Utilities Clause
in Your Lease
What it actually means, what Florida law says, what's specific to Miami - and exactly what to do. In plain English.
Quick Summary - What You Need to Know
- Fla. Stat. section 83.67 bars a landlord from causing a utility interruption directly or indirectly, including by not paying the bill.
- Damages are actual and consequential losses or three months' rent, whichever is greater, with no ceiling written in.
- The protected list is broad: water, heat, light, electricity, gas, elevator, garbage collection, and refrigeration.
- Costs and reasonable attorney's fees are recoverable too, so a shutoff claim doesn't have to be funded out of pocket.
- Miami adds nothing of its own - the state Act is the entire remedy for a utility shutoff here.
Understanding the Utilities Clause
The utilities clause says who pays for what - electricity, water, sewer, trash, sometimes gas - and how it reaches you as a bill. In most Miami leases you pay FPL directly for power while the landlord covers water and trash, or a flat utility charge rides on top of rent. What no version of this clause can do is give your landlord permission to shut anything off.
Fla. Stat. section 83.67 makes causing a utility interruption illegal no matter what your lease says, and prices the violation at actual damages or three months' rent, whichever is greater. In a city where losing power in August means losing air conditioning, that's the one number worth remembering. Florida also names elevator and garbage collection as protected services, which matters in a high-rise town.
What renters assume
Renters assume a shutoff only counts when the landlord personally flips a switch, and that falling behind on rent gives the landlord some right to do it.
What is actually true
Florida bans causing an interruption directly or indirectly, so letting a master-metered bill lapse counts. Late rent changes nothing, and damages start at three months' rent.
Florida has no bar to plot here because the statute sets no flat penalty. Compare Atlanta, where the $500 on this chart is a criminal fine paid to the state and the tenant collects nothing - Florida's three months' rent goes straight to you, and it scales with what you actually pay.
Plain English Version
Think of your utilities as part of the apartment itself, like the front door. Your landlord can no more cut the power to pressure you than take that door off its hinges, and Florida prices the mistake at three months' rent.
Utilities Clause Example - What the Wording Looks Like in Miami, FL
The sample clause below is real lease language - a court quoted it word for word, and then ruled on it. What the judge decided is at the bottom of this block.
Find the equivalent paragraph in your own lease and read the two side by side. The wording will differ; the moving parts rarely do.
Under any allocation method, [the tenant] may be paying for part of the utility usage in common areas or in other residential units as well as administrative fees.
Quoted from the published opinion in Northland Investment Corp. v. Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, 349 Conn. 35 (2024). Judicial opinions are not subject to copyright; the lease language is reproduced in limited part for commentary under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
“allocation method”
Two words that tell you the bill is a calculation. Fla. Stat. § 83.67 reaches the termination or interruption of service, not the arithmetic behind the charge, and a South Carolina appellate court has held that its own state's utility regulator cannot review that arithmetic either. In Zito v. Strata Audubon, LLC, Op. No. 6129 (S.C. Ct. App., filed Jan. 14, 2026, withdrawn, substituted and refiled Feb. 18, 2026), the court affirmed the Public Service Commission's dismissal of a tenants' complaint: owners who do not submeter and simply pass a municipal water and sewer bill through, with a third-party company performing the billing, do not furnish or supply water or sewerage for compensation and so are not public utilities under S.C. Code Ann. § 58-5-10(4). No submetering, no power to switch the service off, no jurisdiction over the rate. Connecticut voided the practice; South Carolina held the Commission could not review it.
“for part of the utility usage”
“Part” is the whole issue. A formula share is not a meter reading, and once the bill is a share, the question a Florida renter can put real weight behind is not the size of it but whether the service can be switched off over it. It cannot, and the ban is drafted to catch the indirect route as well as the direct one.
“common areas”
Corridor lights and the pool pump, arriving on a resident's statement. Florida's shutoff statute has nothing to say about who is billed for them. It has a great deal to say about what a landlord may never do to collect: the protected list is written into the section itself - water, heat, light, electricity, gas, elevator, garbage collection and refrigeration - and none of it may be interrupted, whoever is being billed for what.
“administrative fees”
Price the fee, not just the utility. An administrative charge for the act of dividing a bill is a monthly amount you agree to in advance, so total it across the whole term before you sign, because nothing in Fla. Stat. § 83.67 reaches a charge like that. The Connecticut court's warning about that lease is the shape to test for: its administrative fees were not defined or limited anywhere in the document.
Ratio utility billing lost. The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority's ruling that billing residential tenants a formula-derived share of a master-metered bill is unlawful. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 16-262e (c) makes the owner of a multiunit residential dwelling liable for the costs of all utility services furnished to the building, except service that is individually metered or billed for one unit's exclusive use - and an allocated share is neither. Because the clause charged the tenant for usage the tenant did not exclusively consume, and backed the charge with late fees and eviction, it could not be enforced. The court left the landlord one lawful route: forecast the year's utility costs and build them into fixed rent at signing, where a renter can see the number before agreeing to it. Three justices dissented. The court also observed that the administrative fees this lease allowed were not defined or limited anywhere in it.
One court, one lease, one state. That answer is not automatically yours, and your lease may be worded to land differently. Use this to know what to look for and what to ask - your state's tenant hotline or a local tenant attorney can answer it for your document.
Florida Law on Utilities Clause
- A landlord may not directly or indirectly cause the termination or interruption of any utility service furnished to the tenant.
- The protected list includes water, heat, light, electricity, gas, elevator, garbage collection, and refrigeration.
