Hazim Yassin at a council meeting in 2019. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
See UPDATE below
By JOHN T. WARD
With just days left on his term, former Red Bank councilman Hazim Yassin was ordered evicted from his apartment last month, court records show.
The action came less than two months after Yassin agreed to pay his landlord more than $32,000 in overdue rent.
The sum had grown to $32,849.20 by December 1, when the Molly Pitcher Village Apartments claimed in Monmouth County Superior Court filings that Yassin had already breached a settlement agreement approved by the court on October 29.
Yassin didn’t make either of the two payments that he’d agreed to submit within five days of the settlement, the landlord alleged. Those would have cost him $10,540.
Judge David T. Bauman issued a warrant of removal December 20, according to filings.
Yassin did not respond to a redbankgreen request for comment Wednesday.
As previously reported by redbankgreen, the complex owner claimed that Yassin had not paid rent on his Branch Avenue unit since January, 2020, an assertion Yassin did not formally contest.
He had referred to the matter as “a private legal dispute that was held up in the courts and delayed due to the pandemic.” But court records show no filings by Yassin in response to the landlord’s attempts to collect, and no references by the landlord to a dispute.
Yassin, a Democrat, lost his bid for a second three year council term when political newcomer Jacqueline Sturdivant topped him in the June Democratic primary. After winning the general election in November, Sturdivant took the council seat Yassin vacated January 1.
UPDATE, January 11, 2022: On January 6, after this article was published, Judge Kerry Higgins granted a temporary stay of removal, allowing Yassin to remain in the apartment until 3 p.m. Friday, January 14. The stay followed a request Yassin filed one day earlier seeking “more time just to get my things and find temporary housing.”
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