Tenants showing COVID symptoms but will not get tested

"AND show me their results or I am raising their rent. "

Sounds illegal to me.

Your house - your rules. Do they have subleases? When do they expire? Is there a clause in there about safety or other? Tell them that you'll keep their security deposit.

R2 I have them on a month-to-month lease, but there isn't a clause about safety -- they moved in last summer, before COVID. I will back off on raising rent because I don't want to do anything illegal, but I feel like I'm stuck here and am being willfully endangered.

Look up the laws about disease transmission or even the latest COVID. There should be something in there about communicable diseases.

Can you call up the town health department and ask advice?

Seems like the OP's tenants aren't the only "limited" people on this thread.

Got a mirror OP?

OP, it's month-to-month, what's the problem? August is just about over, so tell them they're chucked out by eob 8/31/20.

And try to be home as much as you can once you tell them, so they have less opportunity to fuck your house up.

R7, I would think OP has a 30 day notice clause, in where he or the tenants can give 30 days notice to the other party if he wishes to have them vacate. Is that the case OP?

As a landlord you cannot demand they be tested, and you certainly can't demand they show you their results. Using a rental increase as a means to get this information is blackmail, which is also illegal.

Can't you chain them to the bed?

If they have otherwise been good tenants you should leave them alone. What if they are positive? They are in their rented home. If they have it they will probably be over it before you get them evicted and you have already been exposed.

OP, I had an issue a while back with a tenant destroying the house. In most of these cases, the only thing you can legally do is evict them. To evict them, you have to file eviction papers with the city or county, I forget which. There’s a form you fill out, IIRC.

You don’t have a right to a tenant’s medical records, that’s an invasion of privacy. At this point, I would contact the Health Department and tell them what’s going on and see what they say.

What I was told about the eviction was that if the housing came furnished, the time to evict was much shorter. If they contested it or refused to cooperate, eventually you could get them out but you have to file and go to court. Where I live, it’s a couple of months to do that, although I was told (pre-Covid) that people usually just leave after getting a notice to evict.

What I ended up doing was offering them $1000 cash to leave immediately. They left. I had a person come and sit in the house with me while they packed. The person stayed until I followed his car out of the complex. He returned the key (check the key; he gave me a different key back and I had to change the locks). Change the locks.

Next time you write a lease, make sure it has some type of umbrella conditions where you have grounds to evict. Damaging the property, making noise, whatever. If you want them to wear masks in common areas or get a Covid test, you better put it in writing. If they don’t sign it and agree to it, I doubt you have grounds to make them. My guess is you’d have a very hard time finding tenants that want to wear a mask in their own home.

The other advantage to paying them off, if they agree, is they know where you live and you don’t want them pissed off at you if you can help it.

[quote]What I ended up doing was offering them $1000 cash to leave immediately.

I had a similar problem. Once they accept the offer any contract you had with them is broken. The roommate I had needed the money to pay for the first month's rent at the next place. Getting rid of him was worth the aggravation.

OP, it sounds like you have a litany of problems here, and most of them belong to YOU. You cannot force a tenant to do most of the things you're suggesting, or you could be the former-owner of a townhouse if they decide to go after you. And you better check if your state or municipality have non-evict statutes in effect before you try to terminate. If I were you, and thankfully I'm not, I'd wear my mask, sanitize things that they have access to, and MYOB. You should take a crash-course in Landlording also, because I suspect you have not followed-through on many of the issues that could get you in trouble.

R12, the tenant I had seemed really nice, then within days he was trashing the place. I couldn’t believe it. He was acting like he had no idea there was a problem or anything was wrong. If he didn’t, he must have been on the spectrum or something because his behavior was not normal. It was definitely worth paying him off. Presumably he got housing elsewhere.

That gave me a scare. I couldn’t figure out if he’d lived in a barn his whole life and had no idea how to act indoors, or he knew exactly what he was doing and was gaslighting me while acting friendly and nice to my face. That was weird.