What Happened: After the utility company turned off the power to her apartment, a Section 8 tenant and her boyfriend secretly broke into the apartment building’s utility closet and reconnected her electricity. In so doing, they inadvertently disconnected the electricity to other units in the building. Thanks to security camera footage, management discovered what the tenant had done. But instead of acting right away, the landlord waited three months to evict the tenant for the transgression. The tenant argued that in accepting three months of rental assistance payments, the landlord had waived its eviction rights. After losing at trial and on appeal, the tenant appealed to the state’s top court.

Ruling: The third time proved the charm for the tenant as the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the landlord waived its right to evict. 

Reasoning: As in many states, in Minnesota, acceptance of rent payments by a landlord with knowledge of a tenant’s breach is a waiver of the right to evict the tenant for that breach. The so-called “waiver-by-acceptance” doctrine applies not just to conventional but also HUD assisted and public housing. In other words, Section 8 vouchers and other housing assistance payments constitute rent for purposes of the waiver-by-acceptance rule, even if some leases don’t characterize such payments as “rent.” The fact that rent is paid by HUD or a government agency rather than the actual tenant doesn’t support excluding tenants receiving housing assistance from the doctrine of waiver by acceptance, the court reasoned. Nor does the fact that HUD regulations give public housing agencies discretion to contract with landlords to temporarily continue providing housing assistance payments after a tenant has vacated a unit.

• Hook & Ladder Apts., L.P. v. Nalewaja, 2025 Minn. LEXIS 502, 2025 LX 432139, 2025 WL 2714155