Tenant Gabriella B.: Next time, will make sure to get a lease in writing. A state judge approved the no-fault eviction of an Edgewood family after cautioning both landlord and tenant about the quicksand-like perils of oral, rather than written, leases.State Superior Court Judge Walter Spader, Jr. OK’d that eviction Tuesday morning at the end of a summary process trial in New Haven’s housing court on the third floor of the state courthouse at 121 Elm St.The case hinged on the fact that the owner-occupant landlord, Mamoudou Toure, and his first-floor tenants had an oral rather than a written lease.As Spader made clear at the end of the trial, once Toure and the tenants started disagreeing over rent and repairs last October, the lack of a written lease in place left both parties — but especially the tenants — vulnerable to an abrupt end to their housing agreement.“There’s a reason for a [written] lease. It gives you both protections,” Spader told Toure and one of his tenants, Gabriella B., who showed up on Tuesday to make their respective cases to the judge during the eviction trial.A written lease memorializes the address of the rental property, the term of the agreement, the monthly rent, and the list of approved tenants.Without such a written document, the judge continued, the spoken agreement between landlord and tenants legally lasts for only a month at a time.​“But at any time, if you don’t have a written lease, the landlord can say, ​‘I don’t want to continue this relationship.’ ” And it is their legal right to do so.With that, Spader approved the eviction — on the grounds that Gabriella and her family no longer have the right to occupy the apartment. But, the judge included in his order a caveat allowing the tenants to stay in their apartment through the end of March if they pay Toure $1,100 per month between now and then.Judge Spader: "There's a reason for a [written] lease. It gives you both protections." The case itself dates back to December, when Toure filed an eviction lawsuit against his first-floor tenants at a three-family house he owns on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard near Elm Street. He sought to evict those tenants on two grounds: that their lease had expired, and that they no longer had the right to occupy the apartment.The original lawsuit filed by Toure stated that Gabriella and her family owed a monthly rent of $1,100. Because the oral month-to-month rental agreement had ended in November, he wanted them out by Dec. 1. The landlord’s lawsuit did not accuse the tenants of failing to pay rent, but instead sought to move them out because the lease was no longer in effect. In a Dec. 11 answer filing with the court, Gabriella made her family’s case for why they should not be evicted.She wrote that she, her boyfriend, and their now-three-year-old son moved in in October 2022 after coming to a verbal agreement with Toure to pay $1,100 per month in rent. And in exchange for that rent, she wrote, Toure agreed to ​“make necessary repairs to the subject property within a reasonable amount of time.”She accused Toure of not living up to those timely maintenance obligations. She described a ​“serious mouse and roach infestation” at the property that has never been properly addressed, as well as what she said were inadequate or incomplete fixes to the kitchen floor; broken electrical outlets; chipped paint; a ​“free-falling window”; and cracks in the walls and door frames.Gabriella also wrote that Toure tried to increase her family’s monthly rent from $1,100 to $1,500 starting last Nov. 1 ​“notwithstanding plaintiff’s failure to provide a fit and habitable rental property.” And so, starting last November, she stopped paying rent altogether — instead putting aside a money order for $1,100 each month for November, December, and January, in case Toure decided to accept the previous agreed-upon rental amount and gave up on the proposed hike.In court on Tuesday, Toure and Gabriella — both representing themselves, and not accompanied by any lawyers — restated before the judge many of the arguments they had made in their legal filings in the runup to the eviction trial.In his opening argument to the judge, Toure explained that he had originally agreed to rent out the first-floor Ella T. Grasso apartment to Gabriella’s family as a ​“favor.” He heard they had nowhere else to go. He agreed to rent out the three-bedroom apartment at a ​“cheap” monthly rate of $1,100, even though he knew he could get a higher amount, closer to $1,800, on the open market.“If you need anything, I’ll fix it,” he remembered telling the tenants when they moved in. But, he said, over the past two-plus years, ​“they’re always complaining.” He repeated that he was renting out this apartment to them at this lower rate ​“as a favor,” and said he tried to make repairs in as timely a manner as he could. He said he put in a new refrigerator, stove, and floors. But the tenants still had problems.He told the judge several times on Tuesday that his message to the tenants was: ​“If you’re not happy, move on” and find a different place to live. ​“Every little thing is a fight,” he continued. And so, he tried to raise the rent — to offset increases to his taxes and insurance. Then he decided to evict the tenants entirely. He said that he hadn’t been paid rent in three months.During her time to address the judge, Gabriella repeated what she had written in her legal answer: that there were and remain a number of maintenance problems with the property, at the top of the list being a mouse and roach infestation and inconsistent heat; that she had never missed a rental payment until Toure tried to increase the rent by $400; that she had been putting $1,100 per month aside as a money order since November, in her commitment to stick to the original rental amount.She told Spader that she and her family have been looking for a new apartment — while also working full time, raising their three-year-old, and, for Gabriella, going to school. ​“We are trying” to move, she said. ​“It’s super hard, and super expensive.”As he worked his way towards issuing a decision, Spader started off by stating that this is a so-called ​“no fault” eviction. That is, the eviction is not about the tenants’ failure to pay rent. Instead, per Toure’s original lawsuit, it is about the tenants staying in place even though their rental agreement is now invalid.That’s when the judge talked through the dangers of oral versus written leases.By law, he said, oral leases are ​“month to month.” That is, the terms that the landlord and tenant agree to in, say, October, are not the terms that both parties are necessarily bound to come November. If neither party makes explicit changes, then the terms do stay the same. But if one party does want a change, and the other doesn’t agree, then there’s no written document that one can point to to enforce their preferred arrangement.And so, Spader said, Toure as the landlord was well within his legal right to seek to change the oral month-to-month agreement — by raising the rent from $1,100 to $1,500 — last fall. And when the tenants did not agree with that proposed rent hike, ​“that means you don’t have an agreement” anymore. Meaning that the landlord can indeed pursue an eviction on the grounds that the tenant no longer has the right or privilege to occupy that apartment.“It’s a tough situation,” Spader said. He said both parties had made ​“good-faith efforts” to live up to their side of the previous rental agreement — Gabriella by putting aside $1,100 in monthly money orders, Toure by trying to make repairs as quickly and thoroughly as he could.He concluded by finding in favor of the landlord and agreeing to the eviction of the tenants — with a key caveat that they could stay in place through the end of March if Gabriella agreed to pay by Jan. 20 the $3,300 in money orders she had set aside for November, December, and January rent, and if she agreed to pay $1,100 on Feb. 1 and $1,100 on March 1. “You’ve got to find some place else” by the end of March, he told the tenant. But ​“I’m giving you some time.”This is ​“a good lesson” for both parties, and for everyone in the courtroom on Tuesday, Spader concluded. ​“When you don’t have a written lease, if the landlord wants to end an agreement” at the end of any given month, they can. With the approved eviction and the stay through March and the $1,100 monthly payments, ​“We’re just trying for a safe landing for both of you,” he told Gabriella and Toure.In separate interviews after the trial, both Gabriella and Toure said they’ve indeed learned the lesson — and plan on having written leases with their respective landlords and tenants going forward.Toure — whose family also lives at this same Ella T. Grasso Boulevard property, which he said is the only rental property he owns — said that he has always had written leases with his other tenants. He said that the arrangement with Gabriella was an exception, because of how he saw this arrangement as a favor. Going forward, he said, he plans to stick to written leases only.