Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
What to know
Tips for Nevada landlords and tenants
For landlords starting a lease
■ Landlords and tenants should walk through the rental home together and record any issues with the property
■ Inspect the home at least annually
■ Provide a summary page for tenants including information about paying rent and how to request repairs
■ Establish the best ways for tenants to contact the landlord
Paying rent
■ The cost of rent, or when it is due, cannot be changed during an active lease
■ Late fees can be up to 5 percent of a tenant’s regular rent
■ Tenants must be given 45 days written notice before increasing their rent. Only 15 days notice is required if the tenant pays rent more than once a month
■ Send tenants a confirmation email that their rent has been received
Eviction
■ Tenants overdue on rent can be served a seven-day notice to pay or face eviction
■ Landlords can also evict tenants for violating their lease, causing a nuisance or illegally subletting
■ Landlords cannot evict a tenant without a court order, and a law enforcement officer must carry out the eviction
■ Tenants who cannot pay their rent must file an affidavit in court before the eviction notice expires to guarantee they receive a hearing
■ Tenants must attend their hearing if they want to contest eviction. Financial hardship is not a defense
■ Landlords must allow evicted tenants to retrieve their essential belongings, like medication, for five days after they are locked out
Habitability
■ Rental housing must have essential services, including heat, airconditioning, hot water and electricity
■ Landlords have 48 hours, excluding holidays and weekends, to fix problems with essential services. They have 14 days to fix all other habitability problems
■ Tenants may withhold their rent over unfixed habitability issues, but only if they provided their landlord with a written notice asking for repairs and the landlord did not attempt to fix the problem. Tenants must deposit the withheld rent into an escrow account at their local justice court
Security deposits
■ Landlords can keep money from a security deposit to cover the cost of unpaid rent, property damage and cleaning fees
■ Tenants can sue landlords who improperly keep security deposits for up to twice the amount of the deposit
Need help knowing your rights?
■ Legal forms for both landlords and tenants can be found online at CivilLawSelfHelpCenter.org
Sources:
Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, Nevada State Apartment Association dispatched an employee who broke open the bathtub’s tiled siding and drywall, exposing the mold, Teresa recounted in an email to the company sent the day of the incident.
“It was almost like a disease,” Joe told the Review-Journal during a recent interview. “It was just disgusting.”
That night, Teresa sent King Futt’s an email stating her head began hurting just minutes after the mold cavity was opened; the symptoms lasted for hours, even after she stepped outside the home.
Photos attached to the email show large pieces of the broken wall piled on the bathroom floor, their backs covered in dark-colored mold. The family’s lawsuit alleged the handyman did not seal off the bathroom from the rest of the house before starting and that he replaced the drywall and tiles without removing all the mold.
One mold remediation expert, who reviewed the photos at the Review-Journal’s request, said the job was mishandled in a potentially dangerous way.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” said Chris Gusick, owner of Adaptive Environmental Consulting in Las Vegas. “If you break it apart like this, you’re going to release millions, if not billions, of spores into the air. That’s all going to settle on something.”
An air quality sample taken five days later showed elevated levels of mold not only in the rental home’s master bathroom, but also in the living room and kitchen, according to an apparent lab analysis provided by the Jaffers.
The Jaffers’ lawsuit alleged King Futt’s took more than a month to properly remove the mold from the home. The company wrote in a statement to
the Review-Journal that the family was “extremely argumentative” and made fixing the mold problem “an almost impossible task every step of the way.”
During their displacement, the Jaffers said they paid their full $1,250 rent for March and April 2017. Meanwhile, the family of four spent more than $1,800 to split single rooms at nearby hotels through early April, according to copies of receipts they filed as court exhibits. Court records show King Futt’s had initially offered to compensate the family $75 for each day they stayed in a hotel, but Joe said his family never received any reimbursement.
The family handed their keys back to King Futt’s in May 2017 after the company took steps to evict them for withholding that month’s rent. Their lease had been scheduled to expire June 1.
The Jaffers sued King Futt’s in Clark County District Court, claiming the company had been negligent. King Futt’s responded with allegations that the Jaffers had caused the mold to grow and that the family owed the company more than $15,000 in damages. The family and King Futt’s each denied the allegations made against them, and both parties agreed to dismiss the case in November 2017, including all claims for reimbursement.
More than two years later, Joe said, his family is still working to replace the savings they spent on their attorney, the hotels and the cost of replacing most of their clothing, which they feared the mold had contaminated.
“They can bleed you dry going through court, so it’s not like there’s any recourse for the tenant,” he said. “They have no accountability.”
Long-lasting consequences
Even after they left their King Futt’s rentals, some former tenants said they’ve received exorbitant bills from the company.
When DeLoach was negotiating her family’s early departure from their rental in December 2018, emails show she asked the company to conduct a move-out inspection with her. King Futt’s staff never answered the request, DeLoach said, nor did they respond to her repeated inquiries about receiving her $1,275 security deposit.
Her family moved to Arizona and then Texas, thinking the experience was behind them. DeLoach said King Futt’s never responded to multiple emails she sent asking for an itemized move-out bill, but this fall she received a collections agency invoice claiming she owed the company an additional $2,100.
In a written statement to the Review-Journal, the company alleged the former tenant owed unpaid rent, late fees and utility bills. DeLoach said she is contesting the amount to remove it from her credit report; she doesn’t plan on paying King Futt’s.
“It’s very predatorial,” she said. “You’re already in a bad situation, and they put this on your credit. It just sets you back even more.”