Re: Can we sue tenants for damages to us - abusive

Re: Can we sue tenants for damages to us - abusive by Mary (Calif) on December 1, 2009 @23:43

Thanks for your reply. We're in the Central Coast, a small community in an unincorporated area near Santa Maria. People in this community joke that it was built on an ant hill, because all the ground has small brown ants that like to come in especially if it rains, or is too dry for too long, or you leave too much food out. I had told the tenants about that before they moved in and gave them a 1/2 gal. container of the best ant spray to periodically spray the perimeter of the house. In their list of complaints is that they had to buy ant traps and box elder bugs crawl in around the window screens, and quoted me the civil code about infestations of ants, roaches, and rodents making the place uninhabital. Of course, there's no roaches (unless they brought them with them from Montana), but since it's a good sized lot, there's probably a few mice outside. They have two cats and found a dead bat on their front steps so they're saying we have nesting issues!
I have pretty good ideas about what I've done wrong so far, mostly not screening deeper, and not giving written notices sooner about things like not taking care of the landscape, but now I need to know what to do next. It seems I can't evict them since they have a year lease, they've sent the notice of conditions to me and to evict them now would seem retalitory, plus the husband is supposedly joining the Navy so there's even more protection for them there. They have just cost us so much in a few ways in the last week or so that I'm frustrated and more than anxious to be rid of them. Of course I'd gladly release them from the lease but they don't want to move now. I'm also wondering if we can sue them.
Mary

[ Reply ] [ Return to forum ]

Re: Can we sue tenants for damages to us - abusive - Landlord Forum thread 192507