Tackling the Problem

Landlords who neglect maintenance and repairs may do so as a strategic business decision. If they spend less of your rent on repairs, they make more money. Other landlords may neglect maintenance because they are not capable of managing the property or they are low-income and cannot afford to pay for a major repair as well as the mortgage. In either case, if your group has notified your landlord about bad conditions and the landlord refuses to make adequate repairs, there are a number of ways to begin to organize tenants around a solution. Here are ideas about what steps to take to organize to get repairs made.

• Distribute information or a flier to all tenants about what conditions violate the state Sanitary Code and what their rights are.
• The Housing Code Checklist (Booklet 2) is a good place to start. Tell tenants to make a list of all of the problems in their apartment and common areas of the building, such as entrances, hallways, and basements.
• Compile this information and write a group letter to the landlord asking that repairs be made. 
• There are some government programs that make grants and loans to help eligible owners make repairs at a lower cost. Money for lead paint removal is one example (see Chapter 9: Lead Poisoning). Such programs may also restrict the amount of rents for a period of time after the loan or grant, so they can help tenants achieve the goals of repairs and affordability.
• If the landlord does not respond to your letter about the bad conditions, you can call the local Board of Health (or Inspectional Services Department) to inspect tenants' apartments. Inspections of more than one apartment by the Board of Health may put enough pressure on your landlord to make repairs. Chapter 8: Getting Repairs Made tells you more about how to get an inspector.
• As an alternative to the Board of Health (or Inspectional Services Department), you can hire a private inspector to inspect tenants' apartments. Although such inspections are not free, they are often more comprehensive and can usually be scheduled at times more convenient to tenants.
• When an inspector, public or private, comes to the property, one or more people should be with the inspector from the beginning of the visit to the end. Someone needs to be sure that all the apartments that requested inspections are in fact inspected. Immediately after the inspection, you should receive copies of the inspector's reports for all of the apartments.
• Call a meeting with tenants to develop a list of common problems based on the inspector's reports.
• Write a second letter to your landlord demanding that they make repairs and propose a specific schedule to make them. Get as many tenants as possible to attach their inspection reports and sign the letter to the landlord.
• If, after receiving written notice, the landlord fails to make repairs within a reasonable time, you have the right to use tactics such as rent withholding and repair and deduct—although those tactics should be used sparingly and only after getting legal advice from an attorney familiar with housing law. See Chapter 8: Getting Repairs Made. 
• A group may also want to ask a court for an injunction ordering the landlord to make repairs or for an order appointing a temporary receiver to manage repairs. See Chapter 8: Getting Repairs Made - Receivership. Both tactics significantly increase the pressure on the landlord and the negotiating leverage of the tenant group.
• You should periodically hold meetings to discuss the tactics used and other tactics the group may want to consider. Evaluate the pros and cons and get legal advice about each. You may, for example, consider other tactics that make the struggle and your demands more public, such as holding an "action" (organizing event) or contacting the media.
   

Landlords, especially those who have recently bought rental buildings, sometimes try to impose large rent increases on tenants. In some cases, this is done in an effort to drive low- and moderate-income tenants out so they can rent to higher-income tenants. In other cases, landlords simply fail to renew leases or bring eviction cases so that they can convert rental units to condominiums. These tactics are part of landlords' roles in the process known as gentrification. In other words, real estate investors and landlords are using rent increases and evictions to displace the existing residents. In these situations, tenants have successfully organized and negotiated agreements to remain in their homes and establish a schedule of fair rents over a period of years. See Sample Collective Bargaining Agreement (Form 22).

Organizing a tenant group to negotiate with a landlord may, in fact, be the best and only way to protect tenants against unfair rent increases or gentrification-driven mass evictions. A group of tenants, as opposed to one individual, may be able to force a landlord to weigh the benefits of steep rent increases or condominium conversions against the costs of bad publicity, tenant resentment, evicting lots of tenants who are unified, or a potential lawsuit. There are a number of steps that you can take to begin to organize tenants to defeat or lower a rent increase.

