Advice on apartment telling us to leave for a day

In a week our apartment complex is spraying for insects. They are telling us that we basically have to pack our whole apartment up and put it all on our kitchen table, clean everything, and keep our dog somewhere else. In addition, the note they gave us said pregnant women must vacate the premises for 24 hours. Anyone else can return two hours after spraying. The apartment manager said that they probably won’t be giving us a place to stay during that time.

Do we have any recourse?

Notes:

My mileage may vary.

I know any and all advice given is worth about as much as I’ve paid for it.

I’m in California.

The wife is about 23 weeks pregnant.

If I refuse to do anything the only thing they can do to me is not spray the place.

The lease only says we have to be willing to vacate, but doesn’t say anything
about expenses, etc.

We don’t have a list of what pesticides they will be using.

If I were you, I’d get that pregnant wife out of the complex for at least the specified 24 hours even if you decide not to let them spray your apartment.

Otherwise, anything that is wrong with the baby will turn into a huge “what if?”

I don’t have any practical experience with your situation.

Be grateful that they gave you advance notice. But I would ask for a list of ingredients. Maybe you don’t want to come back.

I lived in an apartment complex that did that sorta spraying once. But they didn’t even have the “evactuate!” warnings. Just they would be spraying on Thursday or whatever.

I had to wash every damn piece of cloth I owned after the first spraying. All the clothes in the closet. All stuff in the various dressers and other storage thingys. Everything caused me to itch a lot afterwards till I washed it.

Now I am pretty sure they did not actually spray that crap on my hanging clothes or open my dresser drawers and douse my underwear. But the fumes got to em apparently.

So, I guess I am saying I would take the precautions seriously and maybe even consider them not sufficient for the more cautious folks.

Now that I think about about it. I think I went through this twice (the second time is when I figured out what the problem was) and then went the “don’t spray my apartment …I’ll do it myself at the same time thanks” approach.

Your end result will depend on what city you’re in. Some cities like LA have very specific rules for this, requiring the landlord to arrange for temporary housing at their expense, and others are much more hands-off, but at the very least, you’re probably entitled to deduct the day’s value in rent.

Our lease says we have to cooperate with pest control efforts by “providing us with access to Residence for our pest control assessments and treatments; following our instructions to prepare the residence for pest control treatment and/or vacating the residence when necessary in connection with our pest control efforts.”

That’s the line that has me worried, as I’d rather just tell them to leave me alone and I’ll deal with pests myself.

I felt the same way when I dealt with this situation a few years ago, as it turns out that was a big mistake. Guess where all the bugs go when the other apartments get sprayed? Yep, they scuttle over to the poison free space you will be providing for them by not spraying. I swear I’ve never seen so many bugs in my life plus then I had to deal with them myself and couldn’t call on the landlord.

Pack up your kitchen, pack up your wife and hit a cheap motel for a few days. It’s worth it.

That’s something I’m worried about. But we have a dog, so we’re limited where we can go. In addition: she works full-time and I have class all day, so now she’s going to have to take a day off work, so not only are we out the cost for the hotel, but also her missing work.

Pain in the ass, it is.

Is there a friend who can hang out with your dog for the day so you guys can go to work? Or maybe speak to your OB and ask about other ways to combat the bugs? Maybe contact “green” pest control companies in your area? I think the key here is to do it on your terms if possible, but don’t put it off because an infested apartment isn’t any healthier than a sprayed one. Best case would be to get something nontoxic done first (before the other apartments are sprayed) so you can tell the landlord to bug off (heh) and still be bug free.

I am in to say the thing about when they spray the other units but not yours, bugs will come to your unit.

But I don’t get why your wife will miss a day’s work if you’re staying in a motel instead of home. Take the dog to a doggy day care place.

It does seem like you ought to be able to deduct your expenses for this from your rent, but I have no idea what California says about that.

What is your dog’s job?

The reason why she’ll have to miss a day is because we have to be out of our place by 0900 on Tuesday but won’t be able to check in anywhere until ~1500.

:smack:

My dog’s a tax attorney.

How much advance notice did they give you?

And now, as you read this, how much of that advance notice time is still left?

Have you talked to the other tenants about this? Are they mostly just going along quietly to the slaughter, or do you hear a lot of grumbling? Maybe you can lead a massive tenant revolt.

Option A: Check in the night before.

Option B: Pack all your stuff into the car, go to work as usual, and check in after you’re finished with work for the day.

We were given a week notice. The only other tenant we’ve talked to about this just said that they’re angry, but moving out either way, so they’ll just stay there.

It really wouldn’t be a big deal (besides the huge pain in the ass of taking everything out of the cabinets, closets, etc) if it weren’t for the fact that my wife is pregnant.

A: That’d mean we would have to pay for two nights.

B: We would still have to figure out something to do with the dog (unless I’m missing something, which is probably likely).

Got a friend who can take on the dog, or a dog boarding place?

For that matter, got a friend/relative whose house you can crash at?

And as someone who used to live in an apartment building where they started out by only spraying for cockroaches in the apartments where people complained about them - you do not want to be the “island” in the middle of all of that. You definitely want them spraying your place. We were on the other side of things, the complaining people whose apartment got sprayed, but the roaches kept coming back, and we figured out they were saving money by only spraying 1-2 apartments at a time. The roaches would just creep back in from the neighbors’ apartments once the poison had cleared.

Finally, there has to be some kind of tenant housing legal website for your city/for California that lists the rights you have as relating to stuff like this. It’s not necessarily all covered in the lease.

Any chance renter’s insurance will cover the hotel?

And I still don’t see why your wife has to take off work. If the 24 hour vacate starts at 9:00 am on Tuesday, you leave that morning, take the dog to kennel, wife goes to work, you go to school. At the end of the day check into the hotel. Wednesday morning check out of hotel, work/school, pick up dog, back home Wednesday evening and you’ve had an extra 8 hours or so for the pesticides to disperse.

Check your dog in the kennel. Or if he is a well-behaved dog, can you bring him to work? I am not a big fan of dogs at work, but emergencies happen.

Find a friend to take the dog for a day. Stay in a hotel. I don’t see how a hotel stay prevents your wife from working. I doubt you can even deduct a day’s rent for the 2 hour interruption based on some clause in your lease, but the full day may allow you to deduct a days rent which should be about equal to an hours rent for a hotel. It’s kind of a bad break but how do you expect the apartment to operate if there’s an infestation of bugs? See, this is the advantage of owning your own house, not only would you get to rent the hotel room, but you’d get to pay for the exterminator yourself. :confused: