There's a moment that fills many tenants with dread: the lease term ends. The one-year lease, the two-year lease — it runs out, and suddenly the tenant feels they're on borrowed time, exposed, stripped of protection. If a landlord wants them gone now, the thinking goes, well, the lease is over, so what rights are left? Some tenants imagine that once the lease expires, they've become something less than a tenant — a mere holdover with no standing, someone the landlord can now simply remove. And a landlord inclined to push someone out may encourage exactly that belief: your lease is up, you have no lease, so you have to go.
A New York appellate decision shows how wrong this is. In Trec v. Cazares, the Appellate Division, Second Department, addressed a tenant whose written lease had expired — and held that her tenancy didn't vanish with it. Because she remained in possession on the same terms, her tenancy continued as a month-to-month tenancy under New York's Real Property Law § 232-c. She was still a tenant. And when the owner's estate later changed the locks on her rather than using the lawful court process, the court held she had adequately alleged wrongful eviction — because even a month-to-month holdover tenant can't be removed by self-help; she could only be removed through a lawful proceeding. The expired lease didn't erase her rights; it changed the form of her tenancy while leaving her a protected tenant.
This guide uses that decision to explain a genuinely important and widely misunderstood point: an expired lease does not automatically erase a tenant's rights. It will explain the case and its holding. It will explain what happens when a lease expires — the conversion to a month-to-month tenancy — and why that means you're still a tenant. It will explain that, as a continuing tenant, you remain protected against self-help eviction and removable only through lawful process. It will honestly address the parts of the case where claims were dismissed, so you understand the decision accurately. And it will offer practical guidance for a tenant whose lease has expired. This is general information rather than legal advice for your situation. But the core message can dissolve a widespread and harmful fear: when your lease expires, you don't become rightless — you very likely remain a tenant, with a tenant's protections, including the fundamental protection against being thrown out by anything other than the lawful process.
Let's walk through the decision, because its facts show clearly how an expired lease does not strip a tenant of their status or protections — and how a landlord's resort to self-help after expiration is still unlawful.
The tenant in the case had a written lease for parts of a Brooklyn building (a basement, backyard, and two closets), running for a defined term — from April 2013 to March 2015. So far, an ordinary fixed-term lease. But two things happened that matter. First, beginning in 2014, the arrangement shifted: rather than paying cash rent, the tenant provided substantial help maintaining the property, and the rent was treated as paid or waived in exchange for that maintenance work. Second, when the written lease expired in March 2015, the tenant remained in possession on the same terms — she kept living there (and maintaining the property) under the same arrangement.
Then, after the original owner died, his estate (acting through his widow, who became executor) moved against the tenant — in March 2017, changing the locks on the building and refusing to give her keys, effectively locking her out. The tenant sued, alleging wrongful eviction (among other claims). The estate and others moved to dismiss, essentially contesting her standing and her claims. The case reached the Appellate Division, and the court's holding is the heart of the lesson.
The expired lease converted to a month-to-month tenancy. The court held that the tenant's arrangement — maintenance in exchange for possession — and her continued occupancy after the lease expired indicated that a month-to-month tenancy was created and remained in effect for as long as she stayed in possession. The court grounded this in Real Property Law § 232-c, the provision governing what happens when a tenant holds over after a lease expires. In other words, the expiration of her written lease did not end her tenancy or strip her of tenant status; it converted her into a month-to-month tenant, continuing on the same terms, for as long as she remained in possession. She was still a tenant after the lease expired.
The maintenance-for-possession arrangement counted as a valid tenancy. Notably, the court treated the arrangement in which the tenant maintained the property in exchange for possession — with rent "paid or waived" — as establishing a tenancy. Her tenancy didn't fail just because she wasn't paying cash rent; the maintenance-for-possession arrangement was a valid basis for her tenancy, which continued month-to-month after expiration. This underscores that the substance of the tenancy, not a particular form of rent payment, is what mattered.
Changing the locks was self-help eviction, supporting a wrongful-eviction claim. The court held that the estate's changing the locks and refusing keys — rather than using the lawful court process — suggested the estate had resorted to self-help to evict her, and that the complaint adequately stated a wrongful-eviction claim against the estate (and the executor acting as its agent). The court cited the illegal-lockout and wrongful-eviction provisions of New York law (RPAPL §§ 711, 853). Crucially, the court noted that the estate didn't even commence a holdover proceeding — the lawful process for removing a holdover tenant — until months after the lockout. The estate had skipped the lawful process and gone straight to self-help, which is exactly what the law prohibits, even against a holdover month-to-month tenant.
