Regular people may face eviction… but Jay-Z and Beyonce? From billionaires and music moguls to
reality stars and rappers, these stars know what it's like to be kicked to the street.
A lot of things have changed for
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle since they stepped back as senior working royals in
early 2020. They relocated from the U.K. to California and gave up their claim to
the royal coffers in an effort to be fully financially independent. Three years later,
they were then evicted from their official royal residence, Frogmore Cottage.
Queen Elizabeth II gave the couple the four-bedroom cottage, which is
located on the grounds of Windsor Castle, as a wedding gift. Following extensive renovations,
which totaled around $2.9 million, the pair moved into the historic home in early 2019.
They lived in the residence for about 11 months before packing up and heading to Canada, where,
it was thought, they would remain for an extended period of time as working members
of the firm. After they announced their change of plans, Harry and Meghan repaid the palace for the
renovations and lent their home to Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank.
Still, they held onto the keys to the cottage, staying there every time they'd
return to Britain on official or personal business. But that all changed in March 2023,
when it was revealed the couple had been asked to leave by King Charles III,
who planned to give the home to his disgraced brother Prince Andrew. According to The Sun,
the eviction was set in motion after Harry's controversial memoir Spare was released,
and the move was rumored to be in response to the unflattering stories he spilled about his family.
"I don't think that we can ever have peace with my family unless the truth is out there."
You'd think things like being a
member of the royal family or being a billionaire would mean that you'd be safe from ever facing an
eviction. It turns out, neither of those things will actually protect you from getting kicked out
of your home. Just ask Jay Z and Beyoncé, one of the richest self-made couples in the country.
In 2015, the power couple was renting a 16,000-square-foot estate in the Holmby
Hills area of LA. They were reportedly paying around $200,000 a month for the luxurious pad,
which boasted seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a fitness center,
and two libraries. The pair only ever intended to be temporary residents in the rental home
while they searched for a more permanent place to settle their growing family. But then a buyer
scooped the property up from under them, paying a whopping $35.5 million to make it their own.
Jay and Beyoncé apparently weren't interested in buying the home for themselves. As a result,
they were reportedly given just 60 days to pack up and get out,
per TMZ. Given the Carter's deep pockets, we can't imagine that it was all that difficult
for them to find somewhere else to live even on such short notice.
The two better-known
Rock-A-Fella Records founders, Jay Z and Dame Dash, have had two wildly different
trajectories. One is a self-made billionaire with fingers in everything from music to professional
sports to the cosmetics industry. The other is essentially a failed businessman who has
been evicted twice and has lost almost the entirety of his $50 million fortune.
In 2013, Daily News reported that the former mogul was in so much debt he was close to
being evicted from his home in Carmel, New York. If he had been given the boot,
it wouldn't have been the first time. Three years earlier, the music exec
had been evicted from a pair of TriBeCa lofts after failing to pay his mortgage.
His money troubles stemmed from a variety of sources, such as his acrimonious divorce
from fashion designer Rachel Roy, failed business investments, and various lawsuits. That same year,
it also emerged that a $2.8 million federal tax lien had been served against him for unpaid
bills from 2005 and 2011, respectively. When Dash finally abandoned his upstate property
in late 2013, the landlord claimed to Page Six that the place had been left in a sorry
state with an abundance of the former tenant's personal effects left behind.
In the early '00s,
actor Isaiah Washington had a thriving career. A mainstay on the popular medical drama Grey's
Anatomy, his star was finally taking off and he had the paychecks to prove it. Flush with cash,
the actor moved his family into a luxurious $20,000-a-month property in the Venice Beach
area. He managed to retain the option to buy the home down the line if he were to wind up
falling in love with it. Generally, things seemed to be going swimmingly.
Then, in mid-2007, it was announced that the actor had been fired from the popular
ABC series after he was accused of using a homophobic slur during an on-set argument.
"I said several bad words, as well as he did."
Despite his various attempts to make it right, the network ultimately decided that the best
way to handle his transgression was to let him go. Unsurprisingly,
with his primary source of income dried up, the star began to experience financial issues.
In March 2009, just about a year and a half after he'd been fired from Grey's,
the owner of Washington's home filed eviction papers. According to the court documents,
the actor hadn't paid rent in five months and owed $100,000 in back rent — a sum that was
expected to be paid in full within three days. Perez Hilton later reported that Washington
and his family were subsequently spotted packing boxes and vacating the premises.
In 2013, the Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kenya Moore was evicted after she fell behind
by just $848 in rent. The six-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion the reality star
had been living in cost a whopping $3,999 a month. According to Radar,
neighbors had complained about Moore almost from the moment she moved in,
calling her the "neighbor from hell" and bemoaning the attention and chaos she unwittingly brought
to the area. This likely had quite a bit to do with the homeowner being so eager to get her out.
"Unfortunately, sometimes things really sting and you just never
know when you're at your breaking point."
