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Matthew Chase Won’t Apologize for Being Landlords’ Go-To Eviction Lawyer | St. Louis Metro News | St. Louis

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click to enlarge MIKE FITZGERALD Matthew Chase agreed to talk to a reporter in his office in University City.
This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund.
If you’re going to write about the eviction industry in St. Louis, then there is one person you absolutely have to mention: University City attorney Matthew Chase.
Not mentioning Chase, 53, in such a story would be akin to writing about the beer industry in St. Louis without mentioning Anheuser-Busch. And like the suds giant before him, Chase has used automation, economies of scale and new technology to push himself to the top of his field.
Chase says he files around 450 eviction cases in a typical month in St. Louis area courtrooms and handles somewhere around 6,000 cases per year — or about 40 percent of the nearly 15,000 cases filed in the region.
While it’s difficult to verify these numbers, it’s clear that Chase is one of the busiest eviction attorneys in both St. Louis city and county and St. Charles County, as evidenced by the fact that many of the area’s biggest landlords have picked them as their go-to guy.
So what’s his secret?
Chase, who grew up in Long Island, explains that when he graduated from the Washington University School of Law in 2005, he had no clear idea where he wanted to go with his legal career — other than the fact he wanted to avoid handling divorce cases at all costs.
Over time, though, he began working a growing number of eviction cases while serving various real estate clients.
Up until five years ago, Chase says, he handled eviction cases pretty much like other attorneys in St. Louis.
“My differentiating fact up until 2018 was always, ‘I’m going to do it faster, I try to be more efficient, I try to be reachable,'” he says. “And, price-wise, I’m competitive.”
But in that year he had an epiphany of sorts: He would hire someone to help him build a web portal focused on evictions, automating many functions and turning it into a virtual assembly line.
“There truly is nothing like it in the country,” he says. “It enables me to handle a much larger volume than one lawyer might be able to handle because everything to a certain extent is automated. … Because with the exception of the lawsuit itself, everything is automatically generated and works just fine that way.”
Chase isn’t known just for his web portal. He is also the content creator for a YouTube channel that offers advice to landlords around the country on how to deal with problem tenants and, if need be, kick them out if they fail to pay their rent.
A video that Chase created in August 2021 caused something of a stir when comedian John Oliver played a clip of it nearly a year later on his HBO show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
In the video, Chases is shown instructing his audience not to tell tenants about the federal eviction moratorium then in effect if they didn’t know about it already.
“Fuck them,” Chase says. “Fuck them all!”
Oliver, pretending to be aghast, stops the clip and stares into the camera.
“OK, first, that is definitely the angriest I’ve seen anyone wearing a Rush hat,” the comic says. “Second, there is no doubt that that man at some point in his life was kicked out of a youth soccer game.”
Eighteen months later, Chase laughs about the incident, though he still nurses a grudge against Oliver.
“His writers are funny guys,” Chase says. “He’s a fucking idiot. He’s a communist.”
In person, Chase can be as bombastic and angry as he appears in his videos. But he’s also a self-aware person with a wry and self-deprecating sense of humor.
“Looking at [the video], it was fun,” he says. “And I come across as an ass. No doubt! And I did come across as an ass. Whatever. I’m obnoxious. I’m an obnoxious guy. I openly will say what’s on my mind with no filter. I have to try to rein it in because it offends some people. I generally don’t care who I offend, except my clients. I don’t want to offend my clients.”
Chase tries to rein in when it comes to the defendants he meets in court. But he also admits to being brutally honest with them.
“Sometimes a defendant will say, ‘You know, we had this happen and that happen. You know, we got sick, lost our job, and this and that. And I say ‘I empathize, I sympathize.'”
Seated behind his desk, Chase leans forward to emphasize the next point, a foundational fact that undergirds every single thing he does as an eviction lawyer.
“But the reality is the law doesn’t care,” he says. “And I’m not trying to say something mean. But the reality is my client wants their money, or they want their place back. We’re willing to work with you this far. With some of my clients, ‘work with you’ means pay it all in 10 days or go to trial, usually the following week.”
Chase has lots of opinions, and he’s eager to share them. It’s as if they’re spring-loaded in his brain, and they pop out on their own volition.
Face masks? “In retrospect everybody who has two fucking brain cells to rub together knows the masks were bullshit, and in fact cause problems.”
The COVID-19 vaccines? “The shot is questionable, and I’m not an anti-vaxxer.”
The 2020 election? “Nobody will ever, ever in a million years will convince me that that election was not stolen.”
As he speaks, Chase might be Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross with his big “always be closing” speech, or Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men, with his epic “you can’t handle the truth” rant.
All three men are self-styled truth tellers eager to set the world straight with a dose of reality. They’re blunt-talkers willing to dispense truths that are harsh and flint-hearted, delivered with all the subtlety of a two-ton wrecking ball smashing into a brick wall.
Chase’s version of truth-seeking, however, has led him deep into populist politics. He greets an unexpected visitor with a red “Keep America Great” trucker hat on his head, and to enter his office you must cross under a sign above the door that reads: “Trump Won. I know it. You know it.”
Chase describes himself as a big believer in fiscal responsibility. And he wishes a lot of the tenants he deals with would adopt such a belief system as well.
“This is going to sound mean,” he says, “but I’m telling you this is the truth. They are buying weed. They are buying their nails. They are buying their hair weaves. That sounds ethnically prejudiced. But the reality is everything comes before the rent. So you need fiscal responsibility.”
Chase pauses to let those words sink in, then follows with the kicker.
“Eighty to 90 percent of my cases would never happen if there is a culture of fiscal responsibility.”
For more on the River City Journalism Fund, which provided funding for this project and seeks to support local journalism in St. Louis, please see rcjf.org.
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Fenton Man Charged in Sword Attack on Roommate