So the case established the throughline this guide builds on: the tenant's lease expired, but she remained a tenant (month-to-month under § 232-c), and as a continuing tenant she could only be removed through the lawful process — so when the estate locked her out instead, that was self-help supporting a wrongful-eviction claim. The expired lease didn't erase her rights; she was still a protected tenant, and the landlord's shortcut around the lawful process was unlawful.
(An honest note, addressed more fully below: the court didn't uphold every claim the tenant made — it dismissed several claims and some against certain defendants. But the core holdings relevant here — that her expired lease converted to a protected month-to-month tenancy, and that the lockout supported a wrongful-eviction claim against the estate — stood. The decision is a genuine vindication of the expired-lease principle, even as it trimmed other parts of the complaint.)
The central lesson of the case is what happens when a lease expires, and it's the opposite of what many tenants fear. Understanding the conversion to a month-to-month tenancy is the key to understanding why an expired lease doesn't erase your rights.
When a fixed-term lease expires and the tenant remains in possession — stays in the home — the tenancy does not simply vanish, leaving the tenant as a rightless occupant. Instead, under New York's Real Property Law § 232-c, the tenancy typically continues as a month-to-month tenancy. The tenant who holds over after the lease ends, with the tenancy continuing, becomes a month-to-month tenant, generally on the same terms as the expired lease. The expiration changes the form of the tenancy — from a fixed term to month-to-month — but it doesn't end the tenancy or strip the tenant of their status. You remain a tenant; you're just now a month-to-month tenant rather than a fixed-term one.
This is exactly what the court found in the case: the tenant's continued possession after her lease expired meant a month-to-month tenancy was created and remained in effect for as long as she stayed in possession. Her expired lease didn't make her a non-tenant; it made her a month-to-month tenant. And that status carried real protections, as we'll see.
Why does this conversion happen? Because the law recognizes that a tenancy is an ongoing relationship, not something that simply evaporates the instant a lease term ends while the tenant is still living there. If a tenant stays after the lease expires and the arrangement continues, the sensible legal understanding is that the tenancy continues too, now on a month-to-month basis. The alternative — that a tenant becomes instantly rightless the moment their lease term ends — would be absurd and would leave countless tenants exposed, since holding over after a lease expires (with the tenancy continuing) is extremely common. The month-to-month conversion reflects the reality that the tenant is still a tenant, living in their home under a continuing arrangement, just on a different temporal footing.
The practical significance is enormous and reassuring. If your lease has expired but you've remained in your home, you have very likely not become a rightless occupant whom the landlord can remove at will. You've likely become a month-to-month tenant, continuing on the same terms, still possessed of tenant status and tenant protections. The dread that "my lease is up, so I have no rights" is, in the typical case, simply mistaken — the lease expiring converted your tenancy rather than ending it. You're still a tenant.
This also means that a landlord's line — "your lease is up, so you have to go" — misstates the law. The expiration of your lease didn't, by itself, give the landlord the right to remove you or end your tenancy; it converted you to a month-to-month tenant, and (as we'll discuss) a month-to-month tenant can only be removed through the lawful process, not by the landlord's say-so or self-help. So when a landlord suggests that your expired lease means you've lost your rights or must simply leave, understand that the law more likely sees you as a continuing month-to-month tenant with protections intact. The expired lease is not the end of your tenancy; it's the beginning of a month-to-month one.
It's worth understanding what "on the same terms" means, because it's part of what makes the conversion protective rather than a downgrade. When a tenancy converts to month-to-month after a lease expires, it generally carries forward the terms of the expired lease — the rent amount, the conditions — now applying on a month-to-month basis. So you don't lose the benefit of your lease terms the moment it expires; they continue to govern your month-to-month tenancy. The tenant in the case, for instance, continued on the same terms (her maintenance-for-possession arrangement) after expiration. This continuity matters because it means the expiration doesn't throw you into some rightless limbo with undefined terms; your tenancy continues on the familiar footing, just month-to-month.
