By Mahlon Meyer
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Manpreet and Jaskaran Singh, with their kids and friends at a 5K run sponsored by Singh (Photo courtesy of Jaskaran Singh)
Jaskaran Singh did everything he could to fit in.
He bought a house in Bellevue, borrowing money from his father and using his savings. He took classes in community engagement. He sponsored 5K runs, Fourth of July block parties, and more. From his Sikh temple, he brought food once a week to the neighborhood homeless shelter.
So when his neighbors started calling him by his childhood nickname, “Jimmy,” and he was nominated as a city human services commissioner, the 43-year-old thought he had finally arrived in his new country after immigrating 17 years earlier.
But, when it turned out he really needed the support of his community, he found its laws were stacked against him.
A rental house he had bought, this time using a home equity loan, had been his security for his wife and two kids against sudden downturns in the American economy—mainly, in case he lost his job.
The house was old but beautiful. Nestled in the neighborhood of Woodridge, it was a small brick rambler, but it had a lush cherry tree and a small Japanese maple in front.
He and his wife, in an act they thought was in solidarity with the immigrant community, rented it to a fellow immigrant family.
And that’s when the troubles started.
His tenant, a Korean man, Singh eventually found out, had apparently not been able to pay rent on his previous lease. But when Sang Kim came to rent Singh’s house, he told him he did not have a social security card and was not able to have a background check.
Singh’s search through King County records showed nothing.
So he rented him the house.
Then disaster struck.
By May of last year, Kim had not paid rent for a year—although in the end he found a nonprofit associated with the American Bar Association that found funding to make up the back rent.
Then it happened again.
From May of last year to now, Singh has not received a single penny of rent, he said.
The house in Woodridge (Photo by Mahlon Meyer)
The permanent stranger
Singh’s frustration with the legal process has left him and his wife with a new feeling of alienation, they thought they had overcome, and even suspicions of deeper concerns. It was as if they had left India only to find similar dynamics here (the Sikhs are a minority in India, with a history of persecution).
“If we were in India, we would have our house back by now,” his wife, Manpreet, who is 41 years old, said in an interview.
Manpreet belongs to a Sardar, or military elite, family. “She moved to the U.S. just for me. Otherwise, she would have preferred to stay in Punjab,” said Singh.
Outclassed in the legal system?
For almost a year, Singh has been paying the mortgage, property taxes, and attorney fees on a house he feels he has lost: Kim, with the assistance of the King County Bar Association’s Housing Justice Project, took out a legal protection order to prevent him from approaching his property.
Of course, besides this, Singh is paying the mortgage on his own home and is still repaying his home equity loan.
Again, he is borrowing money from family and friends.
And again, there is no promise this situation will not go on, repeating itself, with the renter, who he now considers much savvier in the laws of their new country. Will he, again, find legal means to continue to hold onto Singh’s home—while Singh, again, must pay the mortgage and other fees?
Singh has another eviction hearing coming up soon.
The renter: a misunderstanding of eviction protections
Their renter, for his part, declined more than a brief interview on the phone with the Northwest Asian Weekly, saying media coverage had been harmful to him and his family.
Still, Sang Kim said that some of the problems had been brought on by Singh himself.
“He cut corners,” he said.
Kim said Singh’s hiring of an attorney prevented or interfered with the process by which the Housing Justice Project could gather funds to pay his rent in a timely fashion.
Singh’s eagerness to find an attorney and use legal means to get him to pay rent revealed a misunderstanding of the law—in this case, an eviction law that protects families from “being thrown out on the street,” added Kim.
(Singh said he did not intend any interference. “[Kim] doesn’t understand I have to pay the mortgage every month.”)
Kim lost his job in April 2023, he told The Stranger.
Singh said that Kim “never told me about his job loss until this month.”
A process slowed by the pandemic
Singh, however, sees Kim as a “con artist” who knows how to exploit the system.
He said, for instance, that Kim used the same technique in his previous stay in another house, using similar tactics to delay paying rent.
Jani Spencer, a real estate agent for Compass, said it took another couple over two years to evict Kim from their home and, in the end, they did not get any of their lost rent money back.
The delay, however, was due to the backlog of cases in King County court, during the pandemic. It took over a year to get a court date, she said.
The backlog in the court system does impact people, Edmund Witter, of the Housing Justice Project, told KOMO News. But people are still struggling in the aftermath of the pandemic, thus leading to a surge in eviction filings.
Still, Kim didn’t show up for the first court date, which was through Zoom, said Spencer.
“He said he had connectivity problems,” she said.
Then more months passed before they could get another court date, and the judge asked them to go to mediation—which led to even more time passing.
Finally, at the end of two years, the couple obtained an eviction notice, she said. After Kim was evicted, there was a utility bill over $3,000 remaining, she added.
Spencer said the couple offered to pay Kim to move, during the process, and she went to see him several times on their behalf.
“He said he didn’t want to put them out,” she said.
Kim declined a further interview.
Frustration
For Singh, the whole approach, though apparently legal, fills him with outrage and despair, since he feels it is part of an overall scheme by Kim to “exploit the system” by lying to him at the same time.
“Every time I’d go to ask for rent, he’d always have some excuse,” said Singh. “One time it was that his boss had turned his salary into Bitcoins, another that his CEO was having family problems, another that there was a typhoon in Florida.”
For his part, however, Kim said Singh not only “doesn’t understand the system here in the states,” referring to protections for tenants, according to a brief interview with the Discovery Institute, a conservative media outlet. But, Kim said, Singh has been “fabricating stories in court, that’s why I’m still here.” He accused Singh of “bugging me constantly, weekly.”
Ugly signs, defaming Kim, were also put up—he didn’t know by whom.
The media coverage has made it difficult for him to find a job or another place to live, Kim said.
For Singh’s part, despite all the media frenzy—it became a national story, mostly in conservative outlets—the net result has been nil. He is no closer to staving off financial disaster by getting his money back and being able to continue to pay the mortgage on a home that somebody else lives in.
“Is there anything wrong with coming to this country, working really hard, and making some kind of life for your family?”
Mahlon can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.