Legal Q&A:

Legal Q&A: Grease fire caused by tenant

July 31, 2017

Question: There was a grease fire in one of our rental units due to a tenant’s lack of knowledge of cooking. What is my obligation to provide alternate accommodations for this tenant? Am I required to keep her as a renter?

Answer: You are not obligated to put the tenant up. You may have a right to evict her based upon waste of the unit, which requires a three-day notice to quit.

Question: If the landlord accepts a rent payment from someone other than the lessee, does that give them any rights?

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Dear Ms. Moss, I want to personally thank you for your timely and very professional response. You are very thorough AND you provide examples and attachments how to find solutions and how to address the issues effectively. What you did would have taken me hours of research and still I wouldn't feel as confident in my ability because I am not up to date on how certain areas of a contract are practiced.

I was wary about joining CAA but after today I know I did the right thing and plan on continuing my membership for a long time.

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Andrea was very helpful and thorough. She provided different points and angles to my question for my consideration. In her questions she revealed that we need to revamp our internal paperwork and provided references from CAA's forms. I was very satisfied and felt confident in the decisions our company needs to make regarding the matter we sought with CAA. Thank you CAA. We appreciate your help.

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I recently needed to take a few hours of classes to complete my Recertification as a CAA California Certified Residential Manager. I found it very convenient to do this through on demand classes at my office. The classes are well done and gave great education to further my property management skills. I even registered my maintenance team to listen to some of the classes. It benefited us all.
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