A tenant who had not paid rent for a year attacked a Marlborough landlord with a frying pan, sending the landlord to the hospital for stitches in numerous locations on his head. The landlord has been ordered not to drive until he recuperates, estimated to take about a month.
The tenant stopped paying rent a year ago. The owner sent him an eviction notice for nonpayment of rent. The tenant then called the local health inspector, who cited only two code violations: a missing (stolen) fire extinguisher and improper egress from the third floor where the tenant lived in a studio apartment. Those code violations show that the building and apartment were in otherwise good shape. Moreover, the local building department inspected the third floor and said there were adequate egresses. The health department still insists they are improper. However, those code violations allowed the tenant to claim that he was "withholding" the rent and blocked the owner's efforts to evict him.
We call this tenant strategy the "free rent trick," and it is entirely legal in Massachusetts. What is lacking in this state is a rent escrow law that would require tenants who withhold rent to escrow it (pay it to the court) as it would otherwise become due to the landlord. A rent escrow law would thus retain all the tenant's powers to stop paying rent to the landlord and force him to make neglected repairs, but it would stop the abuse of our state's rent withholding law that lacks a mandatory escrow provision.
The attack on the landlord shows how intense the hostility can become when a tenant plays the "free rent trick."
Read the full story from the Boston Globe at this web address:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/01/elderly_landlor.html
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
What is blocking our rent escrow bill?
Basically, our rent escrow bill (S.780) is stuck in the Housing Committee, which is co-chaired by Rep. Kevin Honan on the House side and Sen. Susan Tucker on the Senate side. Sen. Tucker signed on to our bill as a co-sponsor, so she would like to see it move forward. Rep. Honan appears to be the fly in the ointment. It is bothersome that he also happens to be a sponsor of S.1241, one of the two domestic violence bills that, if passed, would slowly bring rent control back across the state. What we can say that is good is that that domestic violence bill is also stuck in the Housing Committee, although as far as we can tell, its proponents have not been active.
Back in 2002, a rent escrow bill was reported favorably out of the Housing Committee and was voted on in both the House and the Senate. The House passed it, thinking they had passed a good bill. In the Senate, we had the votes for it, but then President Tom Birmingham "twisted arms" and called in some political favors and it was narrowly defeated. So if our escrow bill gets reported out of Committee, we feel we can today round up the needed votes to pass it.
Also factors are the House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi and Senate President Therese Murray. If they are opposed to rent escrow, that may explain why it has not moved out of committee. We need to target our emails, phone calls and letters to all these people. When they hear mostly from our side, they will vote on our side. We have done it in the past. We can do it again.
Representative Kevin Honan
Co-Chair, Housing Committee
State House, Room 38
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-2470
Rep.KevinHonan@hou.state.ma.us
Senator Susan Tucker
Co-Chair, Housing Committee
State House, Room 424
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-1612
Susan.Tucker@state.ma.us
House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi
State House, Room 356
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-2500
Rep.SalvatoreDiMasi@hou.state.ma.us
Senate President Therese Murray
State House, Room 332
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-1500
Therese.Murray@state.ma.us
And you need to contact your own senator and rep. Follow this link to find out who they are:
www.wheredoivotema.com
Back in 2002, a rent escrow bill was reported favorably out of the Housing Committee and was voted on in both the House and the Senate. The House passed it, thinking they had passed a good bill. In the Senate, we had the votes for it, but then President Tom Birmingham "twisted arms" and called in some political favors and it was narrowly defeated. So if our escrow bill gets reported out of Committee, we feel we can today round up the needed votes to pass it.
Also factors are the House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi and Senate President Therese Murray. If they are opposed to rent escrow, that may explain why it has not moved out of committee. We need to target our emails, phone calls and letters to all these people. When they hear mostly from our side, they will vote on our side. We have done it in the past. We can do it again.
Representative Kevin Honan
Co-Chair, Housing Committee
State House, Room 38
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-2470
Rep.KevinHonan@hou.state.ma.us
Senator Susan Tucker
Co-Chair, Housing Committee
State House, Room 424
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-1612
Susan.Tucker@state.ma.us
House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi
State House, Room 356
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-2500
Rep.SalvatoreDiMasi@hou.state.ma.us
Senate President Therese Murray
State House, Room 332
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-1500
Therese.Murray@state.ma.us
And you need to contact your own senator and rep. Follow this link to find out who they are:
www.wheredoivotema.com
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Special housing rights for battered women?