A related point worth clarifying: a month-to-month tenancy can eventually be ended, but only the right way. Converting to month-to-month doesn't mean you can stay forever regardless of the landlord's wishes; a month-to-month tenancy can be terminated — but it requires the landlord to follow the proper procedure, which generally means giving the required written notice and then, if you don't leave, bringing a holdover proceeding through the court. The key is that ending a month-to-month tenancy is a process with notice requirements and a court proceeding, not something a landlord accomplishes by declaring your lease over or by changing the locks. So "your expired lease converted you to month-to-month" doesn't mean you're unremovable; it means you can only be removed the lawful way, with proper notice and process — which is a world apart from being removable at will or by self-help.
The reason the month-to-month conversion matters so much is that it means you remain protected by the fundamental tenant protection: you can only be removed through the lawful court process, not through self-help. An expired-lease, month-to-month, holdover tenant is still a tenant, and still cannot be lawfully thrown out by a lockout or other self-help. This is the protection the case vindicated.
Recall what the court held about the lockout: the estate, instead of using the lawful process, changed the locks and refused keys — and the court treated this as self-help eviction supporting a wrongful-eviction claim. The key point is that the tenant's status as a month-to-month holdover tenant did not strip her of the protection against self-help. Even though her original lease had expired, even though she was "only" a month-to-month tenant, she still could not lawfully be removed by a lockout. The landlord (the estate) had to use the lawful process — and its failure to do so, its resort to self-help instead, was what made the lockout a basis for a wrongful-eviction claim.
This is the crucial protection that survives lease expiration. In New York, a tenant — including a month-to-month holdover tenant — generally can only be removed through the lawful court process: the landlord must bring the appropriate proceeding (for a holdover tenant, a holdover proceeding) and obtain a court order, with removal carried out lawfully. The landlord cannot lawfully resort to self-help — changing the locks, removing belongings, forcing the tenant out — to remove even a month-to-month tenant. So the expiration of your lease, which converted you to a month-to-month tenant, did not strip you of this protection; you remain removable only through the lawful process, and a landlord who locks you out instead is engaging in unlawful self-help, just as the estate did in the case.
The court's observation about the holdover proceeding drives this home. It noted that the estate didn't commence a holdover proceeding — the lawful process for removing a holdover tenant — until months after the lockout. In other words, the lawful path to remove her existed (a holdover proceeding), but the estate skipped it and resorted to self-help first. That sequence — self-help before (or instead of) the lawful process — is exactly what makes the lockout unlawful. The landlord's remedy for a holdover tenant who won't leave is to bring a holdover proceeding, not to change the locks; using self-help instead of the lawful process is a wrongful eviction, regardless of the lease having expired.
So the protection that survives lease expiration is the bedrock one: you can only be removed through the lawful process. Your expired lease made you a month-to-month tenant, and a month-to-month tenant, like any tenant, is protected against self-help eviction — removable only through a lawful proceeding, not a lockout. If a landlord, faced with your expired lease, resorts to self-help to remove you rather than bringing the lawful proceeding, that's a wrongful eviction, as Trec v. Cazares confirms. The expiration of your lease did not give the landlord license to skip the lawful process; that process still applies, and your protection against self-help remains fully intact.
The case also offers a subtler lesson worth drawing out: the form of your rent arrangement doesn't undermine this protection. Recall that the tenant wasn't paying cash rent — her rent was "paid or waived" in exchange for maintaining the property — and the court still treated her as a tenant whose tenancy converted to month-to-month and who was protected against self-help. This matters because a landlord might try to argue that an unusual or non-cash rent arrangement means there's no "real" tenancy, and thus no protection. The case suggests otherwise: a genuine arrangement under which someone occupies a home in exchange for value (including services like maintenance) can establish a tenancy entitled to protection, and that tenancy can continue month-to-month after a lease expires just as a cash-rent tenancy would. So don't assume that an informal or non-cash rent arrangement leaves you unprotected; if you've genuinely been a tenant under such an arrangement and your lease expired while you remained, the same expired-lease protection can apply.
This is particularly relevant for the many tenancies that don't fit the tidy cash-rent-on-a-written-lease model — arrangements involving services, informal agreements, or evolving terms over a long tenancy. The lesson of the case is that the substance of the tenancy, not its tidiness, is what matters, and a real tenancy that continued past a lease's expiration carries the month-to-month protection regardless of how rent was handled. A landlord can't defeat your protection merely by pointing to the unconventional form of your arrangement, if the substance was a genuine, continuing tenancy.
