Tenant Emergency Contact: Fill & Download for Free

A property I was looking at buying about ten years ago actually had this happen. It's an ugly reality.The tenant that was hospitalized (and evicted) apparently had no family to turn to to handle matters like paying bills and rent. And this tenant had a longer term hospitalization; even with a slow moving eviction process the eviction was completed prior to the tenant's release from the hospital. The tenant's stuff was still in the rental unit, since there is state law that requires that a tenant's abandoned personal property must be handled in specific ways, with storage of it required to a certain extent.The stuff still being in the unit during the showing, with a padlock on the door to that unit, not the stuff a landlord wants to see and deal with.But as a landlord you have a few choices. I would start with the tenant's emergency contacts; as a landlord, you should have such a list for each and every tenant. Hopefully, the tenant's emergency contacts are aware of the situation and have been instructed to act in some way. Maybe they pay the rent, maybe they were told to get a mover to put stuff into storage.And if the tenant's emergency contacts aren't able to act, then you face the potential of long term non-payment of rent. A tenant with the means to pay will instruct their emergency contacts to do so. So we're talking now about the tenant who needs that next paycheck to pay the rent. How big of a paycheck is the tenant earning while being hospitalized? How's that going to pay the rent? With the tenant behind on rent, how realistic is it for them to get all caught up on rent while hospitalized? Or even after release, if unable to immediately resume working?Eviction is almost always a last resort for a landlord. Sometimes circumstances are such that there is no really good alternative, and the landlord has to be prepared to evict when the only options all look like the landlord will continue to lose rental income. Yes, evict when you have tried all options that will get you paid.EDIT: below is a link to a story of a tenant who was hospitalized for a number of months:July Walters's answer to What is the most savage revenge you have gotten on someone who wronged you or someone you care about?

You did not write anything regarding trying to contact the tenant - that is the first thing you try to do, whether it be by email, phone call or text message.If attempts at contacting the tenant have failed, then the next people to contact are the people the tenant gave you as the emergency contacts. What's that you say, you did not get any emergency contacts for the tenant? Well, then you should make it a point to add that to the information you collect from all tenants, and get it from all the tenants you already have ASAP.There are a number of places the tenant might be - traveling for work on a business trip, on vacation, in the hospital (and in a coma even while there), incarcerated even - where getting in contact might be unsuccessful, but yet the tenant has not given up the rental unit.Now, if the place has been cleared out, and this tenant did a midnight move out, then that's a bit of a different story; but even then you still try to make contact (including emergency contacts).If you should decide for some reason that changing the locks is a course of action you feel you must take, then do post a sign very conspicuously on the door near the changed locks advising that if the tenant does need access that the tenant is to contact you since you had changed the locks.

In the U.S. is a landlord legally required to give his/her tenant an emergency contact for when the landlord is traveling? How does this work for an owner-occupied multi-family house?No.If there were such a law, it would be state-controlled, not applicable to the entire United States. So California would have one law and New York would have another.Having said that, I haven’t heard of any state having such a law. And I can imagine a million complications.How is travel defined?Must the landlord be x miles away from his/her regular site?Over what period of time must the landlord be traveling? One day? One week? One month?What authority would the landlord give to the “emergency contact”?How is “emergency” defined?What would suffice for a “contact”? Phone? Email? Address? Fax number?What if the landlord is unreachable but not travelling?And it could work any number of ways for an owner-occupied building.So: No law.For more information, please contact an attorney.