Squatters' Rights in PA??? - Landlord Forum thread

Squatters' Rights in PA??? by Kelly on November 14, 2009 @17:40

Wow! Last night around 1am we got a call from a tenant about the neighbors fighting. The police were called and it turned out to be a domestic incident. My husband went down to the building. The woman was our tenant, and her boyfriend beat her up. BUT because the boyfriend said he had been living there with her over 30 days (we never OK'd this and she is the only one on the lease) the police would not make him leave unless she pressed charges. And if we wanted this dangerous man off our property we have to file a 30 day notice to quit (if he was on our lease we'd actually have more rights since our lease contains a waiver of the notice to quit.) We were told this by a rather arrogant cop on the scene, not by a the magistrate.

Is this true? Can just anybody become your "tenant" with the full protections of the law by sneaking into your unit? Wow.

Our tenant filed a PFA against Chris Brown and the police lead him off our property this morning. We still handed him a 30 day eviction notice just in case.

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Re: Squatters' Rights in PA??? by Ozzie on November 14, 2009 @22:43	[ Reply ]
Is there a stipulation in your lease about non-tenant visitors? Something like they are allowed to visit 5 days and then the tenant must have writen permission from you for the visitor's longer stay? It's whatever your signed lease allows.

Re: Squatters' Rights in PA???

Re: Squatters' Rights in PA??? by Anonymous on November 16, 2009 @17:58

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Even when you have it in your lease, the "visitors" can still become tenants, causing many LL's having to file for eviction with the wording "and all others" in the paperwork. What you would have to do is evict the tenant for violation of the lease (if you have a clause in yours about visitors, and anyone over a certain number of days having to file an application) because you are going to want her out, if it took her that long to press charges, she's probably going to let him back in.