In an apartment building where each apartment tenant has a private mailbox, does the landlord (or condo board or whatever) have any obligations other than refraining from opening and reading the tenants’ mail?
In our building, the boxes are divided up into large sections that the postal carrier opens; it swings out and away allowing for easy insertion of the mail going into that section. (The individual doors to each mailbox are mounted on this large swinging section). The latch that holds the entire swinging section closed is a tab that, when rotated by the key to the locked position, slides down behing a retaining bracket. The retaining bracket on my particular section is not attached very well. About half the time when I come home and go to pick up my mail, I find the entire swinging section is loose, the bracket having once again failed to keep the latch tab from simply being pulled past it. In other words, when I insert my key and pull, the whole damn wall opens, exposing the mailbox of 60-some-odd people.
Does the landlord have a legal obligation to maintain mailboxes? Must apartment mailboxes guarantee some minimal degree of security from access by unauthorized people? Or is the provision of individual mailboxes a courtesy? And/or mailboxes in apartments could legally be simple cubbyholes open to the air and the hands and eyes of the other apartment-dwellers, and locking individual doors are just a legally unnecessary courtesy?
I know, I should just rent a PO Box. But I get home late and could do without the hassle.