All Forum Posts by: Sam Leon

From a landlord's perspective, I would recommend the tenant get this dog.

Model:B9108 SKU:6315620

Best Buy has it for $119.99.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/joy-for-all-companion-pet-pup-golden/6315620.p?skuId=6315620&ref=212&loc=1&ref=212&loc=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoKzsBRC5ARIsAITcwXFnuOhnzI-lnMFUTyoBHWWmCMZYvWGyp_4Hm4EcS00OdRV4K5JJOGwaAsllEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Roommate 1 asking you to allow them to pay partial rent due to non-use is unreasonable.  If the roommate is a traveling salesman and only use the property on weekends, do they expect you to charge only 2 days out of 7 every week?  The room is occupied with their possessions correct?  So it's occupied period.  The only time I have reimbursed tenants for non-use is because I require their absence for some remedial action, such as when I had to fumigate a building for termites, and coordinated for all tenants to leave for 48 hours and I reimbursed them for the non-use as written in the lease a daily rate for such situations.

Roommate 1 and 2 need to be part of the solution to make this work, with your help.  Since you are also living there and occupying one of the bedrooms, do you have a good idea which roommate is more trouble then it's worth?

Also curious, you indicated roommate 1 is a single occupant, yet your used the pronoun "They" over and over again in referring to roommate 1.  Does it mean roommate 1 is a non-binary sex person?  I know a non-binary is supposed to be referred to as "they" when being addressed but have never bumped into one.

Lots of questions.

Are they intending to take the DW with them when they move out, or are they leaving that to you?  Who owns the DW once it's in place?

Who will do the install?  You or the tenant?  There is a hot water supply connection, a drain hose connection to the sink cabinet either to the branch of the sink tailpiece or the disposer, it may involve doing at least a high loop or better with an air gap.  There is also an electrical connection hardwired or plugged.  It's not a difficult task but not something you want someone unexperienced to do and assume the liability if something leaks later.

Who will maintain/repair the DW once it's installed?  If it doesn't work does your tenant call you to report the issue or does he call for service?  Since the service warranty is most likely in his name.

Do you then have to go remove the old DW, transport it somewhere for storage or will you dispose of it?

Cannot charge any pet rent, pet fee, pet deposits.  An ESA is not a pet.

Sadly, many ESAs are indeed pets in disguise, totally unfair to people with real mental conditions.

Verifying some who claims to have an ESA is a challenge we all face from time to time and we are handcuffed by the law with so many loop holes.

Not necessarily.  While I think 99% of the ESA claims are total BS, I cannot deny more than one animal out right.

You can certainly have a service animal and an emotional animal.  A person that's blind needing a seeing eye dog and also some sort of anxiety disorder needing an ESA, and are two different animals.

While this is unlikely, I did have several inquiries recently from potential applicants saying they have multiple service animals.  The main issue here is they don't even know the different between service animals and ESA, they are mostly likely repeating what their friends told them "just say you have service animals and they will back off".  So when I told them I gladly accept service animals and emotional support animals, then went on to tell them their respective definitions and how I just need to have them provide a doctor's letter for me to call and verify, they never bother to follow through with the application.

But going back to whether multiple ESAs are legal, I did a search and there doesn't seem to be specific clauses on HUD about whether multiple assistance animals are OK, but I found this:

Michigan State College Of Law Animal Legal and Historical Center FAQ on ESA

At least this is the interpretation from a legal profession and on item #14 of the FAQ:

14. Can a person have more than one service or emotional support animal?

While there do not seem to be any cases dealing with the issue of multiple emotional support animals, the basic requirements for this reasonable accommodation would still be the same. In other words, if a person were claiming the need for multiple emotional support animals, then he or she would need documentation supporting this need from his or her physician or medical professional. The practitioner would need to provide documentation that each support animal alleviated some symptom of the disability.

 So I guess technically one person can have multiple ESAs as long as the doctor treating the patient prescribe that.

One other thing I found while reading through this FAQ is the following.

