Why Can't Landlords Perform Self-Help Evictions?

When a landlord and a tenant sign a lease contract, they agree to fulfill certain obligations. If one party avoids those obligations, the opposing party is entitled to seek remedies provided by the contract, statutes, and common law.?

Every tenant must pay rent each month. If they don't, the landlord can terminate the contract and evict the tenant. However, the eviction must be done by court order, not by self-help. So, even if the tenant has overstayed their lease, stopped paying, or failed to complete their contractual obligations in any way, landlords can never take matters into their own hands and perform a self-help eviction.?

What Is a Self-Help Eviction??

A self-help eviction is a situation where the landlord evicts a tenant without going through the proper steps of the legal eviction process. This activity is illegal in almost every state and usually results in a lawsuit.?

Now let's explore some of the most common self-help eviction activities.?

Changing the Locks of the Rental Property?

The most common way landlords perform self-help evictions is by changing the locks of the rental property. They usually wait for the tenant to leave the property to change the locks. Even though the rental property belongs to the landlord legally, it is illegal to change the locks and lock the tenant out of the property without going through the legal eviction process.

Shutting off the Utilities in the Rental Property?

Landlords are required by law to provide a suitable living space for their tenants. That means providing all the necessary utilities, like water, gas, and electricity. If you shut off those utilities, your rental property will become inhabitable.

Many landlords use this method as a way to evict tenants, even though it is illegal.??

Moving the Tenant's Belongings

Another common self-help eviction activity is moving the tenant's belongings. Moving a tenant's belongings without their permission to make them move out of your rental property is illegal. Also, you would have to enter the rental property without the tenant's permission to move their belongings. Thus, you will also be committing a trespassing offense.?

Harassment

As a landlord, you can ask the tenant to leave your property if their rent is overdue or if they perform other lease violations. However, you cannot threaten or blackmail them into leaving or follow them to their work to ask them to leave. If you do that, it will be considered harassment.?

• Other, less common, self-help eviction activities include:
• Damaging the tenant's property
• Sending intimidating letters to the tenant
• Threatening to cause physical harm if the tenant doesn't move out
• Refusing to make necessary repairs?
• Removing doors from the property
• Breaking windows

All of the activities mentioned above will be seen as self-help evictions by the court and will give the tenant grounds to file a lawsuit against the landlord.?

What Will Happen if a Landlord Performs a Self-Help Eviction?

Performing a self-help eviction can get you into serious legal trouble. Every state has different penalties and consequences regarding self-help evictions. However, regardless of your state, the tenant has the right to sue you and plead their case in front of a judge and jury.?

Some of the consequences that you might face for performing a self-help eviction include the following:

• You can get sued for damages by the tenant
• The tenant can hit you with an injunction – a court order that will prohibit you from doing specific activities
• You might have to spend six months in jail
• If the tenant terminates the lease, you will have to pay back the security deposit and prepaid rent
• You can be prosecuted with a misdemeanor

As you can see, the consequences of performing a self-help eviction can be quite rigorous. So, if you ever need to evict a tenant, make sure you do it legally.?

How to Legally Evict a Tenant?

It's easy to get frustrated when a tenant doesn't pay rent, actively causes damage to your property, or doesn't want to leave when the lease agreement is up. You might be relying on the tenant's rent payments to pay your mortgage. Even worse, if the tenant is causing damage, you will have to pay for repairs before you lease the property again.?

However, in no situation should you try to evict the tenant yourself. As you can see, this will only cause you additional trouble. Instead, you should start the legal eviction process. Here's what you need to do:

• Understand the federal evictions laws and the laws in your state;
• Have a reason for evicting the tenant, like overdue rent, property damage, end of the lease agreement, etc.;
• Talk to the tenant and try to solve the issue;
• If you cannot solve the issue directly with the tenant, you have to make a notice in a record, which has to set forth a specified date for termination;
• If the tenant does not act according to the notice, you must ask the court to issue a judicial order. Only then can you claim execution according to the rules.

Past Court Cases Regarding Self-Help Evictions?

Countries that use the "common law" system rely heavily on previous court cases. In other words, decisions made in previous court cases govern how the court will decide on current cases. Of course, the cases have to be similar in nature.?

For example, the Mendes v. Johnson case from 1978 set a precedent for many future self-help eviction cases. During this case, the court decided to revoke the landlord's common law rights of self-help. The reasons behind the revocation of the landlord's common law rights of self-help were then accepted in many other similar cases.?

Concerning this issue, it is interesting to mention one new case from 2022 of the same court as above.?

Holmes v. Dist. of Columbia

In Holmes v. Dist. of Columbia, the plaintiff (the tenant) sued the District of Columbia and two police officers for wrongful eviction.?

Namely, the plaintiff called the police and reported that a man had changed the locks of her door. She explained to them that her father rented the home, and she lived there for two years. After reviewing the documentation, which shows that the person who changed the locks had recently purchased the house from the landlord, the police officers directed the plaintiff to leave upon threat of arrest, and she did it.

What is interesting in this case is that the liability for wrongful eviction includes the landlord and the District via its police officers, who intentionally assisted the landlord in making a wrongful eviction. And since the police officers were involved in making the tenant leave the house, a unique question arose – did the police officers intentionally assist the landlord in wrongfully evicting the tenant, or did they only want to prevent a trespass??

The court concluded that the landlord's action was a self-help eviction and, therefore, not in accordance with the law. The landlord evicted the tenant without permission from the court, which is illegal. Since the landlord performed a self-help eviction and the police officers knew it, the court extended the liability to them and found out that they intentionally assisted in executing such an eviction.

However, the trial court reached a different conclusion. It concluded that the officers only intended to prevent the trespass, which is opposed to assisting an eviction. The trial court examined the following:

• The tenant's call for landlord-tenant relations
• The fact that the buyer did not live in the house before
• The fact that the tenant's belongings were in the house

With these facts, the court could not conclude that the tenant was only a trespasser in this situation. The court decided that the police officers acted as best as they could have under the circumstances – a person trying to enter a house without the right key and without a written document proving that she was a tenant.?

Even though the trial court concluded that the police officers didn't intend to assist in a wrongful eviction, it stressed that even if the plaintiff didn't have a lease or didn't pay the rent, it wouldn't be sufficient to establish that she was not a tenant. The court concluded that the possibility of a wrong eviction is open even if the plaintiff's (the tenant's) occupancy is less than some sort of tenancy.?The point from the Holmes case is that even if a police officer is willing to assist an eviction, a landlord should seek a valid court order before taking any action to remove a tenant from a property.?

The Bottom Line

Landlords cannot perform self-help eviction because such evictions are illegal and punishable by law. There are many different ways a landlord can perform a self-help eviction, and the tenant has the right to sue the landlord for damages if such eviction happens.

So, if you want to evict a tenant, you must do it the legal way. Avoid taking matters into your hands at all costs since it will cause you more harm than good in the long run.?