Unsurprisingly, Moore wasn't ready to let the house go without a fight. During an episode
of The Wendy Williams Show, the reality star shared her opinion on the situation, saying,
"This is absolutely absurd. I've paid this woman nearly $52,000 in rent and she has a
$6,000 security deposit of mine. I have paid her May rent and paid her June and
my lease is up in three weeks, so this whole thing is absolutely ridiculous."
In the end, the court sided with her landlord and Moore had to pay $2,520 in back rent, $4,387 in
utilities and maintenance, $800 in late fees, and $2,000 in eviction fees before vacating the house.
Kenya Moore isn't the
only Housewife to face eviction. Her co-star, Kim Zolciak-Biermann,
has been on the verge of losing her home on multiple occasions. The first time Kim faced
eviction was back in 2014. At the time, she, and her new husband, Kroy Biermann,
were in the process of finishing up the build of their dream Atlanta mansion.
Money had already been a bit of an issue — they'd had to take out an emergency
$300,000 loan just to have enough cash to pay the craftsmen — and
then the couple was hit with a tax lien. According to documents obtained by Radar,
the pair owed the City of Milton and the State of Georgia a combined $12,237. A
judge ruled they had to pay up within 90 days or their half-finished house would be seized.
The reality stars were apparently able to come up with the money because they moved
into the mansion not long after. But their money troubles didn't end there. In 2023,
it was announced that the Alpharetta home was in foreclosure and would be auctioned
off in early March. The whole thing started when the pair defaulted on a $1.65 million
loan they had taken out on the property. For her part, Kim insisted that it was just a
misunderstanding and that they wouldn't actually be evicted. So far, that seems to be true,
as the family still lives in the home as of March 2023, though it isn't clear exactly what changed.
Back in 2016,
Tyga may have been dating one of the richest women in Hollywood — Kylie Jenner — but his own
finances were far from in order. Within the span of a single year, the rapper was hit with three
eviction cases on three different LA-area homes. It all started in the summer of 2015 when it was
reported that courts had ordered the "Rack City" rapper to pay $80,000 of back rent on a property
he'd been living in for several months. While the details on this situation are a little sparse,
we'd have to imagine eviction was at least on the table given how much he owed.
"I just feel like it's nobody's business. You know what I'm saying?"
Months later, TMZ reported that another landlord was suing the star for the $70,000 in back rent
he was owed, this time on a property in Jenner's gated Calabasas neighborhood. Tyga fought back
this time, filing a countersuit saying he had entered into a contractual agreement to buy the
property and had made a $200,000 down payment, meaning he was technically no longer a renter.
In early 2016, he was then hit with a third eviction suit. Per Page Six, Tyga had been
living in a $4.8 million Hollywood Hills abode for just three months, but hadn't been paying rent for
at least part of that time. Once again, it's not immediately clear how the situation was resolved.
After releasing The Miseducation of
Lauryn Hill in 1998, Grammy-winning recording artist Lauryn Hill all but disappeared from
the public eye. In the handful of interviews she's given in the intervening decades, she's
always cited an aversion to so much exposure and difficulties in her personal life as her primary
reason for leaving fame and fortune behind. Additionally, Hill has long maintained that
there wasn't much "fortune" to her career, as she made very little from her success. In a lengthy
Tumblr blog posted in 2012, she even claimed that she had been exploited by the music industry.
A year later, Hill was evicted from her New Jersey mansion. She had been living in the
house since 2009, but had stopped paying rent at least a month prior to the suit
being filed. Hill's landlord had tried to settle things with her privately, but when she refused
to pay the back rent she owed or move out of the house, he was forced to take legal action.
It could be possible that the landlord had gotten wind of Hill's other legal troubles, and wanted to
get his money while that was still a possibility. In 2012, Hill was convicted of tax evasion and
wound up spending three months in jail. Just prior to serving her sentence, the musician
agreed to pay $7,000 and vacate the property. In a Tumblr post written at the time, Hill claimed
that tabloid reports regarding her eviction situation had been misleading and inaccurate.
Rock star Courtney
Love is no stranger to being in trouble with the law. Over the years,
the former spouse of Kurt Cobain has been involved in everything from libel lawsuits
to an alleged plot to kidnap her former son-in-law. So it really shouldn't come as
a big surprise that she's also faced legal proceedings surrounding her NYC apartment.
In 2011, Love was fighting eviction from her West Village townhouse. She was being charged with
falling $54,000 behind in rent, setting fire to the unit, and redecorating — which apparently went
against the terms of her lease. For her part, the celeb claimed to Page Six that she was current on
the $27,000 a month payments. Additionally, Love explained to the outlet that she had asked for,
and received, permission to redecorate before hiring painters and designers agreed upon by
both parties. Love's lawyer also accused the landlord of trying to evict the singer
so that they could bring publicity to the building that they were trying to sell.
