Landlord Asks If He's A Jerk For Making His Tenants Move When They Have A Terminally Ill Child In Hospice

Recently, a 47-year-old man turned to the AITA community for a moral judgment. “I inherited a property from my father 11 years ago. For the past five years I’ve been renting the house to a nice family with a young child (5M),” the Redditor who goes by Unique_Jaguar9688 wrote and added that the family has been “great tenants and there haven’t been any issues.”

A month ago, however, the author was approached by a realtor about selling his property. “He had a buyer who was interested and was ready to offer $60,000 over the market because of the location,” Unique_Jaguar9688 said. He saw it as an “opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

So the author contacted Michael, the father of the family who’s been renting his house for the past five years, to tell him he won’t be renewing the lease.

It turns out the situation in the family was critical since their 5-year-old child was terminally ill.

A non-renewal lease letter states if the landlord or renter does not plan to renew the lease for another term. Most states require renters to notify their landlord on their plan to not renew their lease within a certain timeframe, typically 90 to 120 days before the lease ends, but this varies depending on your state.

As a general rule, landlords and tenants do not have to give a reason for choosing not to renew a lease. But according to the Tenant Resource Centre, this can be exceptionally damaging to long-term tenants where nothing is in writing.

Over the years, the staff members of the Tenant Resource Centre have heard a “fair share of elderly renters, calling to say that they've lived in their home for 20 plus years, it's been years since they had a written lease, and suddenly they get a 28-day non-renewal notice.” They explain that “sometimes it's because of a change of owner, sometimes it's because the owner wants to renovate, or give the unit to their kid who just got a divorce.”

The two reasons why a landlord is not allowed to not renew the tenants’ lease are discrimination and retaliation. “A landlord cannot give you a non-renewal, and cannot choose to not renew your lease, for reasons that are discriminatory. Discrimination means giving tenants different treatment because they are different from other tenants in a way that is protected by the government. There are lists of protected classes on our Discrimination page,” the Tenant Resource Centre states.

Meanwhile, “Retaliation means that the landlord opted to not renew your lease because you asserted or attempted to assert your rights as tenants (the exact lists are in Wis. Stat. 704.45, ATCP 134.09(5) and MGO 32.12(4)).” For these reasons, a landlord cannot give the tenant a non-renewal.