The mortgage mess is claiming a new group of victims: "the renters."

Across the country, a rising number of landlords are falling behind on mortgage payments, sending their properties into foreclosure, according to legal-services attorneys, local officials and financial experts -- and in many cases, their tenants are being forced out of their homes. Often, the tenants' first inkling of trouble occurs when they get a letter from the bank directing them to leave the premises.

"They just don't know what to do -- they leave town, move in with their mothers, end up in shelters," says Janet Merrill, an attorney with the Massachusetts Justice Project, a Worcester legal-services agency that runs a hotline for low-income people.

Ms. Merrill's group gets four to five calls a day from renters facing eviction resulting from foreclosure. One caller recently received a letter from a bank saying her six-unit apartment building had gone into foreclosure and ordering her to vacate her unit by Oct. 31.

This would make tenants worry as out of the blue they would receive letters telling that their lease is void due to a foreclosure.

Banks do not want to manage rental properties. This is why that the most probable thing for them to do is to sell the property. The change in ownership will make the contract with the previous owner void.

The best thing for banks to do in the long run is to keep the tenants in the units, honor the leases and help fill any empty units. Probably it is a silly idea for them as they do not manage properties, but with more people seeking apartments and less people wanting to purchase homes, the banks could not make a profit in selling the property. To minimize losses and help maintain the value of the properties they now own is to keep them rented.