Unscheduled exterminator attempted to enter my unit without notice or invitation Yesterday there was a knock on my door and then I could hear my door being unlocked. Someone was attempting to enter my unit, he had keys so he unlocked the door and deadbolt, but I had the security latch on the door locked so he could only open the door an inch. I asked &quot;Can I help you?&quot; and he said he was an exterminator here about the roaches. I have none and have had no communication from my building about a roach problem and/or an exterminator visit. I told him he had the wrong apartment. He said he was spraying everyone, and I told him I didn't want it and he left. Had I not had the latch in place and he did enter the apartment, I would like to know if his entry would have been a violation of my lease. My lease says: 14. Right of Access by Landlord. Tenant shall permit reasonable access to Landlord, and any of Landlord’s invitees, agents, or contractors, in accordance with local statues and ordinances, upon receiving 2 days’ notice by mail, telephone, written notice or other means designed in good faith to provide notice. Landlord shall have immediate access to the Premises in case of emergency and where repairs or maintenance elsewhere in the building unexpectedly require such access. Landlord shall give Tenant notice of such entry within two days after such entry. For the bottom part, do imaginary roaches count as an emergency? Not sure if I should complain about this, if it's not a violation I'm at least irritated about it.
Not even real roaches are an emergency. The event was foreseeable and scheduleable. According to the terms of your lease, you are entitled to a 2 day warning. From your description, the landlord did not violate the lease, but he came close to it, perhaps to the point that the courts would consider it as good as a breach. In Chicago, §5-12-050 of the municipal code mandates 2-day notice, and the following section says that If the landlord makes an unlawful entry or a lawful entry in an unreasonable manner or makes repeated unreasonable demands for entry otherwise lawful, but which have the effect of harassing the tenant, the tenant may obtain injunctive relief to prevent the recurrence of the conduct, or terminate the rental agreement pursuant to the notice provisions of Section 5-12-110(a). In each case, the tenant may recover an amount equal to not more than one month's rent or twice the damage sustained by him, whichever is greater.
As someone who acts for both landlords and tenants I would say that I have never seen exclusions for personal injury or death in a commercial lease. I would recommend that you have the whole lease reviewed by a solicitor dealing in commercial property, particularly as, as has been stated in another reply, exclusion of liability for personal injury or death is prohibited by UCTA. This would suggest there may be other provisions which, if not prohibited, are unreasonable and you should be aware of the commitments you are taking on prior to signing This pure speculation, but the fact that those clauses would not be in a standard lease precedent does make me wonder if the landlord has done a DIY job and produced a lease from the internet suitable for another jurisdiction.
Many states require an escrow of rent for habitability issues, simply not paying rent can be grounds for eviction proceedings. Illinois has a statute for deducting a repair from rent (765 ILCS 742/5). If it’s less than half the monthly rent and less than $500, a tenant can inform the landlord of the repair required. If the landlord has not provided a repair within 14 days, the tenant can have the repair completed in a workman like manner by someone having the appropriate licenses. In this case, if you’ve notified the landlord and they’ve done nothing, you can have an licensed exterminator come and treat the property. BUT... your lease may override this statute. Many leases include terms that the tenant is responsible for pest control - since often it’s the tenant’s lack of cleanliness that draws pests (not in all cases of course). So definitely review your lease and discuss with someone who is more familiar with IL law. Note that Chicago has its own interesting laws that may add to or contradict IL laws.
Presumably the lease contains an automatic renewal provision that says unless you give notice 60 days in advance, you commit to another month (otherwise, you can just leave at the end of the month). The landlord may have made a math error, or they may be misinterpreting what the agreement says. Most likely it says that the duration of the lease is a month, meaning a whole month, which can have between 28 and 31 days. Unless otherwise stated in the agreement, that means &quot;to the last day in any given month&quot;. A 60 day notice provision states the minimum number of days to stop automatic renewal, not the maximum or exact number of days. The language of the agreement will most likely say something to the effect that the duration of the lease is a month, and that is what the courts will enforce.
