Absentee landlord

“ The quick change of economic conditions in the city that often out-paces all plans of relief, rendering useless to-day what met the demands of the situation well enough yesterday, is another cause of perplexity. A common obstacle also—I am inclined to think quite as common as in Ireland, though we hear less of it in the newspapers—is the absentee landlord. ”

“ When it became, as it finally did, an absentee landlordry, that State-idea did not voice any of the desires, expectations or intuitions of the resident population. In fact, it outraged them at every point. The more truly was this the case when, under the Penal code, the submerged layer of the rent-paying tenantry was denied every right in the existent State. ”

“ This work, indeed, is still in its infancy. There are many absentee landlords who are still holding out for heavy and extravagant prices as a reward for the poverty and misery which they have often in large part caused by their own neglect. ”

“ If the liquidator has retained possession for the purposes of the winding up, or if he has used the property for carrying on the company's business, or has kept the property in order to sell it, or to do the best he can with it, the landlord will be allowed to distrain for rent which has become due since the winding up. ”

“ Men here talk flippantly of the evils of absenteeism, while they are the very first to object to measures which would render it possible for landlords to reside at home. A coercion act is opposed, while Sir Francis Hopkins, a resident and admirable landlord, is fired at at his own hall door, and for what? because, six years ago, he dispossessed an insolvent tenant, "forgiving his arrears, and paying him his own valuation for his interest;" ”

“ Nothing of a perishable nature, which cannot be restored in the same condition—as milk, fruit, and the like, must be taken.
2720. The law does not regard a day as consisting of portions. The popular notion that a notice to quit should be served before noon is an error. Although distraint is one of the remedies, it is seldom advisable in a landlord to resort to distraining for the recovery of rent. If a tenant cannot pay his rent, the sooner he leaves the premises the better. ”

“ Why does he not employ himself on this land? If he has a lease, there can be no excuse; but even supposing him but tenant-at-will, it can in this instance be no justification. The land unused is not waste land, requiring an expenditure of labour and money, for which he might afterwards reap no advantage from the cupidity of his landlord. ”

“ When a lessee is evicted or turned out of possession by his landlord, he is excused from paying rent. What, therefore, is an eviction? Any act by the landlord, or by his agent, impairing the worth of the premises to the tenant, for example, the destruction of a summer house, turning rooting pigs into the premises, the erection of a new building rendering the leased premises unfit for occupation. One of the curious cases is the lease of a distillery which could not be run because the landlord prevented the lessee from getting a license. ”

“ No, no; landlords rather get less for their lands than they are worth, instead of more, for that plain reason. To compel the tenant to take a lease, therefore, for a term as short as five years, is to injure him, you think; to place him more at the control of his landlord, through the little interest connected with the cost and trouble of moving, and through the natural desire he may possess to cut the meadows he has seeded, and to get the full benefit of manure he has made and carted. I see how you reason, young sir; but you are behind the age—you are sadly behind the age. ”

“ As the country advanced, landlords gradually ceased to give leases, and the great majority of small tenants held from year to year. To meet this state of things the Civil Bill Court Act of 1851 extended the ejectment for non-payment of rent to tenancies from year to year. Under the English statutes no similar power was given, and the English landlord was obliged, in the case of non-payment of rent, first to serve the tenant with a Notice to Quit, and then to proceed to evict him by the slow and costly process of an action in the Superior Courts. ”

“ The distress of the evicted tenant—eviction by reason of exorbitant rent is as certain as eviction for non-payment—is nothing to them. They must have their preserves of game; they must have their sport.
The process is the same in England as it is in Ireland. The landlord puts his estates in the hands of an agent, selecting for the purpose a man with a heart of flint and a face of brass, one who knows no mercy, and who would not do a kind act were he paid for it. ”

“ Where furnished apartments are let for immediate use, the law implies an undertaking on the part of the landlord that they are fit for habitation, and, if this condition is broken, the tenant may refuse to occupy the premises or to pay any rent. ”

“ The only cases in which a tenant has been permitted to withdraw from his tenancy and refuse payment of rent are where there has been some error or fraudulent misdescription of the premises, or where they have been found to be uninhabitable in consequence of the wrongful act or default of the landlord himself ”

“ Thence the consequence that not only is the landlord never willing to spend a farthing on the improvements of the land, but also that he systematically opposes them, for fear he should have to pay for them in the end. Besides many landlords have signed their new leases only after the farmer has given them a formal renunciation to the tenant right; or else they have taken advantage of the pretext that offered itself, and raised the rent by way of compensation against all risks. ”

“ The rent is no longer paid, and then the difficulties begin. How is one to appraise the improvements introduced in the [167] land by the actual possessor, or by his forefathers? How can one find out what is due to him, even with the best intentions? Is the landlord to give him an indemnity before he evicts him? But then it means ruin to the landlord, who will have to pay precisely because he has not been paid himself. It is the squaring of the circle. When only very small holdings are in question, the difficulty is generally met by remaining in statu quo. ”

“ Certain it is that in the putting in force of the right to evict a tenant the landlord is very long-suffering. This last step is not usually taken until the rent is many weeks, or often months, in arrear. Even when an eviction order is granted, I have known many cases where a landlord renews the tenancy and collects the arrears at small instalments.
Eviction orders are very often asked for not in the landlord’s own interest but in the community’s. The necessity to do the sanitary requirements of public bodies is a constant source of eviction. ”

