Tenant Rights
Guides across the site that deal with tenant rights.
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Renting & City Housing
Reading a Residential Lease Before Signing
A residential lease is negotiable before you sign and partly overridden by law afterward. This walkthrough covers each clause and flags the terms your state, not the landlord, controls.
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Renting & City Housing
Rent Control and Rent Stabilization: How the Systems Differ
Three different systems get called rent control. This explainer separates old-style hard ceilings, board-set stabilization with renewal rights, and newer statewide anti-gouging caps.
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Renting & City Housing
Bed Bugs, Mold, and Pest Infestations in Rentals
Pests and mold in a rental usually fall under the implied warranty of habitability and the local housing code. What you do first, and in writing, shapes every remedy that follows.
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Renting & City Housing
Renting With a Housing Voucher and Source-of-Income Rules
Whether a landlord may refuse a housing voucher depends on state and local law, not federal law. Here is how a voucher tenancy works and where the legal lines fall.
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Renting & City Housing
Lease Renewal, Non-Renewal, and Month-to-Month Conversion
A fixed term usually converts to a month-to-month tenancy unless someone acts. Notice lengths, just-cause limits on non-renewal, and rent increase rules all come from state and local law.
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Renting & City Housing
Breaking a Lease for Military Service, Safety, or Health
Some reasons for leaving early are written into statute rather than left to the landlord's goodwill. One is federal; the rest are state law and differ sharply from place to place.
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Renting & City Housing
Tenant Organizing and Retaliation Protections
Complaining to a code office or forming a tenant group is protected activity in most states, and an adverse action that follows too closely can be presumed retaliatory.
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Renting & City Housing
Storage of a Tenant's Belongings After a Move-Out
Property left behind is usually not the landlord's to keep or throw away. State statutes set the notice, the storage period, the cost recovery, and the sale procedure.