Q: Can a landlord retaliate against tenant for invoking their rights?
-Girlfriend and I move into motel room since November of last year.
-Owners want us to leave for July 4th and tell a few days prior
-We tell them that we have to give us more notice than that.
-They offer(via text) us another room smaller but more money .
-We decline the offer because of the size of the room.
-They get upset that we invoke our rights so they have their lawyer draft a 14 day notice for non-payment.
Can they retaliate for us invoking our rights by doing an eviction for non payment?
They're saying that we haven't paid the last 2 weeks. Which would fall around the time when we were trying to come up with a solution. It doesn't make sense of them to offer us another room if we haven't paid for the last 2 weeks and for more money. Also nothing was mention about us owing anything in the messages as well.
They are only doing this because we invoke our rights and are upset we didn't leave when they wanted us to.
Can they do this?
A: Generally, a landlord is not precluded from commencing a nonpayment proceeding simply because of a dispute with a tenant over other issues. If the money is owed it is not retaliatory to simply demand payment that is due.
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