The latest news of a restraining order against New England Patriots player Randy Moss serves as an example of a temporary restraining order and how easy it is to get. Two bills at the State House (S.755 and H.1241) would make it easier than a temporary restraining order for alleged battered women (or men) to get special housing rights -- including protection against eviction. Under either of these bills, the person seeking special housing rights merely tells any one of a number of designated people (social worker, advocate in a domestic violence center, etc.) that they are a victim of domestic violence and sign a piece of paper. That gets them the rights that easily, based solely on the alleged victim's word. With protection against eviction, the alleged victim of domestic violence can continue engaging with their partner in the domestic violence -- late-night loud fights, property damage, etc. -- without fear of eviction, leaving landlords helpless to do anything about it.
These domestic violence bills introduce a form of "just cause" eviction, as the owner must prove that the reason for any eviction is not related to domestic violence. We do not have "just cause" eviction in Massachusetts, but this bill would start it. With "just cause" eviction comes a form of rent control. If you can't evict for a reason that might be related to domestic violence and you raise the rent too high, a judge may say you are evicting the tenant by imposing an unreasonable rent increase. That is rent control.
For more information, go to www.spoa.com and scroll down the home page to "Special housing rights for 'battered women'?" The state legislators that need to be contacted are:
Representative Kevin Honan
Co-Chair, Housing Committee
State House, Room 38
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-2470
Rep.KevinHonan@hou.state.ma.us
Senator Susan Tucker
Co-Chair, Housing Committee
State House, Room 424
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-1612
Susan.Tucker@state.ma.us
And you need to contact your own senator and rep. Follow this link to find out who they are:
www.wheredoivotema.com
These domestic violence bills introduce a form of "just cause" eviction, as the owner must prove that the reason for any eviction is not related to domestic violence. We do not have "just cause" eviction in Massachusetts, but this bill would start it. With "just cause" eviction comes a form of rent control. If you can't evict for a reason that might be related to domestic violence and you raise the rent too high, a judge may say you are evicting the tenant by imposing an unreasonable rent increase. That is rent control.
For more information, go to www.spoa.com and scroll down the home page to "Special housing rights for 'battered women'?" The state legislators that need to be contacted are:
Representative Kevin Honan
Co-Chair, Housing Committee
State House, Room 38
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-2470
Rep.KevinHonan@hou.state.ma.us
Senator Susan Tucker
Co-Chair, Housing Committee
State House, Room 424
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-1612
Susan.Tucker@state.ma.us
And you need to contact your own senator and rep. Follow this link to find out who they are:
www.wheredoivotema.com
Monday, January 14, 2008
Proposed rule: No more than 4 students per Boston apartment
The Boston City Council wants to limit the number of college students that can occupy Boston apartments to no more than 4 students per apartment. This very serious decision was arrived at by behind-the-scenes meetings and negotiations until all the Councilors were unanimously in favor of it. Then the action was fast. The petition had its public hearing this past December 11, 2007, and the Council voted unanimously the very next day, December 12.
Obviously, landlords including the smallest of us were not consulted at all. The decision has two more steps of approval, at the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and the Boston Zoning Commission, in that order. The process could take a couple of months up to a year. Speaking our minds to these bodies is our chance to influence the decision-making and stop this very ill-conceived idea of limiting student occupancy. Go to the Small Property Owners Association website: http://www.spoa.com/ and read more and get contact information for the people that need to hear from you.
Here is what would happen. The excess students would seek apartments in surrounding non-student neighborhoods, displacing families and long-time residents and bringing all the problems of students into yet more Boston neighhborhoods. A housing shortage would be created. People in these newly student-occupied neighborhoods would have to pay more rent and live more compactly with more persons per unit than at present. Meanwhile, in the current student neighborhoods, rents would decline since a cap on the occupants effectively puts a cap on the rents. Individual students in these four-students-only apartments probably would pay a bit more in rent, but the overall rent per apartment would decline. Tax revenues from the devalued four-only apartments would also decline as assessed values dropped. That drop would shift the tax burden to the non-student occupied properties, raising their property taxes.
All these miserable effects occur for what goal? To stop student noise, late-night partying, and excessive trash badly handled. Limiting the students to a maximum of four per apartment will not stop noise or partying or trash. It will all continue. But the Council's action does give permission to Boston's Inspectional Services Department to invade apartments, question individuals, and get them evicted.