• Challenge certain real estate assumptions that are widespread in our culture. Tenants who are successfully organizing against high rent increases or gentrification-driven mass evictions have found that it is important to put forward alternative principles in their letters and fliers, including that:
• There must be a balance between the drive for profit and the human need for housing.
• The market rent is not necessarily the fair rent.
• Landlords' buildings are more valuable because of work tenants have done to improve the neighborhood, reduce crime, and make schools better. Or, properties are more valuable because of public investments such as public transportation stops and new parks. Because of these improvements, tenants should not be displaced.
• If you receive a no-fault eviction notice or a notice of a rent increase, try to figure out whether other tenants also received similar notices. If you want to conduct a quick survey, you can adapt the survey. See Tenant Survey (Form 21).
• When you survey people to find out about the rent increase or eviction notices, give them information about how a landlord
  can legally raise the rent or convert to condominiums and what your rights are, including your right to organize. See Chapter 5: Rent and Chapter 17: Condominium Control for more information.
• Call a meeting of tenants to figure out how to respond. Invite an attorney or an organizer to the meeting. For example, in response to a notice of a proposed rent increase, one option is not to agree to the increase, as a group. If you do not pay the increase and you pay the old rent, your landlord will have to go through all of the steps of a summary process action in order to try to evict you. This tactic gives your group time to plan other tactics and also puts pressure on the landlord to negotiate because of the cost of evicting all of the tenants and the risk that the landlord will lose the eviction cases because of tenant defenses and counterclaims. However, there are risks to tenants in using this strategy—that is, you could be evicted at the end of the process. Also, your case will be listed on the court’s online database that landlords use as a tenant screening tool and that private tenant companies access unless you have a right to seal your record. For more see Chapter 2: Tenant Screening.
• You may also want to investigate the landlord's business practices and try to estimate the landlord’s expenses and profit margin. If the owner can cover expenses, grant tenants' requests to refrain from large rent increases, and still make a profit, that's very important to know. How much are the landlord's property taxes? Have they paid them? How much is the mortgage payment? Who is the lender that holds the landlord's mortgage? Has the landlord defaulted on the mortgage? During negotiations you can present what you estimate are the owner's expenses; if they say you are wrong, ask what the correct figures are. Knowing this type of information may also help you develop other strategies and allies.
• You can find information about landlord’s mortgage, the purchase price of the building (as reflected on the deed) and other buildings owned by the landlord at Mass Land Records.
• You can find information about property taxes for your building online. Most cities and towns have their own Property Assessment webpages where you can search by address. For example in Boston, you can put in the property address at Boston's Property Assessment Search.
• If the landlord has raised people's rents or is evicting in retaliation for tenants' organizing, reporting violations of the Sanitary Code, or taking other legal action, this is illegal and you may want to take the landlord to court. If a judge finds that a landlord has retaliated against you, the landlord should not be able to evict you and tenants may be entitled to money damages. See Chapter 12: Evictions and Chapter 13: When to Take Your Landlord to Court and get legal advice.
• If your landlord has not made repairs, you can use that fact to gain leverage in your struggle against unfair rent increases or mass evictions. You should have your building inspected by the Board of Health or Inspectional Services Department or by a private inspector. Once you have an inspection report that documents bad conditions, you can put even more pressure on the landlord by communicating your intent to pursue enforcement of the state Sanitary Code through a public agency or a lawsuit. This is often enough to get a landlord to the negotiating table and, once there, to get her to agree to a reasonable deal.
• If you are facing rent increases and there are serious conditions of disrepair in your home, you may need to make your struggle more public. You can picket your landlord's office and publicize what is happening. Stress the unfairness of the rent increase given the conditions in which you are living and the hardship that a rent increase will have on tenants living in the building. For example, if there are tenants who have lower incomes, who are working, or who are single parents, a $100 increase may cause them to become homeless. Invite reporters into apartments with bad conditions. Have tenants facing hardships talk about how the rent increase will hurt them and how the landlord has refused to negotiate fair rent increases. Some landlords fear bad publicity, embarrassment, and negative public exposure.
• Evictions by their nature are individual procedures; each tenant against whom a case is brought should read Chapter 12: Evictions to learn how to defend themselves in court. Another great resource is MADE, an online guided interview that can help tenants who are facing an eviction file their court documents. Visit MADE's website. However, a well-organized tenant group can turn evictions into a political battle as well, using the tactics described in this chapter: media campaigns, letter writing, resolutions, demonstrations, actions, and beyond. One particularly dramatic and effective type of action is eviction blockades, where members of the tenant organization and other supporters physically prevent the landlord's constable from evicting a tenant after a judge has already ordered them out. This tactic has been successful in many instances in getting landlords to back off evictions. For example, in Massachusetts former owners and tenants used blockades hundreds of times to prevent an eviction after a foreclosure. However, because there is a chance that people participating in a blockade may be arrested, you should consult with a lawyer experienced in civil disobedience prior to planning one.

