Can an apartment forbid me from owning a firearm in the place?

ZainAnak

ZainAnak

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Hey all - I may be moving into an apt in Quincy, and I wanted to start purchasing firearms with my shiny new Class A LTC. I did a quick search online for their lease/handbook and the following is listed:

"Carrying, displaying or discharging fireworks, guns, slingshots, or any type of firearm or weapon is strictly prohibited. Violation of this policy by any resident, occupant or guest will result in the immediate termination of the lease contract."

I can understand if they don't want me brandishing, showing off, etc. That makes sense. But from my reading of this, it sounds like they are well aware they cannot legally restrict me from owning in my apartment. Or am I wrong? Thoughts? Truths? Laws? :)

Thanks all,
ZA
 
ZainAnak said:
Hey all - I may be moving into an apt in Quincy, and I wanted to start purchasing firearms with my shiny new Class A LTC. I did a quick search online for their lease/handbook and the following is listed:

"Carrying, displaying or discharging fireworks, guns, slingshots, or any type of firearm or weapon is strictly prohibited. Violation of this policy by any resident, occupant or guest will result in the immediate termination of the lease contract."

I can understand if they don't want me brandishing, showing off, etc. That makes sense. But from my reading of this, it sounds like they are well aware they cannot legally restrict me from owning in my apartment. Or am I wrong? Thoughts? Truths? Laws? :)

Thanks all,
ZA
Click to expand...


ZA,

IANAL, however, if I was going to sign a lease and one of the provisions of the lease is ""Carrying, displaying or discharging fireworks, guns, slingshots, or any type of firearm or weapon is strictly prohibited. Violation of this policy by any resident, occupant or guest will result in the immediate termination of the lease contract."", I would try to have that provision taken out before I signed it or I would look for another abode elsewhere.

As I read this, it doesn't matter if you have the firearm or an "occupant" or a "Guest" does. Management finds out and you are out!
 
As I read this, it doesn't matter if you have the firearm or an "occupant" or a "Guest" does. Management finds out and you are out!
Click to expand...

Depends on how you play your cards. A law abiding tenant who doe not accept the authority of the landlord to simply say "leave now", but avails himself of every lawful remedy when faces with eviction may very well find a landlord who would much rather have a lawful gun owner than an eviction case. The landlord cannot make you leave once you occupy an apartment - only a court of competent jurisdiction can do that

The key here is "every lawful method" - a tenant who follows every law (not "contract term", but "law") places the landlord in the situation of having to follow a rather expensive and drawn out eviction process that can take months, and cost substantial additional fees (think the landlord can just toss your furniture in the dumpster? think again).
 
Rob, I question I always ask myself is "is it worth the hassel?". Even if the tenant dots all the i's and crosses all the "t"s, it will still be a major hassel to fight the Landlord or Mgmt Co in court. Even if you win, there is still a record that another potential landlord can use against you in denying your next apartment.

Not to mention, if the Landlord or Mgmt Co decides to drop a "Person w/ a gun" dime and you find you no longer have a LTC.

If it is in the lease and you sign it with the intent to ignore, then the tenant will not have a leg to stand on and possible a criminal record.
 
If it is in the lease and you sign it with the intent to ignore, then the tenant will not have a leg to stand on and possible a criminal record.
Click to expand...
Not to disagree with your other points, but where does the possible criminal record come from? Even if you are found to have violated lease terms, and the lease terms are found to be enforceable, that's not a finding of any criminal offense.
 
Rob,

I was looking at the possible outcomes of "Not to mention, if the Landlord or Mgmt Co decides to drop a "Person w/ a gun" dime and you find you no longer have a LTC."

Disturbing the Peace or "Assault w/ a Deadly Weapon" are a couple of possible charges from this situation depending on the "climate" at the time.
 
Greg said:
Nobody can enforce a regulation if they don't see you breaking it.
Click to expand...

That can create it's own headaches/problems/hassles...
having to sneak your guns out in guitar cases for trips to the range, making sure no firearms related items are in plain sight (brass, cleaning supplies, gun books, etc). It also means hoping prying eyes don't see any firearms related mail or catalogs in your mailbox and UPS/Fedex deliveries left in plain sight when you're not home.

