Legal Question in Business Law in California

If you are a Landlord and your Tenant refuses to abide by rules: keep children off landscaping, keep stairwells clear of children blocking, etc. and Tenants harassess Landlord yelling that the Landlord has no right to tell Tenant's kids to stay off landscaping, keep stairwell clear (kids don't live by---other Tenant's), what can a Landlord do?


Asked on 3/15/13, 8:09 pm

2 Answers from Attorneys

Charles Perry Law Offices of Charles R. Perry

The typical remedy for a breach of lease is the issuance of a Three-Day notice to either cure the breach or to move out. Alternatively, the landlord can simply issue a Thirty-Day notice to terminate the lease and require the tenants to move.

It is possible that the lease states additional notice requirements in case of breach. You must also respect those requirements. The notices described above are the most common, and come from California law on unlawful detainer.

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Answered on 3/16/13, 3:24 am
Bryan Whipple Bryan R. R. Whipple, Attorney at Law

Your Zip code suggests that the rental may be in Santee, and as far as I know, Santee does not have a rent control ordinance. If your property is affected by a rent control ordinance, you'd have to check it for additional limitations on the landlord's rights which might apply.

Issue #1 is whether the "rules" the children are breaking are part of the lease, or something that isn't mentioned in the lease at all. Giving a three-day notice to cure a breach won't work if there's no breach.

Next issue is whether the tenants are month-to-month or on a longer-term lease, say a one-year lease with seven months left. In the first instance, you can give a 30-day notice; in the other, you may have to wait for the lease to run out, then don't renew it.

You don't mention the extent to which you'd prefer keeping the tenants and enforcing the rules, on the one hand, versus getting rid of the tenants and finding new ones, on the other. I'm kinda assuming you'd like to get new tenants.

I would suggest that the landlord might want to obtain and study one or more of the paperback self-help law (or how-to) books on landlording or tenants' rights. Nolo Press has one called "The California Landlord's Law Book" that is pretty good (although it doesn't cover the issues of misbehaving children to any extent).

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Answered on 3/16/13, 12:34 pm


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