by John Merchant, JD

“What? Now how in the world would that work and why in the world might the Health Dept. be interested in doing that? And what would give them that right?”

Well, in many (most? all?) cities and counties around the country, it’s a violation of their Municipal Ordinances or County Regs and state laws, and their Health Regulations in particular, to live in any residence without lights, water or sewer or septic all working and in order.

So if their Health Dept. learns that anybody in their fair city is doing that – living in a house or apartment without lights, running water or sewer or septic – they’ll break all speed records to get those people out of that property, right now!

Frankly I did not know about this and it had never even occurred to me that this situation might work to the advantage of the Landlord until I experienced a series of events that woke me up and taught me a valuable lesson.

Several years back I was talking one day to a friend and he mentioned he was sure sick of dealing with one of his rentals, as the crummy tenant, a little unemployed woman who he suspected was a druggie, had not paid him any rent in months and had just told him that she didn’t intend to pay him rent and defied him to do anything about it.

I told him I might be interested in taking over that little property on right price and terms and I soon had the place in my name for a low purchase price.

Not that I knew any better than he did about how to go about evicting that bad tenant except through the usual costly and prolonged legal fight, during which time the Tenant would likely proceed to tear up the house, but I set out to contact the tenant and see for myself.

So one early winter evening I was at her door to talk to her if possible.

She came to the door and I proceeded to tell her I was now the owner and asked her what her plan was to catch up on the overdue rent and get current.

She told me basically the same thing she’d told my seller and sneeringly said she dared me to evict her.

I was standing there contemplating my options and thinking what to do next when I happened to see something really interesting.

She was standing in her front door, and behind her I caught a glimpse of a car battery on the floor, with a wire running to a battery powered lantern hanging from the ceiling light fixture and I remember thinking “How Odd! I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before and wonder why in the world she’s hooked up that contraption.”

So she and I parted ways and I still had no clue as to the best way to get her out and make that property start producing rent.

A couple of nights later, like maybe 3 or 4 am, it came to me (hey, I’m kinda slow sometimes!) WHY she was using that car battery and lantern.

Maybe her lights were turned off because her electric was off? And just maybe that was because of a delinquent, non-payment of the light bill!

Sure enough when I called the power company the next day, they confirmed that her electricity was indeed turned off and had been for months and they were very interested to know if I’d help them collect their $1000 + electric bill!

And then it came to me to wonder if that practice of using batteries for household electric power was maybe a violation of some kind to city ordinances. Maybe a fire hazard or something?

So I had a look at our city ordinances online and decided that this might be a concern to the city Health Dept as they might view it as an unhealthy or even dangerous way to live.

When I got one of the Health Dept (HD) folks on the line, they were immediately very interested in hearing about this situation and the HD employee I was talking to informed me with some emphasis that this was indeed an illegal, unhealthy and dangerous practice.

That HD employee immediately got one of their Health Inspectors on the line with me and he and I made a plan to go to the house within an hour, with a city police officer, and confront the offending tenant.

So within an hour we three met at that house and the police officer knocked on her door and ordered her to vacate that house NOW!

So while I was leaning on her front gate, just enjoying the little drama, she was forced to get her coat, leave the house and hand the keys to me.

She was a little more pleasant to me than she’d been earlier and asked if she might give me a call to make arrangements to get her things out of the house.

But my goal of getting her gone had been accomplished and she hadn’t even had time to further trash or destroy my little house and that was all I wanted.

So if you have a similar situation where you even suspect the Tenant has had his/her power, water or gas heat turned off, go check the meter on the outside of the house (probably can only do this practically if it’s your rental property) and you may find you have an easy way to evict that tenant, as I did.

In fact, think about how any occupant of any residence who’s causing you trouble, might well be in obvious violation of his/her/their law…such as maybe too many people living in the house, no working door, no lights or heat in the house, etc.

On any such situation it would just take you a few minutes to give your health dept. a call and see if this might be something of interest to them. You might find out, as I did, that the tenant or resident of such property is in big violation of your health department and the health department would immediately evict them for such. ##

(Editor’s note: always make sure you check the law in your jurisdiction and seek the advice of a legal professional before engaging in any such activity.)