Any of those situations doesn't necessarily prove that firearms are present in the apartment, but it's enough to arouse suspicion on the landlords part and for that person to keep a closer eyes on things or ask questions.

Personally... I wouldn't even consider renting from any landlord that even hints at any questions involving firearms.

Edit...

to the OP, why Quincy? I'm not certain if you're aware that the CLEO there is extremely anti-RKBA. Not a real problem mind you since you just got your Class A ALP, but if you plan on staying there more than 6 years (when your license renewal comes up), you can kiss your current "privilege" goodbye (assuming the current asshat is still chief).
 
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A few points here:

- A signed lease is a contract and is enforceable in court. The landlord would win an eviction suit in MA. If you sign it, disobey it and get found out for any reason, you've given the landlord every reason to legally evict.

- As stated, any catalogs, NRA or GOAL mag/newspaper, shipments, etc. and some busybody will report you to the landlord and the legal hassles begin.

- Landlords regularly break the law and enter apartments without notice or a true "emergency". If they spot something in plain view or start snooping and see evidence of guns, the legal hassles begin.

- Yes, if the landlord or some busybody trumps up some accusation and reports it to the local chief, he could pull the person's license for "suitability" with no hearings, and no effective recourse.

- The eviction process in MA is a long, drawn out affair that is very expensive for the landlord. It will typically take ~6 months and cost the landlord ~$2-3K to evict someone (plus the total loss of rent if he person refuses to pay during the eviction process).

- There is some sort of database on tenants, so the info will be available to any potential landlords when you look for a new place to live. This will hurt your chances of finding another apartment. The court records are all public info as well, so anyone interested can learn that you are a gun owner. News media may also pick up the story, giving further notoriety to the hapless tenant.

As a Constable, I serve the eviction notices and perform the evictions. It is a very lucrative part of the business for the Constable and the Moving/Storage Companies who do them.

IANAL but I would NOT sign such a lease . . . I would look elsewhere and avoid the troubles.

--------------

Quincy:

- The current chief is resigning according to my sources and may now be out of office. At any rate, he was scheduled to retire in 2012 anyway so a new LTC (2007) would never run into him again anyway.
 
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Zain, if you REALLY want the apartment, I'd recommend asking them to strike all references to guns from the lease. If they won't, you don't want to live there. Did you notice that none of your GUESTS are allowed to carry, either? That means that all your friends from NES who come to visit you could get you evicted if anyone finds out that they're armed!
 
dont worry about it....
what they dont know about wont hurt them..

I had all my guns in my apartment years ago when my wife and I got married and I never worried about it. They had the same rules too. Your life, your 2nd ammendment rights and your decision. Just dont broadcast you have them. Keep it to yourself. No one should be seeing you have guns anyways so it shouldnt be a problem.
Keep them locked up inside as you should anyways and you will be set.
 
ateamrob said:
dont worry about it....
what they dont know about wont hurt them..

I had all my guns in my apartment years ago when my wife and I got married and I never worried about it. They had the same rules too. Your life, your 2nd ammendment rights and your decision. Just dont broadcast you have them. Keep it to yourself. No one should be seeing you have guns anyways so it shouldnt be a problem.
Keep them locked up inside as you should anyways and you will be set.
Click to expand...

And you took them in and out of the apartment how?

You didn't get any gun mags?

No shipments from anywhere where the "from" address would give a clue?

Times have changed and busybodies are now everywhere with gov't sanction to "report anything suspicious" (shades of Nazi Germany)!!

Even in 1974 when I lived in an apartment in Waltham, the local busybody kept track of what everyone did, who came and went and with what and she frequently called the owner to complain . . . sometimes about things that weren't even a "violation" of any rules. She was one of the reasons I broke my lease 2 months early and bought a house (before I had planned to do so)!
 
costly

The eviction process is in fact costly. The loss of rent and other
associated expenses, the constable, moving company etc.

Taking guns in and out should be easy, there are many ways
to do this. Plus a P O BOX would solve the nosey neighbor problem.