17. What about the emotional support animals/assistance animals of my guests?

HUD does not cover this issue specifically in its notice to housing providers. However, the underlying purpose of the FHA is provide an equal opportunity to use and enjoy housing regardless of disability. If a tenant cannot have a particular guest over who uses a service or assistance animal, then the tenant may be deprived of the ability to use and enjoy his or her dwelling based on the presence of a disability. There do not yet appear any published legal cases that have reviewed this issue. In 2011, the United States District Court for the District of Nevada entered a consent decree (a settlement of a lawsuit where a party agrees to take an action without admitting liability) on a this issue. The complaint in the underlying case alleged that the defendants declined to allow a friend of their tenants who uses a service animal to visit the tenants' apartment. The defendants then evicted the tenants based on the service animal's presence in the apartment. As plaintiff, the United States alleged that this denied the tenants the "full enjoyment of their apartment at Defendants' apartment building." See U.S. v. DeAngeli, Case No. 3:11-CV-00796-RCJ-WGC (July 8. 2013), available at http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2013/10/30/deangelisettle.pdf. As part of the agreement, the defendants had to agree to comply with the Fair Housing Act, create a policy for assistance animals in their apartment building, undergo education and training on the issue, and abide by other requirements of the consent decree.

I am more worried about a guest's ESA.  You can't screen a guest.  So if your lease allows a guest to stay for say 7 days a month, technically you have to allow that guest who has an ESA to visit with an ESA without your having an opportunity to verify.  As a matter of fact, your tenant may have a dozen close friends all having ESAs who visit from time to time.  How would any Landlord do?  There is really no defense against such abuse because there is no clause you can put in the lease to prevent that and there is no verification possible to guard against it.  

Possibly.

If your number rings straight to the "ESA Mill" then more than likely you will get no where.

If you end up reaching the actual doctor named in the certified letter, most likely that doctor has some sort of arrangements with the ESA certification company to use his/her name in that capacity.  The more likely outcome is you would reach the reception of the doctor's office and not able to reach the actual doctor.  They will have to take a message and pass the message onto the doctor for a call back that will never be returned.  If you tell them you want to talk to Dr. Smith about patient "Alex" or you want to verify that Dr. Smith has prescribed an ESA for patient Alex, my bet is you will be told they would mention HIPPA and say they can't discuss any patient or disclose any medical informaton unless the patient grant written permission to them prior, and even if your applicant is to write such letter, they will not do anything because there is no way they can verify the applicant IS the person writing the disclosure permission letter, especially since "Alex" has never been treated there.  However, you may be able to use the ability to verify "Alex" as a reason to reject the applicant and ESA.

I am guessing 5 days is the time it takes for the dead animal say a rat to be eaten by a larger animal like a possum, skunk or raccoon?  Or 5 days is how long it takes for a whole army of ants to consume a rat whole?

I don't allow improvement or repair by tenants either.

It's a bit more complicated then whether the tenant will mess up the sink change out.  There is also the issues of liability and ownership.

By changing out the sink, he would have to redo a bunch of stuff such as drain connection, water supply connections, garbage disposer, dishwasher hook up etc etc etc...so let's say after the sink was put in two months later a leak develops under the sink.  Who's responsible?  Would that be him who did all that stuff?  Didn't tighten enough a supply hose or nicked the dishwasher hose accidentally?  What if the leak was undetected for a while and caused additional damages to the cabinet sides and bottom and the flooring below?  Or would it be you the landlord who should be responsible for plumbing "failures" in general?

Who owns the improvement?  When a tenant buys his or her own refrigerator it's theirs and they can remove it when they leave.  When they buy a sink and modifies your countertop and plumbing to fit, they can't take it with them.  But can they claim they own the improvement and want some rent credit or payment in exchange at the end of the lease?  Like you want to charge them $450 for cleaning, painting and recarpeting, he saids he put in a sink for you that's worth $500 so you owes him $50 back?

What about issues that arises during the install?  He goes to buy a deeper bigger sink, ripped yours off, widens your countertop sink cutout, only comes to find out, that the extra depth of the sink lowers the disposer outlet enough to not work with the existing drain stubout at the wall.  Now he needs a shallower garbage disposer but he may want you to pay for it.  You can't go back to the old sink because the cutout has already been done.

The last time I allowed a tenant to "improve", they wanted to just paint one room.  They rolled over electrical wall plates, rolled over edges of window blinds, dripped paint on baseboards...it was A LOT OF work to undo their work.

To me it's not worth it.

why 5 days?

Have you watched Fatal Attraction?