“You cant donate to Salvation Army or local church thrift store?”
The courts’ view anything left by the renter as the renter’s property. A friend felt bad about essentially ruining a renter’s stuff by leaving it out in the rain, so he rented a storage shed and moved it there. He told the guy where to get it. He immediately got served with a lawsuit for theft, which he promptly lost. People are almost universally angry for getting evicted only because they weren’t paying the rent. The last people I evicted told everyone in their church what an evil bastard I was. One of congregants called me while his wife listened in and told me what they were saying. I told him, “We threw out over twenty full bags of kitchen garbage that they ‘forgot’ to take to the curb. There are roaches on every surface. Please come by and smell the place.” He did. But the point is, the anger is there, it’s real and I have to deal with it.
There’s probably some leeway, but nobody I know is willing to explore what that might be. When people leave things, they might later sell, like unlicensed vehicles, I have bent over backwards to make darned certain they’re gone by the time I rerent. Generally, when I have to throw someone out and this problem arises, I have to work on the place for months afterwords, so it hasn’t been an issue. If it became one, I’d send a legal notice with my intention to have whatever is left removed as scrap. (Which I am not allowed to profit from. It’s entirely my expense.) Haven’t had to do that even though it took the last such miscreant several months to come get his nonfunctioning motorcycle.
Thanks for the explanation. It just seems so wasteful. You would think that you might be able to sell things that are left behind because you as the landlord have lost income from these tenants. Scofflaw rights appear to trump tax paying citizens rights.