XI. ISSUES FOR RENTERS:LANDLORD/TENANT AND HOUSINGOPTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS
Under Vermont law there is no specific statute or code that concerns the rights of
tenants and landlords in emergency or disaster situations. However, Title 9 V.S.A. Chapter 137’s rules and regulations continue to apply as do Title 12’s eviction procedures. After a disaster, regardless of what statutory rights or obligations tenants or landlords may have, the reality may be that both tenant and landlord have suffered significant losses, and neither has any money. Often, landlord and tenant are under such stress that they have lost the ability to communicate effectively with each other, and our role as advocates is to help our client develop a reasonable solution to a situation in which both landlord and tenant are bound to lose.
Possible Claims Against a Landlord Negligence
Standard principles of negligence apply. If a landlord is aware of hazards in a
property offered for rent and fails to fix them, or if the landlord makes attempts to make repairs but does so without using the appropriate standard of care, the tenant may be able to sue the landlord for injuries he sustains that were proximately caused by the landlord’s negligence. If a landlord was unaware of the damage caused by the disaster, liability is unlikely to be found. Similarly, if the landlord was aware of the damage and advised the tenant not to enter the property for safety reasons, the tenant would be likely to be found to have entered at her own risk.
Illegal Eviction Tenants are protected from illegal eviction under 9 V.S.A. § 4463. Pursuant to §
4463(b), “[n]o landlord may directly or indirectly deny a tenant access to and possession of the tenant's rented or leased premises, except through proper judicial process.”
If a property is condemned or otherwise rendered uninhabitable by the disaster,
the tenant there is no illegal eviction because the disaster, not the landlord, is the reason why the tenant does not have access to the leased premises. The tenant is likely to be found eligible for emergency shelter and for rental assistance from FEMA. The tenant should immediately make arrangements with the landlord to remove salvageable possessions from the property and to discard rubbish and destroyed personal property. The landlord will be obliged to return the tenant’s security deposit, less any unpaid rent from prior to the disaster, within 14 days of the disaster or the time that the building was declared condemned or uninhabitable.
If the leased premises would be habitable but for the landlord’s failure to make
basic life safety repairs within a reasonable period of time, the tenant could possibly raise an illegal eviction claim against the landlord. However, the tenant is more likely to
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