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OMG i never told you guys that one time my roommates and i organized and took our landlord to court and won lmaooo going against a corporate real estate lawyer!!!!
It was a wild ride... so we all moved into a two family house newly built. Strangers at the time. Two units. 5 rooms in each unit. 10 tenants in total. We all signed the lease on different days and each paying for our individual rooms sharing the kitchen living room bathroom etc.
This is the predator behavior... landlords go after young adults with new apartments and build bigger units to fit as many people as possible In the city. 5 bedrooms 3 full baths..in each unit then common living room and backyard etc. anyways of course the landlord is nameless
So the landlord had many properties like this through out the city... i donât recommend doing this at all. I was young moved to a new city from home and naive....also IMPORTANT* each bedroom had a lock on it with your own key...so this is what created the chaos.
One of the landlords similar buildings had a small fire or fire scare and firefighters came and they had to check each room but you guessed it they were locked and couldnât get it and firefighters couldnât leave without checking so they kicked down the door... landlord was fined
Thousands of dollar.. so obviously they got scared sent out mass email to everyone and said we are taking off locks from your bedroom...we were like f that we donât know each other we moved in different dates we donât feel safe and you rented this with the lock. They didnât care
We said well then break the lease and return our deposit.. they said NO... that lit a fire in us.. mostly me and these two other girls....one of the girls was from the downstairs apartment. We then started researching laws and realized itâs illegal to rent out individual rooms
SO WE CALLED THE CITY LMAO.. and said please come do AN INSPECTION NOW.. we are living in a boarding house. City came quickly and FINED THE LANDLORD FOR OUR UNITS 
NOW remember ALL THIS COULD HAVE been avoided if they were not greedy and just returned our deposit
NOW remember ALL THIS COULD HAVE been avoided if they were not greedy and just returned our deposit
We quickly learned we were building a case against our landlord by having all these official documents from the city of them being fined and the power was in our court.. so next step was when they removed the locks we got together all 10 of us and said we need to withhold rent.
We all agreed.. and this is where we realized some of the tenants were not about it.. 4 of them paid their rent. BROKE THE LINE.. the audacity...but we didnât care we still withheld...again landlord is nameless BUT we were able to find our addresses to their other buildings.
Landlord was realizing we werent messing around.. so what did they do.. send us letters from their corporate lawyer to pay rent or else type of threat..we didnât care lol..all this time we were snitching to the city about our living situation and kept collecting violations lol
Next threat was in person visit from lawyer to summon us to court for non payment. We said what payment.. this is not a legal apartment.. youâre not entitled to rent. Lawyer was SHOOK lmao when i tell you me and this other two girls were wreaking havoc on him.
So we found out other buildings said hey guys we are building a case let me know if yâall want in or if you want to do the same.. but your apartment is not legal and therefore theyâre not entitled to rent. Call the city hereâs the phone numbers have them do multiple inspections.
Collect them violations!!!! forget to mention when lawyer was coming to meet us OUR WATER WAS MYSTERIOUSLY SHUT OFF.... when i tell you i called the city so fast..another violation lmfaoooo water came back in hours... they were using it as a scare tactic to make us leave
It didnât work....so we had a court day.. we told the lawyer we would HAPPILY settle... again we had no lawyers nothing.. this was all our own research. They were not banking on this at all. Im missing so many details yâall it was a 4/5 month process... remember how they took the
Locks.. so the scheduled their own inspection to tell inspector see no locks.. so we bought new locks and put them in for a follow up inspection... lmao. we said NOT TODAY SATAN... WHEN I TELL YOU THEY WERE SHOOK.
Again you gotta build trust with your other tenants... stick it out with them and support each other without that idk if i would have dealt with this mess.. anyways we alerted many nearby buildings to do the same.. lawyer said no settlement.. so we got to court..
Im not gonna lie it was nerve wracking cause if you lose you have to pay your rent and court fees for landlords trash ass...but we knew we had all the paperwork from the city... the room renting emails etc.. we just didnât understand why the landlord wouldnât settle.
So our names our called to go see the judge and state our case... BAM lawyer comes running to want to settle....interesting right.. this is a tactic these predators use where third party companies collect names of tenants to sell to landlord to blacklist. Capitalism yay!
So we settled.. got our pay day on top of not paying rent for 5 months lmao.. we still had to go in front of the judge to record the settlement. Lawyer made a comment about my hair and said now he can afford a haircut and i said at least i got hair mole rat
ALLL THIS BECAUSE THEY DIDNT WANT TO RETURN OUR SECURITY DEPOSIT AND LET US LEAVE PEACEFULLY. Well this is the alternative you got. $$$$$$$$$$$$
I forgot In midst of all these inspections we were orchestrating THEY CITY REALIZED THEY DIDNT FILE FOR CERTIFICATE OF OCCUPANCY WHICH IS A BIG NO NO. One of the biggest When i tell you we rushed to the city to get that official document