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A warrant is out for a Fenton man’s arrest after he allegedly attacked his roommate with a sword.
Police say that on Sunday, Angelus Scott spoke openly about “slicing his roommate’s head” before he grabbed a sword, raised it up and then swung it down at the roommate.
The roommate grabbed Scott’s hand in time to prevent injury. When police arrived at the scene, they found the weapon used in the assault.
The sword in question was a katana, which is a Japanese sword recognizable for its curved blade.
This isn’t the first time a samurai-style sword has been used to violent effect in St. Louis. In 2018, a man hearing voices slaughtered his ex-boyfriend with a samurai sword. His mother said he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.
As for Scott, 35, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was charged yesterday with two felonies, assault first degree and armed criminal action. The warrant for his arrest says he is to be held on $200,000 bond.
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Caught on Video, Sheriff Says He’s Ready to ‘Turn It All Over’ to Deputy

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Video of St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts taken by a former deputy suggests that the sheriff has a successor in mind to hand the reins of the department over to, even as Betts is in an increasingly heated campaign for reelection.
“I ain’t here for all this rigmarole,” Betts says in the video while seated behind his desk at the Carnahan Courthouse. “The Lord sent me here to turn this department around and I’m doing the best I can and I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got about eight months and I’m going to qualify for my fourth pension.”
He goes on, “Right now I can walk up out of here and live happily ever after and forget about all this…and live like a king.”
The sheriff then says his wife has been in Atlanta looking at houses and that the other deputy in the room, Donald Hawkins, is someone Betts has been training “to turn it all over to him.”
Asked about the video, Betts tells the RFT, “My future plans are to win reelection on August 6th by a wide margin and to continue my mission as the top elected law enforcement official to make St. Louis safer and stronger. Serving the people of St. Louis with integrity, honor and professional law enforcement qualifications is a sacred responsibility, and I intend to complete that mission.”
The video of Betts was taken by Barbara Chavers, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2016 after 24 years of service. Chavers now works security at Schnucks at Grand and Gravois. Betts’ brother Howard works security there, too.
Chavers tells the RFT that she was summoned to Betts’ office last week after Betts’ brother made the sheriff aware that she was supporting Montgomery. It was no secret: Chavers had filmed a Facebook live video in which she said she was supporting Betts’ opponent Alfred Montgomery in the election this fall. “Make the judges safe,” she says in the video, standing in front of a large Montgomery sign on Gravois Avenue. “They need a sheriff who is going to make their courtrooms safe.”
In his office, even as Chavers made clear she was filming him, Betts told Chavers he was “flabbergasted” and “stunned” she was supporting Montgomery.
“I don’t know what I did that would make you go against the preacher man,” he says, referring to himself. He then refers to Montgomery as “ungodly.”
Betts goes on to say that not long ago, he was walking in his neighborhood on St. Louis Avenue near 20th Street when suddenly Montgomery pulled up in his car and, according to Betts, shouted, “You motherfucker, you this, you that. You’re taking my signs down.”
Montgomery tells the RFT that he’s never interacted with Betts outside of candidate forums and neighborhood meetings.
“I don’t think anyone with good sense would do something like that to a sitting sheriff,” Montgomery says.
Montgomery has had campaign signs missing and on at least two occasions has obtained video of people tearing them down. (Chavers notes that the sign that she filmed her original Facebook video in front of is itself now missing.)
One man who lives near Columbus Square says that he recently put out two Montgomery signs, which later went missing. “If they keep taking them, I’ll keep putting them up,” he said.
Betts says he has nothing to do with the missing signs. In the video Chavers filmed in Betts’ office, Betts says that his campaign isn’t in a spot where it needs to resort to tearing down opponents’ signs.
“If you sit here long enough, a man is getting ready to come across the street from City Hall bringing me $500, today,” Betts says. “I’m getting that kind of support. I don’t need to tear down signs.”
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St. Louis to Develop First Citywide Transportation Plan in Decades

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The City of St. Louis is working to develop its first citywide mobility plan in decades, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office announced Tuesday. This plan seeks to make it easier for everyone — drivers, pedestrians, bikers and public transit users — to safely commute within the city.
The plan will bring together other city projects like the Brickline Greenway, Future64, the MetroLink Green Line, and more, “while establishing new priorities for a safer, more efficient and better-maintained transportation network across the City,” according to the release.
The key elements in the plan will be public engagement, the development of a safety action plan, future infrastructure priorities and transportation network mapping, according to Jones’ office.
The overarching goals are to create a vision for citywide mobility, plan a mixture of short and long-term mobility projects and to develop improved communication tools with the public to receive transportation updates. In recent years, both people who use public transit and cyclists have been outspoken about the difficulties — and dangers — of navigating St. Louis streets, citing both cuts to public transit and traffic violence.
To garner public input and participation for the plan, Jones’ office said there will be community meetings, focus groups and a survey for residents to share their concerns. The city will also be establishing a Community Advisory Committee. Those interested in learning more should check out at tmp-stl.com/
“Everyone deserves to feel safe when getting around St. Louis, whether they’re driving, biking, walking or taking public transit,” Jones said in a news release. “Creating a comprehensive transportation and mobility plan allows us to make intentional and strategic investments so that moving around St. Louis for jobs, education, and entertainment becomes easier, safer and more enjoyable.”
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