To understand the case accurately — and to give you a realistic picture rather than an overstated one — it's worth noting that the court did not uphold every claim the tenant brought. It dismissed several claims and some against particular defendants. Understanding what was dismissed, and why, both keeps the picture honest and offers useful lessons about the limits of various claims.
While the court upheld the wrongful-eviction claim against the estate (and the executor as its agent), it dismissed that claim against other defendants — the tire-shop operators who occupied part of the building — because the complaint didn't allege that they took steps to dispossess the tenant or prevent her access. The lesson: a wrongful-eviction claim lies against those who actually did the dispossessing, not against others who didn't take such steps. Who you can hold liable depends on who actually committed the eviction conduct.
The court also addressed a trespass claim. It allowed trespass against the executor individually (based on her entering and disturbing the tenant's property), but dismissed trespass against the estate and the tire-shop defendants — against the estate because the conduct wasn't alleged to be in her capacity as executor, and against the tire-shop defendants because their alleged conduct occurred only after the tenant was already locked out. The lessons: the capacity in which someone acts matters, and conduct occurring after a lockout may not support certain claims tied to interfering with possession.
The court dismissed the nuisance claim, because the conduct alleged occurred after the tenant was locked out of the premises — again, the timing (post-lockout) mattered. It dismissed the invasion of privacy claim, because New York's limited statutory privacy right concerns commercial use of someone's name or likeness, which wasn't alleged here. It dismissed the false arrest claim, because the tenant alleged only that a defendant made false statements to police, not that any defendant actively induced or procured the arrest to the degree the law requires.
And notably, the court dismissed the harassment claim, stating plainly that "New York does not recognize a civil cause of action to recover damages for harassment." This is an important accuracy point worth absorbing: while there are various protections against harassing conduct in specific contexts (and specific statutory harassment provisions in some areas), New York does not recognize a general standalone civil "harassment" cause of action for damages. So a tenant can't simply sue for "harassment" as a freestanding damages claim in the way one might assume.
Why include all this? Because honesty about the case makes its real lesson more credible, not less. The decision is not a story of a tenant winning everything; it's a story of a court carefully sorting the claims — upholding the ones that were adequately pleaded (crucially, the wrongful eviction against the estate, grounded in the expired-lease-to-month-to-month conversion and the self-help lockout) while dismissing those that weren't. The core lesson for this guide — that the expired lease converted to a protected month-to-month tenancy and the lockout supported a wrongful-eviction claim — stands firmly, confirmed by the court. The dismissals don't undermine that; they refine the picture, showing which claims hold and which don't. For a tenant, the realistic takeaway is that the expired-lease protection is real and was vindicated, while other potential claims have their own requirements and limits. Knowing both — the strong core and the limits around it — is understanding the case accurately.
This honesty also carries a practical lesson: if your lease has expired and you've been wrongfully treated, the strongest, most clearly-supported claim may well be the wrongful-eviction one if you've been subjected to self-help, grounded in your continuing month-to-month tenancy — while other claims (nuisance, privacy, "harassment," etc.) may face real hurdles or not be recognized at all. An advocate can help you identify which claims actually hold in your situation, rather than assuming every grievance translates into a viable claim.
One recurring theme in the dismissals is worth extracting because it's broadly instructive: timing mattered to several of them. The court dismissed certain claims (like nuisance, and trespass against some defendants) in part because the conduct complained of occurred after the tenant was already locked out. The analytical point is that some claims tied to interference with your possession depend on conduct occurring while you were in possession — conduct after you'd already been dispossessed fit differently. For a tenant, the practical upshot is twofold: first, this reinforces how central the lockout itself (and your status as a tenant at that moment) is to the strongest claim; and second, it underscores the value of documenting the full timeline — what happened when, relative to the lockout — because timing can determine which claims hold. The wrongful-eviction claim, grounded in the lockout of a continuing tenant, was the clearly-supported core; the timing of other conduct affected the viability of the surrounding claims.
The broader takeaway from the honest accounting is that you should go in with realistic expectations and good advice: the expired-lease-to-month-to-month protection and the wrongful-eviction claim against the party who locked you out are the strong, vindicated core, while other claims rise or fall on their own specific requirements. This isn't discouraging — it's clarifying. Knowing that your central protection is solid, while other potential claims have their own limits, lets you focus on the strong claim and pursue the others only where they genuinely fit, which is exactly how a good advocate would approach it.
