Landlord's: apartment damaged: tenant will not leave (apartments, evict, deposit)
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I can't find an answer and it's Friday so a lawyer is almost impossible to find.
Problem: An apartment has had serious water damage from a broken pipe. The bathroom is full of a ceiling that fell and I need to take it completely down, water is dripping from the broken pipe, the bathroom is unuseable. The tenant refuses to leave.
How do I get the tenant out? She is adament that she can deal with it. I cannot be working there with a crew and a 5 year old in the apartment. No useable bathroom and it will take a few days to repair.
I do not have another vacancy she can move into.
I told her I will not and cannot fix it until she is gone. I gave her numbers of other apartments that have vacancies. I told her she would get her deposit back. I will even refund the reminader of this month's rent...she will not budge.
What would you do?
I think the ethical and probably.... legal way to resolve this would be for you to pay for her and her kid to stay at a hotel while repairs are taking place.
Unless you just want to get rid of these tenants. In which case, this is not the right way to do it.
Have you considered that she may have no place to go? Have you offered to pay for an extended stay motel, have you offered to HELP her find another place? And what about the moving costs? You now want her to put in the energy to repack (buying more boxes $$), spending every moment packing up just so you can have the luxury of repairing at your leisure/convenience? How rude.
You rented, get the danged thing fixed or offer to pay ALL her expenses including finding an apt last minute, right before school starts (same school district)
This is surely an uninhabitability issue and I'm not sure why she won't leave while you fix the problem but agree wholeheartedly that you should insist she leave immediately and both find for her and PAY FOR HER TO STAY IN a motel for the few days you say you need for the fix. Hope that helps!
If it's only going to take a few days, why do you want her to find another apartment? I agree with the others, you should offer to put her up in a motel until the issue is fixed.
Find a cheap motel for $300/wk. and hire a contractor. $2000 and a week later it will be done right and you can sleep at night. You may even be able to claim it all on your insurance since this was caused by a water main break. Make sure you take pictures before the repaires are done.
If she is super bull headed and won't even stay in a free hotel, you may have legal grounds to evict her in a 3 day imminent danger statute in your state. Basically she is preventing you/your contractor from doing the repairs because she is living there and therefor threatening the health and living conditions of other tenants.
Whats the Problem! When my Bosses apt ceiling fell in Kitchen & Bath My boss stayed & the repairs were done while she was home. She H/C! I had the joy of Cleaning up the mess when they were done. Yecky mess of Water & Bird Sh*t YECK!! I think you are looking for an excuse to get rid of her. We are NOT getting the Full Story!! You do realise SHE can call the Health Dept on you??
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