No Written Lease and No Electricity in a Rental Unit

Attorney Answer

The absence of a written lease changes nothing about your rights, and losing electricity in November triggers a specific statutory remedy you can use yourself — but only after you give notice. That notice requirement is the step people skip, and skipping it forfeits the remedy.

The governing law. General Statutes § 47a-7 requires a landlord to comply with applicable building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety, to make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition, and to maintain in good and safe working order all electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, and ventilating facilities supplied or required to be supplied. These duties attach to the rental agreement whether it is written or oral. A month-to-month tenancy created by nothing but handing over rent is still a tenancy, and a new owner takes the building subject to it.

General Statutes § 47a-13 is the provision that gives you leverage. Where the landlord is required to supply electricity or another essential service and fails to do so for reasons not beyond the landlord's control, then — after you give reasonable written or oral notice specifying the breach — you may do any of the following:

procure reasonable amounts of the service yourself and deduct the actual and reasonable cost from your rent; - procure reasonable substitute housing if the landlord does not supply the service within forty-eight hours (immediately, if the same breach recurs within six months), with rent abating for the period of noncompliance; or - if the failure is wilful, terminate the rental agreement and recover the greater of two months' rent or double your actual damages.

Reasonable attorney's fees are recoverable, which is why a housing lawyer may take this case without money up front.

If the building is on one meter. If your power is off because the landlord stopped paying for service that is not individually metered to your unit, a different statute applies. General Statutes § 16-262e(c) makes the owner, agent, lessor, or manager liable for the cost of electricity furnished to the building, except for service furnished to a unit on an individually metered or billed basis for that unit's exclusive use; where the landlord fails to pay, an occupant who takes service in his or her own name may deduct a reasonable estimate of the cost attributable to other units, and under § 16-262e(d) those payments are treated as rent. In Northland Investment Corp. v. Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, 349 Conn. 35 (2024), the Supreme Court held that a landlord of a master-metered multiunit building bears liability for the building's utility costs and may not push them onto tenants through ratio utility billing, and that the section is to be construed liberally to protect tenants. That was a utility-billing appeal, not a shutoff case — but the landlord-pays rule is the point, and it only applies if your building is in fact not individually metered.

What you can do

1. Call the electric utility today with the building address. Ask whether service was terminated, in whose name the account stands, and whether the unit is individually metered. Everything else depends on that answer. 2. Give the landlord notice specifying the breach — in writing if at all possible, by text or email so it is time-stamped — and keep a copy. Section 47a-13 makes this a precondition. 3. Note the exact date and time of your notice. The forty-eight-hour substitute-housing trigger runs from it. 4. Call your town's building or health code enforcement office and ask for an inspection. No electricity in an occupied unit in winter is an emergency code condition. 5. Keep every receipt — hotel, generator, fuel, spoiled food, a space heater — and photograph the unit and any thermometer with a visible date. 6. Do not simply stop paying rent. Use the § 47a-13 deduction and abatement routes, or pay into court escrow through housing court. Unstructured withholding invites a nonpayment eviction. 7. Ask for the owner's name and address in writing. A new purchaser who has never spoken to you still has to be identified for you to sue or serve notice.

⏱ Time limits apply. Section 47a-13's forty-eight-hour substitute-housing trigger does not start until you give the notice the statute requires — so the sooner you give notice, the sooner your remedies open. Whether the shorter, immediate trigger for a repeat of the same breach within six months applies depends on your specific history with this landlord.