Drawing the lessons together, here's practical guidance for a tenant whose lease has expired — or is about to — who wants to understand and protect their rights. The through-line is that lease expiration doesn't erase your rights, and there are concrete ways to understand and assert your continuing tenancy.
Understand that you're likely still a tenant. First and most important: don't assume that your expired lease has made you rightless. If your lease expired and you remained in possession with the tenancy continuing, you've very likely become a month-to-month tenant under § 232-c, continuing on the same terms, still possessed of tenant status and protections. Recognizing that you're still a tenant — that the expiration converted rather than ended your tenancy — is the foundation for asserting your rights.
Know you're still protected against self-help eviction. As a continuing month-to-month tenant, you remain protected against being removed by self-help. The landlord generally can't lawfully lock you out, remove your belongings, or force you out; they must use the lawful process (for a holdover tenant, a holdover proceeding) and obtain a court order. So if a landlord, citing your expired lease, tries to remove you by self-help rather than the lawful process, that's a wrongful eviction — as the case confirms. Don't accept a lockout as legitimate just because your lease expired; the protection against self-help survives expiration.
Recognize that the landlord's lawful remedy is a proceeding, not a lockout. If a landlord wants you out after your lease expires, their lawful path is to bring the appropriate proceeding (a holdover proceeding) and go through the court process — not to change the locks. Understanding this helps you recognize unlawful self-help: if the landlord is trying to remove you without the lawful proceeding, through self-help, they're acting unlawfully. The lawful process is the landlord's only legitimate route, and its absence (replaced by self-help) is the hallmark of a wrongful eviction.
Document your continuing tenancy. Be able to show that you've continued as a tenant after the lease expired — that you remained in possession on the same terms. Keep your expired lease (it establishes the original tenancy and terms), records of your continued occupancy, records of rent paid (or, as in the case, of the arrangement by which rent was handled — even a non-cash arrangement like maintenance-for-possession can establish tenancy), and anything showing the tenancy continued. This documentation establishes your continuing month-to-month tenancy, which is the basis of your protections.
If you're locked out, act promptly to seek restoration and get help. If a landlord does resort to self-help and locks you out after your lease expired, understand that — as a continuing tenant subjected to unlawful self-help — you may be able to seek restoration and pursue a wrongful-eviction claim, as the tenant in the case did. Act promptly, and get legal help, because a wrongful eviction (illegal lockout) is a serious matter with real remedies, and restoration is time-sensitive.
Get legal advice about your specific situation. Because the specifics matter — whether your tenancy converted to month-to-month, what protections apply, what claims hold — getting legal advice is valuable, especially if a landlord is trying to remove you or has locked you out. A tenant-rights advocate or attorney can confirm your status as a continuing tenant and help you assert your protections.
The overarching message is that a tenant whose lease has expired is far from rightless. You're likely a continuing month-to-month tenant, protected against self-help eviction, removable only through the lawful process — and if a landlord treats your expired lease as license to remove you by self-help, that's unlawful. Understand your continuing tenancy, document it, recognize the landlord's lawful remedy (a proceeding, not a lockout), and get help if your rights are violated.
Let's see how the principle plays out for a tenant whose lease has expired.
Imagine a tenant whose two-year lease ended several months ago. She stayed in her apartment, kept paying rent (which the landlord kept accepting), and life continued as before — but she never signed a new lease; the old one just expired. Now the landlord wants her out and tells her: "Your lease is over. You don't have a lease anymore, so you have no right to be here. You need to leave." When she doesn't leave immediately, she comes home one day to find the landlord has changed the locks. Locked out and told her expired lease left her with no rights, she feels she has no choice but to accept it and go.
Run it the way that belief dictates. The tenant accepts the landlord's framing — expired lease, no rights, must leave — and treats the lockout as the legitimate consequence of her lease having ended. She gathers what she can and leaves, absorbing the lockout as if it were lawful. The landlord's self-help works, because the tenant believed the myth that an expired lease erases tenant rights. Her real protections went unused.