The only other issue is the management company going in for
an emergency and find something related to firearms.

In this case i would look elsewhere and not mention a thing.

JimB
 
Yes, but taking a rifle in and out of the apartment would be hard to do without being seen. Anyone with the slight amount of knowledge will know that that soft/hard case is a rifle case.

Then, someone calls the office and here we go....


I'm with most here...talk to them up front, or find a new place. If you let them know at the start, it might change how they view your lease.
 
I've mentioned this before but when I lived in an apartment with busy bodies I picked up an old golf bag at a yard sale for a couple of bucks and stuck the rifles in it with driver covers over the barrels. I could leave it sitting outside all day and nobody would know the difference
 
dwarven1 said:
Ah, the local Mrs G2...
Click to expand...

Yup, and she lived across the hall from me! She had lived there (AJ Antico's Charlesbank Apts) since they were built.

They opened the pool to all tenants as of ~May 31 and invoked a "pool club" where you had to join and pay a fee as of some date in June for the season. We had the form filled out and were going to turn it in with a check the following week. We used the pool before said payment deadline over the Memorial Day weekend and she "reported us" since we weren't "pool club members" (DOH, the pool club didn't begin for a few weeks). When we got a call about it from the management office, I explained the situation and then ripped up the form and never joined. We started looking in the newspaper for houses!

I hope Antico buried her sorry bones in that apartment and sealed the doors and windows so that the stink wouldn't bother others!
 
when i lived in cambridge my roommate/friend was a cop and we signed the same type of lease our looking at. no one said anything when they saw him leaving everyday for work for the 3 years i was there.
 
It's unfortunate most people don't have the resources to fight something like that. Since when do you give up your constitutional right because you rent an apartment. I work in the multi-housing industry and that restriction is in our leases as well. If I see firearms in someones home I don't say anything, not only because I also own firearms, but it's also none of my buisness.
 
Even busybodies won't usually mess with cops!

Anyone else, however is fair game.

Somehow, many think that every gun owner is a killer . . . but if they learn that the person is LEO, somehow "it's OK" and they calm down. I had this experience directly with a former neighbor . . . I find it weird, but it is what it is.
 
LenS said:
A few points here:

- A signed lease is a contract and is enforceable in court. The landlord would win an eviction suit in MA. If you sign it, disobey it and get found out for any reason, you've given the landlord every reason to legally evict.

.
Click to expand...

It's hard enough to boot somebody for non-payment of rent never mind any other type of lease violation. MA is a VERY
tenant freindly state. Now I have never seen a case where someone was evicted for guns in the apartment, but I can tell you the landlord usually walks into court with the deck stacked against him. And you are 100% right about it taking forever and being extremely expensive.
 
It's not just getting it done, but timing. If the tenant asks the judge for a temporary stay of eviction so they can find a new place "the children! think of the the children!" that's another couple of months where the landlord's only payment is in the form of a judgement against the tenant. If the tenant's stuff needs to be moved to storage the landlord pays for the move and cannot have the stuff held ransom for the moving fee - but, once again, can get a judgement for it. If the storage place requires an up front deposit from the landlord, the stuff can't be held ransom for that - only for the storage time after the amount of prepayment the storage place required from the landlord runs out. (but, once again, the landlord can get a judgement for the amount he paid).

The threat of eviction can be an effective tool in dealing with responsible people (the kind without any criminal record, 700+ credit scores, etc.). Try the eviction game with a deadbeat; someone who doesn't care about their reputation because they don't have one; or someone who really knows the game and the landlord's nightmare has just begun.
 
Rob Boudrie said:
It's not just getting it done, but timing. If the tenant asks the judge for a temporary stay of eviction so they can find a new place "the children! think of the the children!" that's another couple of months where the landlord's only payment is in the form of a judgement against the tenant. If the tenant's stuff needs to be moved to storage the landlord pays for the move and cannot have the stuff held ransom for the moving fee - but, once again, can get a judgement for it. If the storage place requires an up front deposit from the landlord, the stuff can't be held ransom for that - only for the storage time after the amount of prepayment the storage place required from the landlord runs out. (but, once again, the landlord can get a judgement for the amount he paid).

