I lost my job in July and have struggled with bills for the last month. One thing I always made sure to pay was the rent, even at the risk of losing my car. A few weeks ago, there was a family emergency that required me to go out of town. I left my children with my sister (due to them being in school) and proceeded to leave town to take care of it. She went to my apartment a few days ago to get the children's coats and some warmer clothes (I did not expect to be gone this long) and called to inform me that my key did not work. I got in touch with the property manager and he told me that my electricity had been shut off a couple of weeks ago. He told me he had to think of the integrity of the property. He told me that he had sent maintenance men in to get the food out of the fridge and had them change the locks. He also told me to wait to pay my rent until I had come back into town and could talk to him. It sounded like I was being evicted.
Can he do this? I have paid my rent, there was no eviction notice on the door or in the mailbox. There was food in the fridge and winter coats in the closet as well as all my worldly possessions in the apartment, it was obviously not abandoned. He did not try to contact me via email which is how we correspond. Im at a loss and am not quite sure what to do.
Is having your power turned off justifiable cause for having your landlord change your locks?
This isn't an illegal eviction at all.
If you vacate the premises for more then 50% of the rental period, in your case 2 weeks, it is legally abandoned property.
He had to store your things, you will need to pay him to recover them.
Is having your power turned off justifiable cause for having your landlord change your locks?
My question to you is, did you change the locks yourself and fail to give the landlord copies of the keys. If you did, they were perfectly justified in having the locks changed. In this case expect a locksmith bill in addition to the cost of the locks. The landlord may have been alerted to you power being out, buy many means, for example door bell didn't work, phone answering machine never answers, no lights at night, smell of rotting food and so on....
My lease requires the tenant to have all utilities on during the entire lease. This means electric, and gas for units with gas stove, and hot water. For units that only use gas for heating, the gas must be on during the entire heating season. Failure to comply, is a lease violation and can result is eviction.
You are fortunate you landlord did not start an eviction action for failure to maintain the interior of the apartment and committing waste on the property.
Does the lease require that electric be paid? If it does, then technically you have breached the lease by not paying it. Nevertheless, the landlord cannot enter and change the locks and proceed with eviction without proper notice. Now since you were out of town, he may not have been able to contact you to provide proper notice, so that is an issue. But with the electric being off, that probably constitutes an emergency situation, in which the landlord does have the right to enter and guarantee the safety of the property. You need to be in communication with them now, and ask them to justify changing the locks and ask them if they plan to evict you.
he absolutly cannot do this!!! this is an illegal eviction. he cannot change the locks on you! the only way he could do this if you abandoned your property, and a couple of weeks is not enough time to consider it abandoned, especially if you were up to date on your rent! tell him if he does not IMMEDIETLY rectify this situation by giving you keys to the new locks and prorated the time you were locked out from your rent, you will take him to small claims court for wrongful eviction, where you will recieve treble damages!
1- You say that you had food in the fridge, but your electricity was cut off. So what do you think was happening to that food ?
2- Have you read your contract ?
- Does your contract say that you must maintain all your utilities in order ?
- Are the utilities under your name or the landlord's name ?
- When the utility company came to cut off power, did they have to ask the landlord for access to the power grid so they can cut it off ?
- Did the landlord have a copy of your apartment key, or did you have it changed without letting him know ?
As you can tell by now, it seems like you may have left out part of the whole story.
