Could I be evicted for this?

[lscr]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Pennsylvania

My roommate and I are renters in a condo which is run by a homeowners association. Since moving in, we have had a downstairs neighbor that complains about any and all things. Lately, she has been complaining of hearing our footsteps, and it has resulted in us receiving large fines. Now, in the bylaws of the community, it clearly states that the owner of our unit, as well as the occupants, are to receive any fines/ letters/ violations in the mail. In the lease agreement with our landlord, it clearly states that the landlord is to send certified mail or hand-deliver any notices that pertain to us. Neither the association or our landlord have sent us these notices. We only hear about them over the phone, we have not seen anything in writing. Naturally, we are not paying fines that we do not see for ourselves. We have expressed numerous times to both parties that we are upset at not receiving anything in the mail. This has been going on for at least 3 months, and still nothing has been mailed to us! Our landlord is now demanding we include the first fine with our rent, which we are still not doing because we have not been properly notified of the fines. Now, in our lease agreement, this would be considered a violation and means that the lease is broken. But, my question is, since our landlord violated the lease agreement first by not properly notifying us of the fines, are we in the right by not paying them? Can we be held responsible for breaking the lease, can this be a reason for eviction? Thank you!

 

[FarmerJ]

never ever again should you live somewhere that someone else who is not the police has the ability to fine your landlord or to levy fines that way, IN regular rentals if a tenant makes too much noise then as a landlord if you don't have police reports in hand you really look very foolish in court. If you don't care if you have to move when your lease is up then I suggest you tell your LL to take you to court and to bring his police report copies with him when he does.

 

[lscr]

Yes, I learned the hard way that homeowners associations are terrible. It's funny you mention police reports, because before the neighbor started reporting us to the HOA for the fines, she called the police out 3 times. All 3 times they left without citing us because they couldn't hear any noise, so I actually have police reports that prove we don't make excessive noise. We've mentioned this to our landlord and the HOA, but they don't seem to care because apparently a board member witnessed the noise. All they have is a he-said/ she-said case, but even though we've argued that, they still seem to think their word is more important than a police officer's incident report... These aren't grounds for an eviction though, right? We've asked to appeal the fines, but they say that because we're renters and not owners, we don't have that right, which I find absurd. We're not paying these fines until we've been treated fairly, and I'm just afraid that our landlord could use this to start an eviction process.

 

[FarmerJ]

even if your LL does start the process in the end your LL must be able to prove to the courts satisfaction that you broke your lease.