7 ms·

No, they really can't. Maybe in a handful of places that have completely given up on the idea of tenant's rights, but this wouldn't fly in almost any major city

• qbasic_forever 4y ago
  Like I said it's shenanigans. Almost certainly the law is not explicit enough to say people are required to have a functioning key, it likely just says people are required to have residency of a unit. If gaining entry requires some ridiculous process and you sign a rental agreement agreeing to follow it then that's that.
  • californical 4y ago
    I’m pretty sure that “physical access” is a requirement for residency, and every single legal process would uphold that
    • qbasic_forever 4y ago
      Yes, and if you agree your physical access requires checking in with a front desk attendant then it's fine.
  • pgwhalen 4y ago
    The law is not a smart contract with exploitable loopholes; obvious malice like you describe would be found illegal.
    • qbasic_forever 4y ago
      It's not malice when it's in your rental agreement and you sign it.
      • JeremyBanks 4y ago
      • Spivak 4y ago
        Nope. Contract law doesn’t work like that. Signatures aren’t that powerful. You can’t sign away rights the law guarantees you. That part of the contract is just void. And hell, even if you could it would probably still be thrown out because a judge would look at it, see that it’s a take-it-or-leave it contract and that no reasonable person would assume such things are in a lease agreement and void it. If the contract said “and you agree to give me your life savings” somewhere in the fine print that doesn’t make it enforceable. It’s like half the point of having these things in law so landlords can’t put them in lease agreements.
      • PKop 4y ago
        It's illegal wherever you put it. This is a ridiculous thought experiment that doesn't reflect the reality of regulations on eviction process.
        • qbasic_forever 4y ago
          The law doesn't spell out that you have a key to the unit, only access to it. For all the law cares you might have a passcode, retina scan, or button or other non-key device to gain access. But if you agree in your rental agreement that the access requires you to ask a front desk employee then it's solid as far as the law is concerned.
          • mftrhu 4y ago
            "The law" is a thing that is going to be interpreted and enforced by a human judge, one who is likely going to frown upon a landlord's creative interpretation of it. A judge's job is not to apply the law to the letter, but to the spirit. They are not going to throw their hands up when a tenant is kept out of their unit, no matter what the landlord might have decided to sneak in into the rental agreement: the law is there to protect the tenant.
    • ChoHag 4y ago
  • judge2020 4y ago
    Tenant law is one of the few law areas that does, indeed, have extremely verbose language in most US states, and it almost always gives judges immense leeway to punish a party for bad faith actions.
    • qbasic_forever 4y ago
      It's not bad faith if it's clearly spelled out in your rental agreement and you sign it. That's why I say it's shenanigans, they know people won't realize the implications of what they're signing but when lawyers argue it in front of a judge it is crystal clear to the letter of the law.
      • PKop 4y ago
        You're just making stuff up. This is not how the law works.
      • wiml 4y ago
        If it's explicitly spelled out, then it's just an invalid contract. You can't contract for something that's illegal and thereby make it legal.
  • hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    > Almost certainly the law is not explicit enough to say people are required to have a functioning key, it likely just says people are required to have residency of a unit. Actually, the law is pretty explicit about that. And judges have a decent amount of leeway to determine if a landlord has been acting in bad faith. If you are a landlord, and you have a bad tenant, you are definitely not interested in any "shenanigans" if you have any amount of rationality. All you care about is getting a bad tenant out as soon as possible, and the last thing you'd want is for a judge to delay the process, or penalize you, because they have found that you haven't complied with the law.