The threat of eviction can be an effective tool in dealing with responsible people (the kind without any criminal record, 700+ credit scores, etc.). Try the eviction game with a deadbeat; someone who doesn't care about their reputation because they don't have one; or someone who really knows the game and the landlord's nightmare has just begun.
Click to expand...


At one time I did a lot of summary process cases (the Massachusetts name for evictions). I never saw a judge who would grant a stay of execution that was not conditioned on payment of arrears and payment of "use and occupation" (at same rate as least rent) on time during the period of the stay.

I take the underlying question of this thread to be: is it a violation of any anti-discrimination statute for a landowner to discriminate against gun owners in the renting of residential real estate in Massachusetts? The answer to this question is simple: No, it is not.
 
The Constable who trained me (in the Springfield area) has a "regular eviction clientèle". One guy that he served eviction notice on had been evicted FIVE TIMES by this same Constable. He just goes from apt to apt, doesn't pay the rent and gets a free ride for 6+ months before being thrown out.

The bonded warehouse/mover that I use for evictions charges ~$350/room to do an eviction move. This covers the first month storage fee only. If unclaimed/unpaid after (I think) 6 months, the mover has the legal right to sell the goods at auction to recover the money due him for storage.

One person I served an eviction notice to was 10 months in arrears on a duplex rental. Before the eviction was done, he owed a full year's rent.

It's almost unheard of for the landlord to ever collect on what is owed in these cases.
 
Sounds like you have had experience with that as well...
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Nope, but I did my homework by asking people who had been there/done that. I always used month to month agreements and offered a "no rent increase except for property tax" for a year. As a very small landlord, I realized that there was no way I would be able to effectively use the courts to force a tenant who left before the lease was up to pay rent on a place where they were not even living.

The bonded warehouse/mover that I use for evictions charges ~$350/room to do an eviction move.
Click to expand...
Am I correct in my understanding that the landlord must front the cash for this move, and that the mover cannot hold the belongings as security for this money owed to the landlord, since the mover has already been paid?

It's almost unheard of for the landlord to ever collect on what is owed in these cases.
Click to expand...
And this pretty much sums it up. The only way a landlord would ever go to the expense of evicting a paid on time/no problems/law abiding citizen for guns in the apartment would be if it was worth it to try to keep the other tenants in line with a show of muscle.
 
Rob Boudrie said:
Am I correct in my understanding that the landlord must front the cash for this move, and that the mover cannot hold the belongings as security for this money owed to the landlord, since the mover has already been paid?


And this pretty much sums it up. The only way a landlord would ever go to the expense of evicting a paid on time/no problems/law abiding citizen for guns in the apartment would be if it was worth it to try to keep the other tenants in line with a show of muscle.
Click to expand...

Rob, you are correct.

There are a bunch of laws and regs regulating the actions of eviction movers/bonded warehouses. They must be licensed specifically to do evictions. There are less than a handful that are so licensed in the Eastern part of MA!

As the Constable, I hire the mover/bonded warehouse and pay them upfront. I also hire/pay the locksmith who drills the locks (if we can't get in) and changes the locks in all cases. I get my money, the mover/warehouse/locksmith estimates paid to me by the client (landlord) upfront before we serve the eviction notice. I estimate the cost based on what the landlord tells me (# rooms) and refund the overage if any to the landlord when I finish my paperwork on the case.
 
C-pher said:
Yes, but taking a rifle in and out of the apartment would be hard to do without being seen. Anyone with the slight amount of knowledge will know that that soft/hard case is a rifle case.
Click to expand...

I've found it's not that hard to obscure guns, even
unintentionally.

One day I was leaving my house and the mailman came up the
driveway while I was loading my AR-15 into my car in a soft
case. He asked me what kind of instrument I played! [laugh]

It's not that hard to move guns in and out of a house without
being noticed. IMO a bigger giveaway would be any
mail you get, etc. If nosey parker cravitz next door gets
your CDNN catolog by accident with your name on it, that's
obviously a dead giveaway. [laugh]

-Mike
 

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