Lawyers.com > Understand Your Legal Issue > Leases and Leasing > Landlord Tenant Law > Tenants' Associations

Just like some employees and their employers have disputes-over things like work hours and wages-landlords and tenants often have disputes over various matters, ranging from things like rent increases to the condition or maintenance of the building's parking lot or common areas. And, just like many employees are able to organize labor unions that try to resolve disputes on behalf of all employees, rather than each employee trying on his or her own, tenants often form or join groups that look after their rights and interests.

Tenants' associations (or "tenants' organizations" or "tenants' unions") are formed to help tenants-either within an entire geographic area or those within a specific building-deal effectively with a landlord to resolve disputes between them all at once, rather than having each tenant deal with the landlord on an individual basis.

Whether you're a landlord or tenant, you should know some things about how tenants' associations work and what they try to achieve.

What Do These Associations Do?

Historically, tenants' associations were formed to:

• Help even the playing field between the tenants and landlord, in that the landlord-tenant laws of many states were pro-landlord originally
• Increase enforcement of state and local housing cods so as to ensure safe and habitable housing
• Help control higher rents, poor maintenance, abusive treatment by landlords, and housing shortages

For the most part, these issues have been addressed by the various states' landlord-tenant laws, but tenant organizations and unions are still effective today in two areas:

• In lobbying or encouraging local governmental authorities and organizations for changes in the landlord-tenant laws, particularly in regard to rent and rent control and health and safety standards, and
• Advising tenants on specific landlord-tenant matters and even providing litigation support in individual cases

In general, the immediate goals of any tenants' union or association include:

• Being recognized as the "voice" or "negotiator" for the tenant-members, so that the landlord deals with the association, and not the tenants individually
• Fairer rents, or at least the prevention of arbitrary rent increases
• Lower security deposits
• Better and more frequent maintenance, including repairs and improvements

Organization & Membership

Tenants' associations or unions can be made up of all tenants in a geographic area or city, like the San Francisco Tenants Union, or the tenants of a particular building or rental community. In addition, they can be composed of lower income tenants, students living off-campus, or middle and upper income tenants.

Tenant associations and organizations typically have meetings throughout the year, sometimes as often as monthly, sometimes twice a year, and sometimes only when there is some special need or threat, such as a proposed rent increase or much needed repairs and maintenance. The idea of the meetings, of course, is to keep tenants up-to-date not only on matters having to do with their particular landlord, but with changes in housing laws as well.

In most states, the landlord-tenant laws make it illegal for a landlord to interfere with his or her tenants' right to form, organize, or join a tenants' association or union. Specifically, as a landlord, you can't do things like increase rent, decrease services—like reduce hot water or heat—or threaten to evict a tenant solely on the grounds that he or she joined or formed a tenant's association of union.

Tenants' associations and organizations are typically run by a committee of tenants, who either might volunteer for the job or might be elected by the other tenants. Usually, the organization will develop some rules or "bylaws" that govern things like who will run the association and how and when they will be elected, amount and collection of dues, if any, when and where meetings will be held, etc.

Tenants' unions are bit more formal. Like a labor union, a tenants union will typically have a "collective bargaining agreement (CBA)" that spells out exactly:

• The name of the union and who it represents, such as, "the tenants residing at 1234 Main Street"
• The name(s) of the landlord
• How long the CBA is in effect
• The rights and obligations of both the landlord and the tenants/LI>
• The amount of dues and how they'll be collected, both with regard to current and new tenants, but also with regard to tenants who don't want to belong to the union but should be required to pay dues because they will reap the benefits of the union's work and efforts

Tactics and Strategies

The tenants' organization or union has at its disposal the same tactics available to an individual tenant to try to convince a landlord to make any necessary changes or repairs, such as:

• Delivering a written list of complaints and demands, signed by all tenants, which serves to give him or her notice of needed repairs, but also shows that the tenants are serious
• File a lawsuit against the landlord and seek an injunction-a court order directing the landlord to make the repair-or money damages or a reduction in rent
• "Rent and deduct," that is, the association pays for the repairs and then the tenants deduct the cost of the repair from their rent payments to pay for the repairs
• Withhold or stop paying rent until the repairs are made

Questions for Your Attorney

Do I have to tell potential tenants that there's a tenants' association or union in my building?

We're holding our first tenants' association meeting next month. The landlord says he wants to be there. Do we have to let him attend?

Do I have to let my tenants use the recreation room for their tenants' association meetings?

Potential tenants tell me they're not interested in the apartment because they don't want to belong to the tenants' union but they'll have to pay dues anyway. Can I lower the rent a little bit for these potential tenants to off-set the union dues?

Related Resources on Lawyers.com^sm

- Find a Real Estate Law Lawyer in your area
- Visit our Landlord & Tenant message board for more help