7 News Belize

Lawless Landlords Could Be Charged
posted (March 26, 2020)

And hopefully there will also be charges for heartless landlords on San Pedro who are evicting tenants in the middle of a state of emergency on the island.  We have received such reports this week and the AG said it is illegal:

Hon. Michael Peyrefitte - Attorney General
"You can only be kicked out by virtue of a directive from the Magistrate's court. Landlord can't come and kick you out, most of places who have rental agreements, by law, there must be a period of notice and usually that notice is at the time when you pay the rent. So if you're paying the rent on a monthly basis, then you have 30 days’ notice, which is the length of the state of emergency. So you would have to wait until the state of emergency is over. Next thing, if you purposely kick a person out and you know that person has nowhere else to go, clearly you have taken an action to me that will cause panic and fear, which means under the summary jurisdiction act if you just do that, with no reason, just out of spite, then you are committing an offence. Not only that, no policeman can come and just take somebody out of a residence and say the landlord wants you out, the policeman must have a judicial order that says that."

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