Leases and Evictions

• Leases and other rental agreements are binding legal contracts. This is true even if one party is a convicted criminal. While your shock at discovering a tenant is a sexual predator is understandable, it does not automatically give you the right to tell the tenant to leave. Grounds for eviction vary among states, but typically include things like a tenant's failure to pay rent or maintain the property. Unless your tenant lied on her rental application, or local law restricts where sex offenders are allowed to live, your outrage isn't enough to get a legal eviction.
  
  

Local Residency Laws

• It is illegal in some communities for certain sex offenders, such as those convicted of crimes against children, to live near buildings or places where children congregate, such as schools, churches, parks and libraries. Laws vary but may include penalties for landlords who knowingly rent to sexual predators. If your tenant is living in a community with such a law, you may not only have grounds to evict the tenant, you may be required to do so.
  
  

Tenant Application

• There are no federal laws prohibiting housing discrimination against a tenant with a criminal background. Your rental applications should ask tenants if they have a criminal background. If you discover that a tenant lied about his status as a sex offender on the application, you may have grounds to terminate his lease.
  
  

Unauthorized Occupant

• You may find that a sexual predator is staying with one of your tenants but is himself not on the lease. In these situations, it is often fairly easy to evict the "unauthorized occupant," as he doesn't have a valid lease or rental agreement. If your legitimate tenant refuses to force the sexual predator to leave or the predator won't leave upon request, follow your state's eviction process to have the predator removed from the home.
  
  

Warning

• Laws in virtually all states forbid "self-help" evictions, in which you or people who work for you evict a tenant without due process. To evict a tenant, you must provide her with proper notice, file an eviction case in court, ask the judge to order the eviction, and then wait for your local sheriff to come and physically re move the tenant. If you fail to follow eviction laws, you may not only be stuck with the tenant, your tenant may sue you and, in some places, may even file criminal charges against you.