Landlord squeezes in a rent hike

Question: My lease expired Aug. 18. I pay my rent on the first of each month. I gave the owner a termination notice Aug. 8, expiring Sept. 8. Then the owner wanted me to pay 30 days’ rent on Sept. 1, and he wanted to increase the September rent by $400. If I didn’t pay all of the rent, including the $400 increase, he said he would deduct it from my security deposit. This doesn’t sound right to me. Can he do that?

Answer: The assortment of dates contained in your question makes it challenging.

First, what rent did you pay Aug. 1? You say the rent is due on the 1st but the lease expires on the 18th. If you paid a full month’s rent on Aug. 1, it appears you have extended your one-year lease through the end of the month. Absent any termination notice, such as the one you served Aug. 8, or change of terms of tenancy notice (such as a rent increase notice), your tenancy automatically would have become a month-to-month tenancy on Aug. 19 at the same rent you paid under the lease.

California Civil Code section 1946 provides that in a rental agreement (such as a month-to-month rental agreement) with a term not defined by the parties (defined means a specific termination date in this instance), where a 30-day notice is served, the rent is due to and including the termination of the 30-day period. Absent some change of terms of tenancy rent increase notice, the rent remains the same as it was before. So you would owe the old rent to and including Sept. 8.

Since you terminated the lease with your 30-day notice to move, the lease is now irrelevant.

If you had not served the 30-day termination notice, and assuming that you paid the rent only to and including the date of the expiration of the lease on Aug. 18, you would have had a 30-day rent obligation beginning Aug. 19. Since you did serve the notice, you have a rent obligation up to and including Sept. 8, the date of the expiration of the 30-day period. The rent due is the same amount as the rent that was due under the lease.

If the landlord wrongly withholds some of your security deposit, you can sue in Small Claims Court. If the court determines that the landlord withheld a portion of your security deposit in “bad faith,” the judge can award you as much as twice the amount of the security deposit in statutory damages plus actual damages.

Say cheese; the cameras are legal

Question: At the Hollywood apartment complex where I live, the owners have put up three cameras in the courtyard area. These cameras can see into the tenants’ apartments. We haven’t had any crime at the building, and there are no cameras at any of the three entrances to the building or at the parking entrance, where you would think they would be located if they were installed for security purposes. I find these cameras an invasion of my privacy. I think that the landlords are either voyeurs or into some kind of a Big Brother trip. Do you know if these cameras are legal?

Answer: The cameras are legal. In some cases where the police were investigating activities such as drug dealing, apartment owners have directed their security cameras at neighboring apartment buildings or units. In other instances, the police have even contributed to the funding of these cameras or they have cut deals with two landlords across the street from each other to direct their cameras at each other’s buildings.

For maximum privacy try blackout drapes, which block out the outside world, or some other window coverings that will serve the same purpose.

Postema is the editor of Apartment Age magazine, a publication of AAGLA, an apartment owners’ service group. E-mail your questions on any aspect of apartment living to AptlifeAAGLA@aol.com, c/o Kevin Postema, or mail to AAGLA, c/o Kevin Postema, 621 S. Westmoreland Ave., Los Angeles, CQ90005.