In the end, an NYC judge sided with Love, tossing the case altogether and allowing the
rocker to remain in her swanky pad. Or at least, she did for a time. As of 2019, she had moved to
London where she planned to focus on rewriting her tell-all memoir while recording some new music.
Considering the
intimate knowledge To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen has of crime and its consequences,
it's shocking that he'd allow himself to slip into that path. But slip, he most certainly did. In
2019, the journalist found himself in hot water over a series of bad checks and missing money.
In January of that year, Hansen turned himself in to the authorities after a $13,000 check he
had written to a local vendor bounced. However, it wasn't the first time Hansen had written a
bad check, and despite telling the vendor he'd make it right ASAP, he never followed through
with the money. As a result, Connecticut police issued an arrest warrant for Hansen,
resulting in him pulling up to the station to get everything sorted out. It turns out,
the bad checks were likely being written because Hansen didn't actually have any cash in the bank.
How do we know this? Well around the same time this was all happening, TMZ reported that Hansen
was being evicted from his NYC apartment. According to the landlord, the Dateline
contributor owed $4,000 in back rent, and had been asked to remove himself and his belongings
from the rental within 10 days. As far as we can tell, Hansen complied with the request, and it
seems things have started to turn around for him since then. In 2020, he signed on with Paramount
to produce a documentary, and his podcast, "Predators I've Caught" also took off that year.
The eviction predicament of Lynne Curtin,
from Real Housewives of Orange County fame, was featured heavily on a season of the series,
proving once and for all that many of our favorite reality stars are likely living
beyond their means. During an episode of the show, it all went down like this: Curtin's two
teenage daughters were served eviction papers for their massive California rental home.
"You just moved in. How could you be evicted?"
"I know. I can't even believe it because I thought we were current."
Upon discovering this, the star confronted her husband, Frank, who explained that the
family was essentially broke and that he hadn't paid the $10,000 security deposit required by
the owner. Stunned, Curtin fumed at her man, who had kept her entirely in the dark about
their financial position up until that point. The incident eventually led to the couple's divorce.
It turned out broke-as-a-joke wasn't even an exaggeration when it came to Curtin's
situation. In court documents obtained by TMZ, the reality star claimed to only have $100 to
her name and stated that she had been living off of $500 a month for quite some time. It's unclear
whether or not the Curtins were actually evicted from that house or whether they chose to leave of
their own volition, but Lynne seems to be doing much better these days. As of this March 2023,
the licensed esthetician is gainfully employed and continues to work on her jewelry line.
In the early 2010s,
Bobbi Kristina Brown was going through a rough time. Her famous mother,
Whitney Houston, died in 2012, and the loss understandably hit the 19-year-old hard.
"I'm doing as good as I possibly can, you know, at this point."
Estranged from her father Bobby Brown following some family infighting,
her support system seemed shaky, at best. Additionally, her subsequent relationship
with her foster brother-turned-fiance, Nick Gordon, wasn't widely accepted by the remaining
members of her inner circle, and she was also speculated to be misusing drugs and alcohol.
In 2013, the young couple was evicted from their Alpharetta,
Georgia apartment following a series of noise complaints from neighbors that
spanned six months. When they finally departed the unit, they left a nasty
note for their downstairs neighbor, which was posted on Reddit. It read, in part,
"Thanks. You are all s--- on the bottom of our shoe. Thank you for
making a hard year harder. You are a miserable couple and always will be."
It's unclear where, exactly, the couple moved next. However, just a year and a half later,
Bobbi tragically died in a manner similar to that of her late mom,
when her body was found unresponsive in a bathtub. An autopsy later suggested that drug intoxication
likely played a part in her death. Five years later, Gordon also died from a drug overdose.
In 2012, Amanda Bynes began a downward spiral that
would eventually see her completing several stints in rehab, butting heads with the law over and over
again, and being placed in a Britney Spears-style conservatorship. In the midst of the chaos,
the actor was essentially evicted from her NYC apartment. In September 2012, the troubled starlet
moved from her native California to New York City. The relocation seemed in part a way for her to
get away from some of the negative influences and routines she surrounded herself with in
Hollywood. Unfortunately, the cross-country move wasn't enough to shake her free of her troubles.
From the jump, it seems Bynes' behavior made her a fairly undesirable neighbor.
When photographer Giovanni Arnold was invited inside the apartment by the star herself,
he told In Touch that the unit looked to be a full-blown party pad, complete with
spray-painted windows, drug paraphernalia, and no furniture. On at least one occasion,
Bynes was reportedly caught smoking marijuana in the lobby of her building, with neighbors
complaining that there was an almost constant smell of weed smoke drifting from her home.
After an episode where police were called to reign in the antics,
the actor threw a bong from her 36th-floor window, and her landlord finally made moves
to evict her. According to TMZ, the building's owner sent a letter to Bynes informing her that
the lease would be terminated. Rather than fighting the decision, Bynes just moved.
"Peace out."