You may find that the main problem you and other tenants are having is harassment by your landlord or people who work for your landlord. There are many kinds of harassment and intimidation, including illegal evictions, utility shut-offs, and illegal entry into apartments without permission. Here are some steps to take to deal with harassment.

• You need to document whatever is being done. Keep records of eviction threats, verbal abuse, or any other threats. Specific stories of what happens and when it happens are important.
• Tenants' fears and isolation from one another allow a landlord or employee to continue the harassment. If things are going to change, people need to come together and recognize that they are not alone. Some tenants may be willing to meet and share what has happened to them.
• You should educate yourselves about your rights. Knowing your rights is your best defense. It is illegal for a landlord to retaliate against you by trying to evict you, raise your rent or change the terms of your tenancy because you are organizing, attending a tenants meeting, joining a tenant group, or taking any legal action against the landlord (like reporting them to the Board of Health).
• You then need to discuss how you can break the cycle of harassment and what tactics to use. One specific tactic may be to get a court to order the landlord to stop the illegal behavior. This type of order is called a temporary restraining order. See Chapter 13: When to Take Your Landlord to Court.
• Your landlord may try to break up your group by going after one tenant or favoring another to create fights amongst the group. Tenants should work to protect and support those whom a landlord is targeting. You may warn other tenants about how the landlord is harassing people so they won't be caught unaware if the landlord comes after them. They will then know who to turn to for support. Also, prepare ahead of time for the possibility that the landlord might try to settle with one tenant at the expense of the group.

If the building in which you live has been foreclosed, you may encounter simultaneously with your new landlord a number of the problems discussed above. In many cases, the bank or other entity that has taken over the property after foreclosure will fail to make repairs or maintain it properly. They may also fail to take responsibility for utilities, leading to shutoffs. Brokers or others working for the bank may also harass you in an effort to get you to leave your home. Evictions of all occupants are also routinely undertaken by banks and other lenders after foreclosures.

In these circumstances, you should take all of the appropriate steps laid out in the sections above on Bad Conditions, Unfair Rent Increases and Displacement, and Harassment. You should also read Chapter 18: Tenants and Foreclosure, which gives you specific tips on additional steps to take in dealing with banks and other foreclosing lenders. The key for tenants to overcome problems in foreclosed buildings is to come together and jointly resist strong pressures from often very powerful institutions.

Another helpful strategy to fight the foreclosing bank or lender has been for tenants to join forces with their former landlord who are often living in the building and are now facing eviction as well. In numerous cases where tenants and former owners in foreclosed buildings have joined forces, they have been successful in getting lenders to make necessary repairs, restore utility service, stop harassment and evictions, and even repurchase the home from the foreclosing entity.