One of the most frustrating problems that many landlords encounter is having their tenants complain about residents from other buildings using the garbage dumpster in the alleyway. Not only is it frustrating for the tenants to not have enough room to dispose of their own trash, but since the dumpsters are rented by weight it will also end up costing you extra money to dispose of the neighbor’s waste.
Not to mention sanitation problems that occur if extra trash begins to build up outside of the dumpster–hiring exterminators to deal with the rats that will attract is yet another expense that you should not have to pay!
The simple solution to this problem is to just upgrade your dumpster to a model that locks up when not in use. Most companies that offer dumpster rentals in North Carolina will have locking models that you can rent, sometime without paying much more than you already are.
Putting your own lock on the dumpster is not recommended since the rental company will need to have their own copy of the key in order to open the waste bin to empty it when it gets collected, and you will not save much money if the lock gets cut every time the dumpster gets emptied. However upgrading to a locking dumpster is generally very easy and inexpensive.
There are several different locking mechanisms for dumpsters; larger bins will have a gravity lock built into the dumpster, whereas the more common smaller models will have a regular key lock to work with. You will probably need to rent the key lock as well as the dumpster, but that is not particularly expensive.
As long as your tenants remember to lock the dumpster when they are done you should not have any more problems to deal with. The miscreants that have been hijacking your dumpster space will have a very difficult time gaining access to the bins; the gravity locks on larger dumpster rentals are not going anywhere, and even the smaller key locks are not easy to bypass.
Simply keep renting the locking dumpster for a month or two to discourage the neighbors from using the dumpster again, and then switch back to a regular bin once you feel that the problem has been solved. If you do have problems with people dumpster diving or dumping their waste in your bins again simply contact the rental company and ask for a different model of dumpster to avoid the problem.
Upgrade to a model with a gravity lock or consider housing your dumpsters behind a chain link fence like many businesses do.