“ No man can make distress available for the recovery of rent, much less so for a penalty inflicted on an occupier, because he gave one-third of his farm to a son, another to a married daughter, and thus planted three families on that portion of his estate which the landlord designed for the comfortable support of one. ”

“ They are immediately and continually [424] in debt; but being there upon the soil, they can first feed themselves; this they do, and the rest, whatever it may be, is for the landlord.
"In such a condition," writes Mr Mill, "what can a tenant gain by any amount of industry or prudence, and what lose by any recklessness? If the landlord at any time exerted his full legal rights, the cottier would not be able even to live. ”

“ It can hardly be doubted that, in a large proportion of cases, the reply of the landlord to any notice from a yearly tenant that he intended to make some improvement for which he expected compensation, would be either a notice to quit, or a demand for an increased rent as the price of a permission to improve. ”

“ If he has given a lease, he has no control further than to exact his rent; if he supply instruction, it may not be received; if he set a good example, it may not be followed. If the tenant will not consult his own interests, the landlord is not to be held as responsible for the consequences of his neglect. The fair way to calculate in this particular would be, not to take the saleable produce at what it is, raised under a deficient system and negligent cultivation; but at what it might be, if the tenant had but industry, and would but do his duty. ”

“ The Distress for Rent Act 1737, however, enables a landlord to recover double rent from a tenant who holds over after having himself given notice to quit; while another statute in the reign of George II.—the Landlord and Tenant Act 1730—makes a tenant who holds over after receiving a notice from his landlord liable to the extent of double the value of the premises. There is no tenancy by sufferance against the crown. ”

“ How would it be, Lawyer, if the landlord rented the rooms to some one else before the expiration of the week?”
“That would amount to a rescission of the bargain, and he could not sue the defaulting tenant for rent for the days the apartments were empty; [461] but lighting or warming the rooms, or putting up ‘to let’ in the window, will not prevent the owner looking to the man who has left without giving the proper notice.” ”

“ A lodger is rateable to the poor-rate where he is in exclusive occupation of the apartments let to him, and the landlord does not retain the control and dominion of the whole structure. As to distress on a lodger’s goods for rent due by an immediate to a superior landlord, see Rent. As to the termination of short tenancies, as of apartments, see Landlord and Tenant. The landlord has no lien on the goods of the lodger for rent or charges. Overcrowding lodging-houses may be dealt with as a nuisance under the Public Health Acts 1875 and 1891 and the Housing of the Working Classes Acts. ”

“ If the tenant has not had a fair rent fixed, and his landlord proceeds to evict him for non-payment of rent, he can apply to the court to fix the fair rent, and meantime the eviction proceedings will be restrained by the court. ”

“ But then I say, let no considerations allow anyone to take such a house, for if it be hideous, and the owner is really poor as well as the tenant, nothing can be done for it because there is nothing to spend, and without money all are powerless. An impecunious landlord should never for one moment be allowed to exist. He is a danger to the community. He cannot and will not repair his roof, see to his drains, or keep the outside of his house in order ”

“ It may at once be granted that in the long run, when the demand for houses declines, it falls upon the landlord, but it is equally undeniable that the landlord will shift the burden on to the occupier as long as he is able to do so. ”

“ Though the cost of supporting such an incredible number of the idle and helpless does, in the first place, fall upon the tenant, yet, by diminishing his means, and by often compelling him to purchase, towards the end of the season, a portion of food equal to that which he has given away in charity, it certainly becomes ultimately a clear deduction from the landlord's rent. ”

“ By this Act leases are allowed to be broken by the tenant, but not by the landlord. All leaseholders whose leases would expire within ninety-nine years after the passing of the Act have the option of going into court and getting their contracts broken and a judicial rent fixed. No equivalent power is given to the landlords. ”

“ If the lease is only for one year, and the loss is of the whole of the fruits, or at least of the half, the tenant shall be discharged from a proportional part of the rent. He cannot claim any abatement if the loss is less than half.
'1771. The tenant cannot obtain an abatement when the loss of the fruits takes place after they are severed from the land, unless the lease gives to the landlord a portion of the crop in kind; in which case the landlord ought to bear his part of the loss, provided the tenant has not been guilty of unreasonable delay in delivering to him his portion of crop. ”

“ Upon the second principle the tenant lays out the money at his own risk, and if the outlay is injudicious he will be the sufferer; but if the outlay is so judicious that he receives a large sum for compensation, he is fairly entitled to it as an equivalent for his skill and knowledge. The landlord is not injured, for whatever it adds to the yearly value he gets back in increased rent. The charge upon the holding can then be made to determine at the period of the exhaustion of the improvement, thus preventing anything resembling a permanent charge on the land. ”

“ Everyone should pledge himself (1) to abide by the decision of the majority; (2) to hold no communication with the landlord or any of his agents, except in presence of the body of the tenantry; (3) to accept no settlement for himself which is not given to every tenant on the estate.
On the rent-day, the tenantry should proceed to the rent-office in a body. If the agent refuses to see them in a body, they should on no account confer with him individually, but depute the chairman to act as their spokesman and acquaint them of the reduction which they require. ”

“ Long since it was decided that where a man rents ready furnished houses or lodgings and they are infested by bugs, the tenant may leave without paying rent. Baron Parke, in giving judgment, said that the authorities appeared fully to warrant{184} the position that if the demised premises are encumbered with a nuisance of so serious a nature that no person can reasonably be expected to live in them, the tenant is at liberty to throw them up. And he said that this was so because of the implied condition that the landlord undertakes to rent the place in an habitable state. ”