A question I have been getting more and more at Apartment School over the past couple of years is whether or not you can be kicked out of your apartment for smoking weed.
CAN you get kicked out of your apartment for smoking weed? Yes, absolutely regardless of your state laws because it is still illegal federally. WILL you be kicked out for smoking weed? Probably not unless you are being a nuisance to others or damaging the property.
Marijuana laws across the United States are changing dramatically, which is indirectly causing marijuana users to become more and more brave with their habit, regardless of whether or not it is legal in their particular state.
Moving Soon? Get quality cardboard moving boxes for less! – Click Here – Fast and Free Shipping!Today, I am going to address where the landlord’s rights regarding smoking weed end and where the tenants begin.
Can You Be Evicted For The Smell Of Weed?
Throughout all my years of owning an apartment complex, there has only been one instance where I actually had to evict someone for their rampant smoking habit.
In the end, we had to evict the people in the apartment because their smoking habit was a direct nuisance to their neighbors.
It is incredibly difficult to evict someone simply because you or one of the neighbors think they “smell” weed. Often times, people who aren’t familiar with it will mistake another smell for that of weed and use it as a way to cause problems for a neighbor they don’t like.
The case I am referring to was a couple who would not only smoke several times a day, they would literally “hot-box” their apartment or smoke with their door open to their apartment with people coming and going. They weren’t even making an attempt at being subtle about it. They also disabled all the smoke alarms in their house so they wouldn’t work either.
Needless to say, not only did their apartment smell like weed, the hallway smelled terrible, and you could even smell it before you even went in the building their apartment was in.
The state our apartment complex is located in still regards marijuana to be illegal, even medically, so there was little if anything they could say as a defense on the matter.
I had smelled it often, and my manager had smelled it often and while we rolled our eyes at them, we didn’t have to live next door, above, or below them. For these people, it became UNBEARABLE.
We started getting report after report after report. Finally, the cops came over. Then they came a second time. THEN the neighbors started getting threats from the people smoking weed and they became scared for their safety.
I simply wrote up a smoking violation, gave it to them, and documented it on our end. I also instructed their neighbors to simply call the cops the next time it happened, have them come over, and if that happened, I would take further action.
Literally, that very day, it happened again, the cops were called, and I had my manager write them up an eviction notice.
Did we ever “catch” them smoking weed? No. Did the cops ransack their apartment like 1950’s FBI agents? No. So, how did we legally evict them and why?
Firstly, we didn’t choose to evict them because they were don’t something that we had some sort of moral disagreement with. While neither me nor anyone else at Apartment School, would EVER recommend doing drugs of any kind, there are some battles you choose to fight as a landlord and some things you let go. If we choose to evict all our tenants who we suspected or even had reported that were smoking weed, it would probably be a lonely apartment complex!
We evicted them solely because they were a “nuisance to other tenants” and disrupting their right to a “peaceful and undisturbed domicile”. What this means is that their smoking weed wasn’t what got them kicked out, it was making their neighbor’s apartments unlivable and by causing a direct nuisance to them over and over again. These tenants weren’t paying to deal with that!
Even the police couldn’t do anything or even search their apartment for anything, regardless of whether it smelled like weed or not. They could only respond to the complaint the other residents had. Then it was our job as manager and landlord to address and rectify the situation as soon as humanly possible.
How Can A Landlord Prove I Was Smoking Weed?
Honestly, you can’t. It’s virtually impossible. Unless someone is videoing you smoking out on your balcony or being extremely blatant about it, all you are going to have is an accusation, and you cannot be evicted for an accusation.
There has to be something much more to the situation than someone accusing you of something.
Now, if you GIVE CAUSE to the landlord that you were smoking, that is another deal entirely.
For instance, if the landlord comes by to replace the filter in your furnace or change the batteries in your smoke alarm and you have weed sitting out on your coffee table, they could evict you in any state because it is still federally illegal to have weed. Your landlord could evict you on this basis.
In the same way, if they go into your apartment to replace a filter or batteries in your smoke detector and your apartment smells terrible, they can also evict you on this basis as well because you are damaging their property by making it smell bad.
I can tell you honestly, that if you are smoking weed in your apartment and you can make your apartment not smell, not be a nuisance to your neighbors and not be blatant about it……your landlord isn’t going to care.
All your landlord cares about is if their tenants are happy and that their property is being taken care of. But if they think that they may be in danger of losing other tenants to it, you can be assured they will step up and do something about it.
Don’t give them a reason to do something and they won’t. They are in the business to make money, not to harass people.
Can I Be Evicted For Smoking Weed Even When It’s Legal?
Because weed is still federally illegal, any landlord can evict you for smoking weed. However, the overwhelming majority of the time, your landlord is going to evict you NOT because they disapprove of your weed habit, but because you are either damaging the property or causing a nuisance to other tenants.
These are the ONLY two reasons that they are going to go to the trouble to evict you for smoking weed.
While technically, you CAN be evicted if the owner has good reason to suspect you smoke weed, they aren’t going to go to the trouble if you are being respectful to their property and the people around you.
So, if you are going to smoke weed, just be courteous about it, don’t make your apartment smell like a music festival, and be respectful and conscientious about the people around you.
While your apartment complex CAN kick you out for smoking weed because it is illegal federally, you are MUCH more likely to be kicked out because you are making your apartment smell bad and you are causing a nuisance to your neighbors.