- The tenant recovers actual and consequential damages or three months' rent, whichever is greater.
- Costs and attorney's fees are also recoverable, but Florida fixes no flat dollar penalty.
Fla. Stat. § 83.67 - statutes change; verify the current text for your situation.
Fla. Stat. section 83.67 says a landlord may not directly or indirectly cause the termination or interruption of any utility service furnished to the tenant. The word indirectly does the heavy lifting: in a master-metered building, a landlord who simply stops paying has violated the statute as surely as one who calls the utility and closes the account. Protection runs across water, heat, light, electricity, gas, elevator, garbage collection, and refrigeration.
Contrast Atlanta, where the statute reaches only heat, light, and water and the penalty is a fine of up to $500 paid to the state - the renter collects nothing at all. Seattle and Los Angeles pay $100 a day, a formula that rewards long outages, while Florida's three months' rent lands the same whether you lost service for one night or thirty. Costs and attorney's fees come on top, which is what gets a lawyer to take the call.
Florida Tenant Protections
Your landlord cannot cause any utility interruption, directly or indirectly, under Fla. Stat. section 83.67, and that covers water, heat, light, electricity, gas, elevator, garbage collection, and refrigeration. You recover actual and consequential damages or three months' rent, whichever is greater, so a short outage still carries a real number even when your out-of-pocket losses are small. Costs and reasonable attorney's fees are recoverable as well, which means a renter without savings can still find representation for a shutoff claim.
What's Specific to Miami
Figures are the state rule, or the stronger city ordinance where one exists. Verify the current law for your own situation before relying on it.
Miami adds nothing of its own, and that's the honest answer. Florida's Residential Landlord and Tenant Act supplies the remedy statewide, so a renter in Brickell, Hialeah, or Homestead has the identical claim and the identical three months' rent floor. Miami-Dade's Tenant's Bill of Rights strengthened notice and rent-increase rules for county renters, but it laid no separate penalty on top of a utility shutoff.
What is different here is the housing stock. A large share of Miami rentals are individually owned condos, so when the owner falls behind with the association or on a master-metered bill, water or elevator service can go dark in a way that looks like a building problem but is still your landlord indirectly causing it. Storm outages are the opposite - FPL going down after a hurricane isn't anyone's violation, and the statute doesn't reach it.
Electricity, water, sewer, trash, and gas should each be assigned by name. Vague "tenant pays utilities" wording is where a surprise submetered charge hides.
Flat fee, submeter, and ratio billing produce very different numbers. A fair lease names the method and lets you request the master bill the allocation came from.
Strike it. Fla. Stat. section 83.67 bans interruptions outright, and doing it anyway costs your landlord three months' rent or your actual damages, whichever is greater.
Ask for that language removed before you sign. The three months' rent remedy is the only real leverage most renters have, and no lease should quietly trade it away.
Sources
The law this guide relies on, and where to read it. Statutes change, so confirm the current text before you act on it.
- Fla. Stat. § 83.67 on flsenate.gov, Florida's own publication of its statutes.
Red Flags to Watch Out For
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Shutoff threatened over late rent
A lease clause or a text message saying the power goes off if rent is late. Fla. Stat. section 83.67 bans it, and the tenant's floor is three months' rent.
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Master-metered bill in landlord's name
You pay rent, the landlord pays the utility, and nothing in the lease promises the bill gets paid. Letting it lapse is causing the interruption indirectly.
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Elevator or trash called an amenity
Some condo leases treat garbage pickup or elevator service as a perk that can be paused. Florida names elevator and garbage collection as protected utility services.
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Waiver of statutory utility rights
Any language giving up your remedies under Florida's landlord-tenant Act. Without the statute's three months' rent floor, a shutoff claim is barely worth filing.
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Uncapped utility allocation charges
Ratio billing that divides the building's total by occupancy with no cap and no copy of the source bill. Demand a written right to see the master bill.
Your Rights as a Miami Tenant
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No shutoff, direct or indirect
Fla. Stat. section 83.67 bars your landlord from causing any utility interruption, whether by calling the provider or by quietly not paying the bill.
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Three months' rent as a floor
You recover actual and consequential damages or three months' rent, whichever is greater, so even a short outage carries a number worth pursuing.
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A wide list of covered services
Coverage reaches water, heat, light, electricity, gas, elevator, garbage collection, and refrigeration - far broader than Atlanta's heat, light, and water.
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Fees and costs on top
Costs and reasonable attorney's fees are recoverable, so pursuing a shutoff claim doesn't have to come out of your own pocket first.
What To Do - Step by Step
Document the outage now
Photograph the dark unit, the thermostat, the meter, and the clock. Timestamps are what turn "the power was out" into a damages figure a judge can use.
Call the utility directly
Ask FPL or Miami-Dade Water and Sewer whether the account was closed, went unpaid, or is a general outage. That one answer tells you whether your landlord caused it.
Put the demand in writing
Email your landlord the date and time service stopped and ask for immediate restoration. Name Fla. Stat. section 83.67 in the message and keep a copy.
Track every dollar it costs
Hotel nights, meals out, spoiled groceries, a rented generator. Those are your consequential damages, and you collect the greater of that total or three months' rent.
Ask Miami-Dade for help
Miami-Dade's Office of Housing Advocacy takes tenant complaints and can move a landlord faster than a lawsuit. Code enforcement handles habitability problems in parallel.
Call a tenant lawyer
Legal Services of Greater Miami helps income-eligible renters at no cost, and the statute's fee-shifting makes private attorneys willing to take a strong shutoff case.