tenant rights

“Dear PoPville,

I’m wondering if readers might have advice regarding a housing situation I find myself in. Late last year, I toured a brand new building in Columbia Heights and applied to rent a place. I was approved for a February 1 move-in date. In December, I found out my move-in date was moved to March 1. I know this was a red flag, but I figured a new building would come with some hiccups and I was month-to-month at my previous place.

So, from December until last Tuesday (February 26) I operated under the assumption I would move in March 1 – I signed the lease, arranged for movers, reserved my new apartment’s loading dock, gave my 30-days notice to my old place, etc., and was in regular contact with my new management company. At this point, it’s important to mention that the new lease includes a clause absolving the management company of all responsibility for move-in delays due to construction of the building (this section made me skeptical, but I went against my better judgment and signed away, which was a big mistake on my part). Then on Tuesday, February 26, I found out my move-in date had been changed to March 5 – 8 because the building doesn’t have its certificate of occupancy. (more…)

Photo by PoPville flickr user Tim Brown

“Dear PoPville,

Was hoping somebody in the community could help out here. I am in the middle of moving out of my apartment building (older small building with no onsite building management) and noticed the items in my storage unit are gone. Each apartment gets a space and there is no fee for it and its basically a large wooden shelf with chicken wire so you can lock your stuff up. The kicker here is that I may have used the wrong specific space (because I wasn’t sure which was mine at the time I moved in) – but seeing as there was one available I assumed. At one point the building sent out an email asking if anyone may be using a space that was not theirs and I replied that it was likely me. I never heard back and assumed that meant everything was ok.

Fast forward – I go down for the first time in several months to complete my move out and notice my items are no longer there and have been replaced by someone elses stuff. (more…)

Photo by PoPville flickr user Victoria Pickering

“Dear PoPville,

I’m writing because, even after nearly 2 years of being out of this living situation, I am still just as outraged as I was when I left. I thought, perhaps, that time away from the situation would decrease my outrage and overall disgust, but after hearing from a tenant still in the house, I am just as mad today as was when I lived there. The rental home is unfit for tenants because the landlord has let it fall apart, and he is unfit to be a landlord due to his aggressive ways and unsettling, creepy behavior towards his female tenants.

First up: house maintenance. I lived in this house from July 2015 to March 2017 and my time there was extremely unpleasant. At first, I chalked up some of the issues around the house to it being a mildly shitty DC starter home (I was 23 when I moved in, so a less than pristine house is to be expected). It looked like the house hadn’t had a good cleaning in several years, there were dated appliances, countertops, cabinets, and some odds and ends that needed to be repaired. Then, when things started breaking, we would inform the landlord and he would come by and fix it himself, not with real tools or expertise, but with random scraps from the basement. These fixes were half ass to say the least and were the equivalent to putting a band aid on a broken leg. Below are some of the “updates” and “fixes” that occurred. Full disclosure, there were so many I can’t even begin to remember all of them, but here are a few that I can remember: (more…)

Photo by PoPville flickr user LaTur

“Dear PoPville,

I have been renting a rowhouse around Petworth for the past three years along with two other roommates. It’s an old house and the rent is relatively cheap, so I try not to complain about a lot of minor infrastructure issues and interior aesthetics. But due to some serious leakage (initially from the rooftop/upstairs bathroom old window, now to a lesser extent from an old bathtub with broken tiles/flooring upstairs), our property manager has notified us that they want to do a complete renovation of the upstairs bathroom.

This work will “take about a week” to complete, and will obviously put our bathroom out of commission. We have a half bath downstairs, so there is no other shower option available. (more…)

Photo by PoPville flickr user Erin

“Dear PoPville,

I’ve been renting an English basement of a townhouse for several years, am happy with my living situation, and have maintained a friendly relationship with the landlords.

They’ve had some recent life changes and appear to be preparing to sell the house. But I would like to stay put, or at least be compensated reasonably for suddenly being put out.

I know that sometimes a new owner will keep an old tenant once buying the property, or that sometimes owners will often pay the tenant to minimize the burden on them (they’ll give them a security fee+rent for a month or two+moving costs, for example).

But that was under the old TOPA laws, which were recently changed so that people in my situation are no longer given priority. (more…)