Text your current tenants one line today: “For a true emergency, a burst pipe, no heat, gas smell, or anything unsafe, call me at this number any hour. Do not use email or the portal.”
If you have never sent that, your emergency policy is whatever the tenant guesses at 2am. Some guess right. Some send an email. Some call a 24-hour plumbing service off a web search and hand you a $900 invoice you had no say in.
Define emergency narrowly, and in the tenant’s words
A policy that says “emergencies only” without saying what one is will be interpreted generously at midnight and stingily by you the next morning. Write the list.
These are emergencies:
- Water actively entering the unit or actively running where it should not
- No heat when it is below roughly 55 degrees outside
- No electricity to the unit, or exposed wiring
- Gas smell
- Sewage backup
- No water at all
- A door or window that will not lock or close
- Anything on fire, which means call 911 first
These are not, even though they feel like it:
- One outlet dead
- A dripping faucet
- The dishwasher, the disposal, or the washer
- Air conditioning out in mild weather
- A slow drain
The dividing line is habitability and safety, not inconvenience. California’s habitability standards in Civil Code § 1941.1 are a fair guide to what belongs on the first list: effective weatherproofing, working plumbing and gas, hot and cold running water, heating, and electrical in good working order.
Air conditioning is the argument you will have. In a hot climate with a vulnerable tenant, it belongs on the emergency list, and some jurisdictions require cooling outright. Decide before July, not during it.
Answer the question “who do I call”
Every tenant should be able to answer three questions without looking anything up.
- What number do I call at 2am?
- What do I do if nobody answers?
- Am I allowed to call somebody myself, and up to how much?
Question two is where most policies stop. Give a real fallback: a second number, or a named after-hours vendor the tenant may call directly. “Keep trying” is not a fallback.
Question three is the money question. A tenant who cannot reach you and is standing in water will act, and you would want them to. So set the terms in advance: for a genuine emergency, after two attempts to reach you thirty minutes apart, the tenant may engage a licensed contractor to stop the immediate damage, up to a stated dollar figure, and must send you the invoice and photos the same day. Pick a number you could absorb without an argument, and one that is realistic for an after-hours call in your market.
That clause is not generosity. It is the cheapest way to cap the scenario where a tenant hires the most expensive emergency service in the county because nobody told them not to.
The lease language
Three provisions do the work. Keep them short.
Reporting. Non-emergency requests go through the written channel you actually monitor. Emergencies go to the emergency number. Name both.
Access. In an emergency, entry without advance notice is permitted. California allows it explicitly, since Civil Code § 1954(a)(1) lists emergency as a case where a landlord may enter, and subsection (b) exempts emergencies from the normal-business-hours limit. Every other entry still needs proper notice, and the emergency exception is narrow. The California entry rules page covers where the line sits.
Tenant-caused emergencies. A frozen pipe because the tenant turned the heat off while traveling is a different bill than a pipe that failed on its own. Say so in the lease rather than discovering the disagreement while the floor is drying.
If you are drafting from scratch, our lease templates and the lease builder put the clause next to the fields it constrains for California leases (the only state the builder supports today), which is where a dollar figure is least likely to go missing.
Prepare the parts that are not writing
A policy is only as good as the phone that rings.
Line up an after-hours vendor per trade before you need one, and confirm each year that they still take after-hours calls. Ask what their emergency rate is, so the invoice is not a surprise. Finding vendors who will actually pick up is its own problem.
Know where the shutoffs are: main water, water heater, gas, and the electrical panel. Tell the tenant where they are at move-in and put it in writing. A tenant who can close the main valve turns a flood into a puddle, and that thirty-second walkthrough is worth more than any clause in this post.
Decide who takes the call when you are unreachable. On a plane, in surgery, asleep in a different time zone. If the answer is “nobody,” your policy has a hole in it and you know where.
Four failures this prevents
The email at 3am. Fixed by naming the channel per severity.
The $900 invoice. Fixed by the dollar cap and the named fallback vendor.
The dispute about who pays. Fixed by the tenant-cause provision.
The unanswered phone. Fixed by a second number, which is the one most landlords skip.
Then send it again
Write the policy, put it in the lease, and send it as its own message at move-in. Then send it again every fall, before the first cold night, because nobody remembers a document they signed eleven months ago. Two lines and the number.
Keeping that in a channel that stays attached to the tenancy, rather than a text thread, means it is findable at renewal and in a dispute. What to send during a normal repair, on a normal day, is covered in keeping tenants updated on repair status.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules change and local ordinances vary. Confirm current requirements with your city, county, or an attorney before you act.