[RPPTL LandTen] Repairs and Maintenance during COVID 19

[Mike Davis]

We have been getting several emails from landlords regarding their responsibility for repairs and maintenance that are deferable or can otherwise be postponed.  The repairs/maintenance to which they are referring are ones that don’t effect habitability (no a/c), aren’t required to correct a code violations, and don’t impact tenant safety.   Think a dripping faucet, a missing/broken cabinet door handle and the other inconveniences that aren’t crucial but are fixed in the normal course of a landlord’s daily maintenance requests.  My take-away from these emails is that the landlords are trying to reduce their risk of their maintenance techs contracting Coronavirus by only responding to essential maintenance, because even the healthy looking tenant could be a carrier that’s not sick yet.

The leases that these landlords have sent don’t really have anything that addresses emergency deferral/postponement of maintenance.  Chapter 83 Part II might help.  The tenant’s remedy for a landlord’s unilateral postponement of non-crucial maintenance would be a Tenant 7Cure.  But 83.56(1) requires the “landlord materially fails to comply with … material provisions of the rental agreement….  The argument is that this minor, nuisance or cosmetic maintenance is not material.  And even if it is material, under 86.56(1)(b) the unit isn’t untenable and there’s no real “loss of rental value caused by the noncompliance.”

Your thoughts.

Mike
Michael Geo. F. Davis
Attorney at Law
The MGFD Law Firm PA
Countryside Colonial Center
2753 SR 580, Suite 209
Clearwater, FL 33761-3351
P 727-726-1900
F 727-726-7440
mike at mgfdlaw.com
Primary Eservice: eservice at mgfdlaw.com
www.mgfdlaw.com<http://www.mgfdlaw.com/>

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