Run it informed by the case. The tenant understands, as Trec v. Cazares establishes, that her expired lease didn't erase her rights — that by remaining in possession with the tenancy continuing (paying rent the landlord accepted), she became a month-to-month tenant under § 232-c, still a tenant with tenant protections. She knows that, as a continuing tenant, she's protected against self-help eviction — that the landlord can't lawfully lock her out but must use the lawful process (a holdover proceeding) to remove her. So she recognizes the lock change for what it is: an unlawful self-help eviction, exactly like the one the court in the case treated as supporting a wrongful-eviction claim. She doesn't accept it as legitimate. She documents her continuing tenancy (the expired lease, her continued rent payments the landlord accepted, her ongoing occupancy), acts promptly to seek restoration, and gets legal help to assert her wrongful-eviction claim and get back into her home. The landlord's "your lease is up, you have no rights" line turns out to be the myth it is: her expired lease made her a month-to-month tenant, not a rightless occupant, and the lockout was unlawful self-help against a protected tenant.
Same tenant, same expired lease, same lockout. In one version she accepts the lockout as the legitimate result of her lease ending; in the other, she recognizes her continuing tenancy and protections, sees the lockout as unlawful, and asserts her rights. The difference was knowing that an expired lease does not automatically erase a tenant's rights.
For a tenant whose lease has expired and who faces a landlord trying to remove them, help makes a real difference, so a few closing notes.
Tenant-rights organizations, legal aid offices, and housing attorneys can confirm your status as a continuing month-to-month tenant, explain your protections, and help you respond if a landlord tries to remove you — through self-help (which is unlawful) or through the lawful process. Many of these resources are free. Because the specifics of your situation determine your exact status and protections, and because a landlord's self-help eviction is a serious matter with a time-sensitive restoration remedy, getting knowledgeable help is valuable — both to understand your continuing tenancy and to assert your rights if they're violated.
A few principles to carry from the case. Understand that an expired lease does not automatically erase your rights — if you remained in possession with the tenancy continuing, you likely became a month-to-month tenant under § 232-c, still a tenant. Know that, as a continuing tenant, you're protected against self-help eviction and removable only through the lawful process (a holdover proceeding), so a lockout after your lease expired is unlawful self-help, not a legitimate consequence of expiration. Document your continuing tenancy (the old lease, continued rent or the rent arrangement, ongoing occupancy). And if you're locked out, act promptly to seek restoration and get help. Don't accept the "your lease is up, so you have no rights" myth.
A note on scope: Trec v. Cazares is a New York decision, and the principles here — the conversion to a month-to-month tenancy under RPL § 232-c upon holding over, the protection against self-help eviction, the requirement of a lawful proceeding to remove a holdover tenant — reflect New York law. The specifics can vary and evolve, and tenants elsewhere have their own rules (though the general principle that holding over often creates a continuing tenancy, and that tenants are protected against self-help, is broadly recognized in various forms). As always, this is general information, not legal advice, so getting advice for your particular situation is worthwhile — especially where your tenancy and your home are at stake.
Step back and hold the reassuring lesson. The fear that an expired lease leaves a tenant rightless — exposed, removable at will, stripped of protection — is, in the typical case, simply false, and Trec v. Cazares demonstrates why. When the tenant's written lease expired and she remained in possession, her tenancy didn't vanish; it converted to a month-to-month tenancy under Real Property Law § 232-c, continuing on the same terms, leaving her a tenant with a tenant's protections. And when the estate tried to remove her by changing the locks rather than using the lawful process, that self-help was a wrongful eviction — because even a month-to-month holdover tenant can only be removed through a lawful proceeding, not a lockout. Her lease ending was not her rights ending.
That lesson belongs to every tenant whose lease has expired. If your fixed-term lease has run out but you've remained in your home with the tenancy continuing, you've very likely become a month-to-month tenant, still possessed of tenant status and the fundamental protection against self-help eviction. The landlord's "your lease is up, so you have to go" is not the law; your expired lease converted your tenancy rather than erasing it, and you remain removable only through the lawful process. A landlord who locks you out, citing your expired lease, is resorting to unlawful self-help against a protected tenant — exactly what the court in the case recognized as a wrongful eviction.
So if your lease has expired and a landlord is treating you as though you've lost your rights — or worse, resorting to self-help to remove you — don't accept the premise. Understand that you're very likely a continuing month-to-month tenant, protected against self-help and removable only through the lawful process. Document your continuing tenancy, recognize a lockout as the unlawful self-help it is, act promptly to seek restoration if you're locked out, and get help. Your lease ending did not end your tenancy or your rights — it changed the form of your tenancy while leaving its protections intact, and the law, as this decision shows, stands behind the tenant whose lease has expired but who remains, in every sense that matters, a tenant. Find out where you stand.
