Crime as reason to escape lease? (apartment, leases, crime rate)

[mrreliable]

My daughter and two roommates rented a small house to live in while attending college. They signed a lease. The day they moved in they came back from the store and the house had been broken into with small items stolen. They've been in the house two months and they have had another break-in, and the downstairs apartment has been broken into three times.

I checked the crime rate in the city and it is one of the highest crime rates in the state.

Is this a situation that would allow them to break the lease and move somewhere else? There are police reports for each of the break-ins (and additional attempted break-ins).

[Thedosius]

You will only get opinions at this forum and only if you're lucky will you get legal facts. In other words, this is not the place to get a definitive answer- I would check the sites that show legal statutes/ordinances for the community in question.

I would be surprised if you could break a lease for information readily available before the lease was signed. Any municipality that allowed people carte blanche to break their leases because of their high crime rate would be signing their own death warrant.

[MidwestRedux]

Originally Posted by Thedosius

You will only get opinions at this forum and only if you're lucky will you get legal facts. In other words, this is not the place to get a definitive answer- I would check the sites that show legal statutes/ordinances for the community in question.

I would be surprised if you could break a lease for information readily available before the lease was signed. Any municipality that allowed people carte blanche to break their leases because of their high crime rate would be signing their own death warrant.

Well said.

My non-legal thought on this is that you would probably only have recourse if you could show that the landlord was negligent in securing the property. He/she has no control over the safety of the neighborhood.

You could very nicely ask if the landlord would let you break the lease out of safety concerns. I don't think you could force the issue if they weren't agreeable.

If that fails, you could see if the landlord would agree to make some improvements to enhance the safety and security of the property. This could include better doors or even bars on the windows if the area is really that rough.

[maria315]

My friend did experience something almost similar to this. But I believe it was more of an inside job in her case since she's very careful in hiding her valuable stuff.

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[mnmarina]

H i There,
The best thing to do is to have them consult an attorney or have them call MN legal hotline for renters
at 612-728-5767.