The Council's action is attempting to get around a recent consent decree filed in the Federal District Court of Massachusetts. That consent decree throws out a common but incorrect interpretation of the state's lodging house law. That common but incorrect interpretation says that occupancies in all apartments are limited to no more than four unrelated persons, unrelated that is to each other. If four or more unrelated persons occupy, then supposedly they constitute a lodging house or a rooming house and the owner must either evict the tenants or seek a lodging house license and conform to special building code requirements for lodging houses. But the state lodging house law insists that tenants become "lodgers" only when four or more of them are unrelated to the "person conducting" the lodging house. If the owner rents to three individuals and they in turn bring in more tenants, it does not become a lodging or rooming house. In other words, families do not have this number restriction, nor do roommate situations where the roommates decide who lives with them, so long as the landlord does not contract with the four or more roommates individually.
Until recently, Boston's Inspectional Services Department has been enforcing the incorrect interpretation of the law. Now the City Council's action is targeting students and trying to get around this new interpretation of the law. There are legal questions in this action targeting students. It probably is an unlawful search and seizure and invasion of privacy to ask someone if they are a student (it's not illegal to be a student), and based on that status to evict them from their apartment (or force the owner to get a lodging house license, which would not be granted even if the owner wants it). The Council's action also is unequal protection of the law, since it targets students when other types of occupancy may have the same problems.
On the issue of overcrowding, the State Sanitary Code already covers it by requiring at least 150 square feet of space for the first person occupying an apartment and 100 square feet for each additional person. If the City Councilors think that is too crowded, then state law needs to be changed, not Boston's zoning code.
Again, please go to the Small Property Owners Association website http://www.spoa.com/ for more information and for contact information for the people who need to hear from you.
Obviously, landlords including the smallest of us were not consulted at all. The decision has two more steps of approval, at the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and the Boston Zoning Commission, in that order. The process could take a couple of months up to a year. Speaking our minds to these bodies is our chance to influence the decision-making and stop this very ill-conceived idea of limiting student occupancy. Go to the Small Property Owners Association website: http://www.spoa.com/ and read more and get contact information for the people that need to hear from you.
Here is what would happen. The excess students would seek apartments in surrounding non-student neighborhoods, displacing families and long-time residents and bringing all the problems of students into yet more Boston neighhborhoods. A housing shortage would be created. People in these newly student-occupied neighborhoods would have to pay more rent and live more compactly with more persons per unit than at present. Meanwhile, in the current student neighborhoods, rents would decline since a cap on the occupants effectively puts a cap on the rents. Individual students in these four-students-only apartments probably would pay a bit more in rent, but the overall rent per apartment would decline. Tax revenues from the devalued four-only apartments would also decline as assessed values dropped. That drop would shift the tax burden to the non-student occupied properties, raising their property taxes.
All these miserable effects occur for what goal? To stop student noise, late-night partying, and excessive trash badly handled. Limiting the students to a maximum of four per apartment will not stop noise or partying or trash. It will all continue. But the Council's action does give permission to Boston's Inspectional Services Department to invade apartments, question individuals, and get them evicted.
The Council's action is attempting to get around a recent consent decree filed in the Federal District Court of Massachusetts. That consent decree throws out a common but incorrect interpretation of the state's lodging house law. That common but incorrect interpretation says that occupancies in all apartments are limited to no more than four unrelated persons, unrelated that is to each other. If four or more unrelated persons occupy, then supposedly they constitute a lodging house or a rooming house and the owner must either evict the tenants or seek a lodging house license and conform to special building code requirements for lodging houses. But the state lodging house law insists that tenants become "lodgers" only when four or more of them are unrelated to the "person conducting" the lodging house. If the owner rents to three individuals and they in turn bring in more tenants, it does not become a lodging or rooming house. In other words, families do not have this number restriction, nor do roommate situations where the roommates decide who lives with them, so long as the landlord does not contract with the four or more roommates individually.
Until recently, Boston's Inspectional Services Department has been enforcing the incorrect interpretation of the law. Now the City Council's action is targeting students and trying to get around this new interpretation of the law. There are legal questions in this action targeting students. It probably is an unlawful search and seizure and invasion of privacy to ask someone if they are a student (it's not illegal to be a student), and based on that status to evict them from their apartment (or force the owner to get a lodging house license, which would not be granted even if the owner wants it). The Council's action also is unequal protection of the law, since it targets students when other types of occupancy may have the same problems.
On the issue of overcrowding, the State Sanitary Code already covers it by requiring at least 150 square feet of space for the first person occupying an apartment and 100 square feet for each additional person. If the City Councilors think that is too crowded, then state law needs to be changed, not Boston's zoning code.
Again, please go to the Small Property Owners Association website http://www.spoa.com/ for more information and for contact information for the people who need to hear from you.
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