it can be difficult to get rulings on cases that affect their impoverished clients precisely because of their poverty. When clients need money, they are more likely to reach a settlement than to pursue a judge’s ruling, which would be the only way to get a judgement against Rolling Hills’ policies.
“You have people who have largely been rendered invisible by the legal system and a lot of times by society in general,” Jackson said. “These are poor people for the most part, and people who may or may not know what their rights are or have access to attorneys to tell them what their rights are. For me personally, that’s why my agency has chosen to get involved, because these practices are so predatory and so targeted at the people who can least afford this kind of behavior.”
Jessica Karins is a St. Louis American editorial intern from Webster University.
I dated Robert Keith Bennett for 9 years. To say it was problematic, would be an understatement! He is 17 years older than me, and liked to intimidate me all the time. He assaulted me, but knew the Judge in that jurisdiction, and of course, got away with it! Even after we broke up, he would stalk me. I moved several times for fear of him hurting me. He in fact found me, tried getting into my apartment while holding a gun ,saying he was going to kill me. He of course got away with that as well. I worked in his law office at one point, when he had his own law practice. I witnessed him stealing money from clients several times. He even talked about when he was a truck driver for, Northern American, and told me about running a man off the road, believing that he was dead, then driving off. He thought that was funny. He is an unstable, and dangerous man. I feel for all the people that have dealt with him in general. He needs psychological help. And yet, I was stupid enough to love him the entire time.
I feel for you Tami. Keith is a sick man