I am absolutely SEETHING right now.
My landlord is raising my rent over $125 a month, from $940 a month to $1065/mo** in retaliation for my making them do their legal job and fix my air conditioning, which was completely nonfunctional during the heat of summer. FYI, they already raised the rent once this year and the largest rent raise I’ve gotten before was $40/mo. This is over three times that, AND includes a threat that they will raise it again in the next few months if I don’t sign a year-long lease. The whole reason I switched to month-to-month was because of the management here getting more and more shitty.
I had to fight my landlords tooth and nail for nearly two months to get them to fix my air conditioning - which they kept insisting worked even though it provably didn’t even lower the temp in the apartment at all - and after about eight work orders across nearly two months, multiple email arguments including me threatening to take them to court and them unsubtly threatening to evict me (they have no legal grounds to do that), and my meeting with a lawyer about these sonabastards. And despite everything, after they finally fixed the AC (sort of, the airflow is still shit but at least it does cool now) I was prepared to drop it.
Not even two weeks later they do this. It’s textbook retaliation.
Except, apparently, by the law of the state I live in, where the only thing legally considered “retaliation” by a landlord is eviction. So these fuckers can raise my rent again and again until I either move out or can’t pay anymore and they can evict me. And it’s all legal because my f**king state is run by Republicans.
Maybe I can’t take their asses to court for this, but I’m going to figure out SOMETHING to do. All I wanted was for them to do their legally required duty to keep the place habitable, and they fight me tooth and nail for months and then blatantly punish me for not letting them bully me into silence.
**For comparison, that would put my rent at the same as the luxury apartment complex up the street - the one with a dog park and workout room. My apartment complex doesn’t even provide in-unit washers or dryers.
