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All boiler-plate lease agreements have at least this basic phrasing: “Tenant will (1) keep the premises clean, sanitary, and in good condition and, upon termination of the tenancy, return the premises to Landlord in a condition identical to that which existed when Tenant took occupancy, except for ordinary wear and tear; (2) immediately notify Landlord of any defects or dangerous conditions in and about the premises of which Tenant becomes aware; and (3) reimburse Landlord, on demand by Landlord, for the cost of any repairs to the premises damaged by Tenant or Tenant’s guests or business invitees through misuse or neglect.” (This is in a lease form sold at an office supply store - i.e., a pretty universal U.S. clause.)An excerpt from a different lease document (an old Boston lease document):“---CLEANLINESS: The Tenant must keep the Apartment in a clean and sanitary condition, free of garbage, rubbish and other filth. The Tenant is responsible for properly placing all garbage and rubbish in containers provided by the Landlord.”So yes, if you do not maintain the property in a clean and sanitary condition, your landlord can evict you if you refuse to, or are incapable of, keeping the property clean and sanitary.I tend to believe that you have a problem with “clean” - landlords have better things to do than police your apartment for cleanliness - so, what has the landlord told you? And how many times?Did he walk into your residence and find dirty dishes piled high in the sink - but there’s still one (1) clean dinner plate in the cabinet so you still don’t see the need to wash the dishes? Trash bins in the apartment overflowing with trash that hasn’t been disposed of in weeks? The soles of your shoes stick to the floor because you haven’t cleaned up spills on the floor in weeks? If you have a cat, the litter box hasn’t been cleaned in a week - or a month - and the stench (to which you are “nose blind”) is so bad one needs a gas mask to breath in the place. — — or worse?Or are you a hoarder, and there is only a 3-foot wide path through your piles of “stuff” to get from one room to another?Yes, we’ve seen them that bad. And worse. And yes, you can be evicted for any of the above.If any of the descriptions fit your behavior, I would suggest that you go out and purchase an apartment or little house in which you can live with nobody bothering you about cleaning up.If not, perhaps you need to find another place to live with a landlord who is not obsessively “clean”. They’re usually seen as slumlords, and some of the damaged done by the tenants could give you nightmares. Such as a large black spot on the kitchen wall, about the size of kitchen table that you suddenly realize is moving - it’s not dirt, it’s a massive swarm of LIVE COCKROACHES.

I had been negotiating a new office space lease for my law practice for about a month. The prospective landlord was also a lawyer, who had built a small office building to house his own firm and to lease out a couple of floors.Having negotiated such leases for myself and others at least a dozen times before, I found dealing with him unusually difficult. He seemed to have a “need to win,” almost as if we were in litigation against each other rather than negotiating the terms of a mutually agreeable sort of partnership.We started out with a list of some 25 changes I wanted to make to the lease he initially presented to me. In some cases the changes were just clarification language, but there were perhaps 12–15 substantive items. For each change, I proposed alternative language that I thought would meet his reasonable needs while also providing me needed protections.I found it strange that he would argue even about the clarification language, where there really was no change in his position, but soon realized it was so that when he conceded on those points, it would look like he was “compromising” while he remained adamant on the substantive provisions. But gradually we worked toward agreement, until finally he sent a letter saying he had made changes in accordance with my last letter and signed the lease; since we were now agreed and it had taken so long to negotiate, he said he was putting a 24 hour deadline on my return of the signed lease to him, with my signature, or the deal was off.His letter was delivered to my office on a Monday morning. The previous week, I had told him I was starting a trial that Monday morning so if he couldn’t get back to me by the previous Friday, I would be unavailable to respond to further negotiations until my trial ended, probably Wednesday or Thursday.So his letter and 24-hour deadline coincided with a time frame I had told him I’d be unavailable.Fortunately, my trial had settled. So I had time to carefully review the lease he sent me.He had indeed made changes in accordance to my last proposal. Had he left it at that, we would have had a deal.But he had also made a number of other changes — things he had never brought up before in any of our negotiations.None of them were huge items. The only one I still recall was that he had inserted language that made me responsible for replacing burned out tube lights in the overhead lighting fixtures (something that in fully-serviced spaces like the one I was renting was usually the responsibility of the landlord). That might have cost me at most about $200 a year in today’s dollars, maybe less, on a space for which I was preparing to pay over $50,000 a year in rent in today’s dollars. The others were equally insignificant or downright trivial.But they all imposed a financial cost on me that had not been part of our negotiation and they were all easy to miss in a 30+ page lease on legal size paper in single-spaced 10-point type.I wrote him back within his 24 hour deadline, saying that I took his last version to be a counter-offer to the last offer I had made, since it included items we had never discussed before.I told him that unfortunately I had to reject the counter-offer and that in view of the time we had both already devoted to the matter and his urgent need to have an immediate resolution, which matched my own need to move on to my second choice lease option on which I could now finalize a deal, I considered our negotiations at an end.I thanked him for his efforts at reaching an agreement, wished him success with his new building, and hoped we’d have an opportunity to work together on cases at some point in the future.He called immediately upon receiving the letter, and was “shocked” that I had backed out of our deal, claiming the new additions to the lease were inadvertent errors on the part of his secretary working from an old lease form. I told him I was sorry to hear that, but that technically, it was a counteroffer and I had rejected it, so there had never been a deal to back out of, and I was now in the process of finalizing my alternate location and had already made a verbal commitment to that landlord. He pointed out I hadn’t signed anything yet so I wasn’t legally bound. I agreed I was not legally bound, but since I had made a commitment, as long as the other side stuck to it so would I.I hope I am never so desperate to make a deal that I have to make it with someone who cannot understand that one can “win” at a relationship like partner, landlord-tenant, professional-client, etc., without anybody else having to “lose,” and who cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith. After that experience, I wouldn’t have signed a lease with that man if he had offered to shave 30% off the annual rent.My second choice option ended up being a very mutually satisfactory relationship with an excellent and very reasonable landlord, that endured in two separate office buildings over nearly 18 years. The initial leases, every renewal, expansion, tenant improvement project, was negotiated forthrightly, in good faith, and we always both came out winners.