Fully enclosed area means being inside something, likely a non-see-through fence. You will not convince anyone that a trash can is &quot;fully enclosed; it is a container, which is called out. Your chance of litigating this successfully is approximately zero unless your goal is to spend money and force the HOA to do the same. You can certainly ask what the expectation is or examples that meet the requirement. Your ability to fight your issue by citing other installations is limited unless they are forcing you to do something other homes are not required to do. &quot;I can see your can with a drone&quot; will not let you leave your trash can out.
It is the tenant's responsibility to understand the written contract. Oral statements about the contract do have to be consistent with the written contract (that is, in the context where you ask the landlord what a particular clause means before signing -- not in the case where you are modifying an existing contract). If I were renting a room and the contract says "Du må betale $1000 hver dag", which I don't understand because my Norwegian is terrible, I would ask about this, and the landlord might say that it means "You must pay $1000 every month", which could be a decent deal. Actually, the clause says "You must pay $1000 every day". When the reality of the situation becomes clear, then it is obvious that we didn't have an agreement in the first place. Perhaps he mis-spoke, or his English is as bad as my Norwegian, but I would not be held to rate in the written contract, assuming that I could back up my claim that he gave me that interpretation: the lease would probably be voided, as not an actual agreement. The underlying principle is that there has to be a "meeting of the minds" where the parties understand what they will get and what they must give, and there was a demonstrable failure of understanding. On the other hand, if I sign a contract without really reading it carefully, and there is a clause in English (which I speak) saying that I have to pay $1000 a day, but I didn't really think about the clause so that in a sense I didn't understand what I had agreed to, well, I may still be on the hook. (On the third hand, a court would probably say that's a ridiculous rent and void the contract on policy grounds). In general, "not my first language" is not a get-out-of-contract card, though attempts to trick people into signing documents in languages that they really have no understanding of won't be successful. Virtually nobody but a lawyer actually understands contractual language, yet contracts are enforced all the time. A contract can be explicitly modified by verbal agreement, or can be entirely verbal, but oral agreements face evidence problems, namely, what exactly did A and B say? It's scientifically well established that parties can be morally certain that the conversation went "A" (for one person) and "Not A" (for the other person). Using "could" rather than "would" in speech makes a huge difference in interpretation. There is a rule, the parol evidence rule, which essentially says that unless there is a good reason to not do so, the contract as written is what is enforced. Even if the conversation had been written into the contract, there's no basis in the contract for objectively determining whether a thing is old and "just broke". So even as an additional clause in the contract, it doesn't afford you a clear escape hatch. You might be able to prove with expert testimony that indeed the pipes had been corroding for a hundred years, and you could not have caused the pipes to burst.
Assuming you have an assured shorthold tenancy, it's not the landlord himself that can evict you. The process is that he serves you notice, and if you don't move by the time the notice period ends, then he has to go to court in order to obtain a court order to end the tenancy. The landlord must demonstrate to the court that he has properly served notice to the tenant. This is a bit of a grey area, but this article suggests that, to avoid ambiguity, the landlord should either use recorded delivery (which would provide proof as to whether or not the tenant received it), or deliver it by hand with an independent witness present. In the case of a section 21 "no fault" eviction, the only defence a tenant has is that the correct procedure has not been followed. So it is in the landlord's interest to ensure that notice has been received beyond any doubt.
The government of California has an extensive manual that says what you can and cannot do. To terminate a lease (a rental agreement for a year is a lease), there would have to be just cause for eviction (p. 65), such as failing to pay rent, violating terms of the agreement, cockfighting, and so on, and that does not include being a pain in the neck. Nor would the need to make repairs justify terminating a lease. On p. 79 they clarify that retaliatory eviction for exercising their legal rights is prohibited per California Civil Code 1942.5, and will result in fines. P. 35 ff. covers landlords entering: you may enter to make repairs, but must give 24 hour written notice (6 days if mailed), entering between 8am and 5pm business days, but you can also arrive at alternative times orally. If the local code-enforcers require you to do some modifications on the property, that is a separate matter and does not create a just cause for terminating the lease. For instance, if the electric service is not properly grounded and they require you to fix that, that does not constitute the structure "being destroyed". If the repairs make the building actually and certifiably uninhabitable, you might be on the hook for finding lodging for the tenant for the period of the repairs, so ask your attorney about that. Assuming that the tenant is not somehow responsible for the problem being repaired, then you will almost certainly have to keep the person for the duration of the lease.