Tenant Rights

You, as a tenant, are entitled to a basic set of rights. If a landlord oversteps certain boundaries and acts in a discriminatory manner, refuses to tell you why he rejected your application to rent the place, or offers you inhospitable rooms to live in, you have every right to press charges if he fails to rectify his behavior.

You have the right to know why your application to rent an apartment is rejected because it is illegal for a landlord to refuse to rent to you for discriminatory reasons. Federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, familial status, physical disability, and mental disability. Some states and cities have additional laws prohibiting discrimination based on marital status and sexual orientation.

Federal law prohibits landlords from various other forms of discriminatory conduct. Landlords cannot advertise or make any implication that they prefer or would rather not rent to one of the people in the classes mentioned above. They cannot say that the apartment is not available when it is. They cannot use different sets of rules for assessing applicants of different class. They cannot provide different services or facilities to tenants of different classes. They cannot end a tenancy for a discriminatory reason.

Note - These statutes do not apply to all rental property. Exceptions include owner-occupied buildings with four or few rental units, housing offered by religious groups or private organizations for their members, housing for senior citizens, and single-family housing being rented without discriminatory advertising or a real estate broker. A landlord with a "no pets" policy cannot refuse to rent to you if you own the animal to help you cope with a physical or mental disability, such as a seeing-eye dog.

You have a right to know if you were rejected because someone gave your landlord negative information about you. Under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, you also have the right to know if you were rejected based on negative credit information that came from some source other than your credit report. That same act requires your landlord to tell you that you are allowed to submit a written request for disclosure of the negative credit information he received, and after receiving such a request your landlord must tell you the nature of the information within reasonable time.

You have the right to "habitable" premises, and most states forbid landlords from writing in the lease a statement that you waive that right. The space is considered uninhabitable if there are unsafe conditions or a gross infestation of creatures such as mice or cockroaches. Rental housing must also be free of lead-based paint.