Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California

Re: Gang removal

There is no real legal answer to this question - its more one of practicality. While there is a decent amount of caselaw on the subject of dangerous conditions in apartment complexes, unfortunately virtually of it relates to the issue of landlord liability after something bad has happened. Where the landlord has notice of the existence of these dangerous individuals, and does nothing to protect the tenants, in many cases they have been found liable for injury caused by these individuals to tenants in the property. But, again, this would be after-the-fact. You can make the argument that the landlord, with knowledge of these gang members' presence, is putting you at unnecessary risk of harm - i.e., exposing you to unreasonable peril and file a lawsuit attempting to force him to do something about it, however, at this stage the mere presence of these individuals may not be enough evidence of dangerous conditions to convince a judge to force the landlord to take action. I would suggest that you may wish to organize the tenants and contact the owner as a group to ask for his/her/its assistance in resolving the problem - I would involve the police as well as they have been successful in using statutes designed for organized crime to prevent gang members from meeting and organzing.

If the landlord fails to work with you, you could then go to the media and local officials to put the landlord under increasing pressure to help resolve the problem. Unfortunately, without an incident of violence having taken place, a lawsuit would be difficult because at this point it is pure speculation that their presence will lead to violence. You probably cannot force the landlord to keep guests out simply because you do not like them - even if you believe it will ultimately lead to a very bad incident. An additional problem you face is that if the gang members are there visiting other tenants, its not real likely you will get help or cooperation from those tenants, and other tenants may be too scared to stand up against the gangs. Frankly, moving may be your best option.

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