This Week's Q & A

Q: When does a “visitor” become a permanent resident? My tenant’s lease specifies that she alone is to occupy the apartment. But her boyfriend spends every weekend in the unit without fail, a pattern I have noticed for at least the past six months. Additionally, the rental arrangement provides for one parking space, designated for the tenant’s car. But the tenant parks her car at her office and allows her “visitor” to park his car in this designated space, the cost of which is included in the rent. My tenant did not notify me of this arrangement when she signed the lease, but it did not take me long to figure out what was happening. Can you advise me on what steps I should take to deal with this situation?

A: Ignoring it probably would be the most sensible response, and, from a legal standpoint, the safest as well. In order to pursue any action against your tenant, you would have to demonstrate that her actions, or the actions of her “guest,” violate your lease. And it’s not at all clear from your letter that there are any specific violations you could cite. While there is no completely clear-cut legal distinction between a temporary visitor and a permanent resident, the attorneys I consulted agreed that the courts would probably define occupancy limited to weekends as temporary.

You would also be hard-pressed to characterize your car complaint as a lease violation. The lease allows your tenant to park one car in the designated spot; it shouldn’t matter whether the car is registered to her, her boyfriend, or some other relative or friend. As long as she is parking only one car in the spot (and assuming that we’re talking about a conventional automobile, and not a mobile home or a 30-foot yacht, about which you might have a legitimate complaint), your tenant probably is not violating her lease.

Forgive me if I’m misreading your letter, but it appears that your real concern may not be how much time this visitor spends in the apartment, or what kind of car is parked in the tenant’s space, but rather, who this visitor is and, more precisely, the nature of his relationship with your tenant. Could it be that you are offended because a man and woman who are not married are living together?

If that is the underlying issue, the law definitely is not in your favor. When it comes to the marital status of tenants, the Fair Housing laws say essentially, that’s none of your business. If you can demonstrate that sincere religious convictions prohibit you from having an unmarried couple occupy your apartment, a court conceivably might allow you to evict your tenant, as a means of protecting your religious freedom; but your disapproval of this relationship, on moral, ethical, or any other grounds, simply is not relevant, according to my legal sources. They suggest that before you try to initiate any action against this tenant, you should ask yourself if you would have the same objections if the weekend “visitor” were the tenant’s brother or sister, or if the offending car belonged to her mother or her boss. If you conclude, as seems likely, that this situation violates your moral sensibilities, but not your lease, you should tread very carefully; otherwise, you run the risk that your tenant will turn any complaint you try to pursue against her into a fair housing complaint against you.