Legal Issues

If you haven’t heard the news, the Chief of Police in Houston, Texas has proposed installing surveillence cameras in apartment complexes.

Houston aims cameras at apartment complexes

Ah, the security deposit… a financial burden when moving in, a blessing when moving out. There’s a reason it’s called a deposit—because you put money down only to cover excess damages that you might cause but, you’re almost guaranteed to get it back. Unless you cause extreme damage that your landlord can prove was your fault and existed after you moved out but before new tenants moved in, you deserve to have your deposit refunded in full. Normal wear and tear on the apartment is to be expected. However, some landlords won’t make the effort to get your money back to you unless you ask for it. Beyond making sure that your crazy friends don’t trash your apartment or that the kitten you’re secretly hiding in your room doesn’t claw up the carpet too badly, here are some steps to take to ensure you get your security deposit back.

You mean that lovely orange sticker on your door isn’t a friendly note from your landlord? Read closer… it’s an eviction notice. You may think that things like this only happen to rowdy college students, but think again, because it can happen to you. The best protection from this harsh punishment is reading your lease completely – especially that fine print. Leases are riddled with all kinds of rules and regulations as well as consequences, so knowing where you stand from the beginning will prevent you from being kicked out into the cold. It’s also helpful to understand the eviction process so if you are served with an eviction notice, you’ll know how to proceed, and what your rights are. Here are a few things to keep in mind about the eviction process.

Federal Certificate of Real Awesomeness? Five Clearly Ridiculous Awards? Fun Cleaning Random Ashtrays? What is the FCRA, anyway, and how does it affect you as an apartment resident? This article demystifies the acronym of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, explaining how it protects you as a tenant.

Imagine: you come home to your apartment after a hard day’s work, ready to kick off your shoes and relax with a beer (or your beverage of choice) and put your feet up on the coffee table. But wait–what’s this? As your turning your key you notice that the door wasn’t locked. Weird–you must have just forgotten to lock it on the way out. You kick off those shoes, drop your briefcase, and head for the fridge. On your way there you notice that half the linoleum tiles are missing from your kitchen floor. Tools and linoleum dust are scattered around your kitchen counter, and your cat is interestedly licking the linoleum dust. "Get out of that!" you yell. The cat obediently jumps off the counter and trots away. You wonder if maintenance is still somewhere in the apartment. That would explain the unlocked door. "Ummm, hellooo?" you call several times, wandering around your apartment and peeping into various rooms for evidence of someone responsible for the destruction in your kitchen (maybe the cat did it–not likely, though). You feel like an intruder on your own home. After determining that no one is in the apartment with you, you look for a notice of entry from maintenance but there is nothing to be found. You call the apartment management and leave a message about the situation. Bewildered, you decide to sweep up the dust and move on with your life.

Desperate times call for… desperate measures

Your apartment is so awful that you need to get out now. The management, however, really doesn’t want to let you go. Maybe it’s because you’re one of few renters left who actually pay rent and/or don’t sell drugs out of your apartment. Whatever the reason, you’ve gotta go—but it ain’t gonna be easy. Here are some highly unadvisable—wholly unadvisable, really—ways to get out of your apartment lease.

Your apartment at “Buena Vista Village” looks out on a junkyard, is infested with roaches, your next-door neighbors are running a meth lab, your upstairs neighbor is a professional tap-dancer, your carpeting still smells like the urine of the previous tenant’s cats (which she definitely wasn’t allowed to have), your car has been broken into three times in the past month, and there are bullet holes in one wall of the complex that haven’t been covered up in the whole time you’ve been there.

So you decided to hire movers. Congratulations! You’ve saved your back, eliminated about 80% of the stress of moving, and have avoided annoying your friends with the old, “hey man can you help me move next Saturday” bit.

When you move into an apartment, your landlord will ask for a deposit of some sort. All states allow landlords to legitimately ask for a security deposit to accompany the first month’s rent. A security deposit is money given to a landlord to provide protection against damage to the rented premises or for some other failure of a tenant.