My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: Hawaii
My husband and I am renting a house which has a seperate studio above the garage that the landlord sometimes uses. The house and the studio are all on the same meter for electric and water. We pay all utilities. the landlord had a friend and his family stay in the studio for a week then the landlord spent 11 days there with a girlfriend. He runs a/c 24/7 with all the windows open and uses our utilities the whole time. He thinks he only owes us $30 for utilities for the entire 18 days. We have yet to get the bill, but electricity will probably be 150 more than normal. Is it legal for him to use our utilities and tell us what he is willing to compensate us? On top of that he wants our lawn to be watered which we paid for for one month then turned the sprinklers off. In the past year we never went over 8000 gallons of water in a month, but here with the sprinklers we were being charged for 61000 gallons for one month. He is mad at us for turning off the sprinklers and has turned them back on (to which we promptly turned them off again). Is what he's doing illegal? Can we call the cops on him for using our utilities w/o our permission? Is it even legal to have two seperate units and have a tenant pay for utilities for both?