Normally, I don't feel like I'm all that qualified to give advice to anyone, but if there's one thing in my life I actually have gotten right it's always knowing the legal rights I have as a tenant.

I first learned about tenant rights when my mom and I moved into a really sketchy apartment when I was 15. Since then I have not lived anywhere where the landlord has not tried to pull some ridiculous and sometimes illegal shit.

Right now I'm in a dispute with my landlord because I'm away from my apartment right now and moving out in June. She wants to show the apartment but apparently it isn't clean enough. So she sent me an email saying that she's going to have to clean the apartment and charge me for it. As my lease ends on the last day in June I just keep telling her that what she's trying to do is not legal under Massachusetts law.
Furthermore, I'm moving out on June 8th which gives her two full weeks to show an empty apartment, so really she's just being a bitch.

It is especially important that you know your rights if you're going to be staying in a foreign country. Being a foreigner virtually gaurentees that your landlord will pull some shit with you.

There, that is probably the only advice I will ever give. I just thought it would be helpful to remind everyone about tenants' rights so they won't have to go through anything really unfair.

it's a great thing to know your rights as a renter/tenant
it can also work against you, as frigged as that is
realty mgmts./landlords don't like being called out on their bads
just like car dealers/dealerships

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That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.” - J. D. Salinger

a spiritual being having a human experience

Going to Housing Court in Brooklyn just can't be called anything but Kafkaesque (you know it's only going to get worse when the first thing that happens that they tell you no standing when there isn't anywhere to sit), on top of the endless fun of having your ceiling constantly fall on you. But a co-worker's girlfriend who is a housing lawyer for GMHC was impressed with the deal I struck, so I'm proud of that.

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Yeah my fiance' and I started becoming masters of tenant law ever since we lived in a place with shitbrains for landlords. We managed not to go to court but wrote a nice letter explaining the law to them and they gave us our security deposit plus 5 months worth of rent that we had paid while living there.

Right now, in our current place, we are suing our landlord for neglect of our heating unit. The shit was blowing out heat during the summer and cold air during the winter. When we complained during the summer, they changed the thermostat. Things seemed fine until we started using the heat. Suddenly cold air. We complained and they tried to tell us it was suppose to function this way. Really? Cold air for heat? Odd. Fast fwd to 3 months and $400 in extra charges to our electric bill later and they say...'Oh yeah, it does appear to be a problem.' We thought it would be nice if they simply lowered the rent for a month to offset the extra money we paid unnecessarily in our electric bill. They told us no and tried to quote a clause in our lease agreement. The funny thing is the clause actually supported OUR position. Fucking idiots.

We had problems with them from the first day we moved in so this really pissed us off. I hate when people try to take advantage of others because they think they're ignorant. I feel like we're fighting for all the little people before and after us.

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i'm with you on this one, i used to work in student housing and have also taken my landlord to tribunal and won.

my big piece of advice is GET IT IN WRITING. DO NOT ever make it a conversation, get it in writing, keep copies, and send it by REGISTERED MAIL. email does sometimes count but nothing is more legal than a letter sent by registered mail.

in your letter, always give them 7 days to fix it - or a timespan telling them when it must be solved.

make use of your local/state agency that deal's with tenant's rights. in my state its Tenants Union of Victoria