Rent and Lease Issues

Gilder

So currently my mother and I live in an apartment and we aren't on a lease. I'm putting that first because I know it'll be crucial in dealing with these issues. This is in SoCal so it's really expensive. It's around $1100 and we also pay for water on a set amount. Apparently nobody else really does this but whatever. What my concern is is that some new neighbors have moved in and apparently they pay only $900 a month. Those new neighbors and also the landlord are mexican, and we have neighbors that moved in about a year and a half ago that pay the same amount as us AND they're a three person family. They're white and not on a lease, just like my family. Since we pay the same amount that means they pay the same for water. The water is supposed to be based on occupancy. The new neighbors are a four person family with one, maybe two, dogs. The other neighbors do not have a pet, and I do but a previous agreement with an old owner said we don't have to pay and the new owner has never pursued it. Do you guys think there's some kind of discrimination going on here? I checked online, and it says that a 1 bedroom apartment here (which all parties in question have) start at $975. But these new neighbors are paying $900? It doesn't seem right to us, and when the lease for the other neighbors expired their rent didn't shoot up to what we pay now. It stayed that way.

So now here's the other issue. Maybe those new neighbors are on a lease and have an agreement. Fine we'd accept that. Maybe. It's still suspect on the starting price. But here's our problem: Why haven't we been offered any lower rates? In fact the older neighbors and my mother have never been offered a lease renewal. The neighbors below us expired a few months back and never got one. We've lived here for years and gone through two different owners. We have not once been offered a lease agreement. However they always try to catch us on little problems to try and evict us. Like we left a storage tub outside for a night once, or we put a small bag of trash in the can by the mailboxes, when recently we have seen as many as 8 bags of garbage in that same can (never seen before until the newer neighbors moved in). Isn't there a law about offering a lease renewal? Because we aren't moving for a while. If we could sign a lease and get a $200 rent reduction we would gladly sign it.

So is there anything we should do here? Anybody we should contact? It just doesn't seem right for us to be paying so much more for two people and a small cat when four people and a large dog are paying so much less. What I will say is that I don't think that whatever is going on here is intentional. The landlord isn't the smartest landlord in the world. She can barely understand anything we say to her, and her daughter actually helps us out the most. So we're not exactly looking to get rich quick with an amazing lawsuit or something, but we're looking for equality.

illig

read up on your local landlord/tenant laws/rules... these are generally easily available on government websites and should answer many questions.

here in NY, a lease automatically reverts to a month-to-month agreement if not actively renewed by both the lessee and the lessor but YMMV

as for the reduction in rent, have you considered asking for one? a landlord will only voluntarily offer reductions if they think they'll lose you as a tenant (and want to keep you)... otherwise they're perfectly happy to have you continue paying $1100 while having to reduce rent for new tenants to $900 due to market conditions

if you want a reduction, ask for one - and be prepared to either move, or accept failure if your request is denied...

BlochWave

Your landlord would be a poor business man indeed if he voluntarily talked you into paying a lower price when you're willing and capable of paying more.

So for starters, the longer a lease you have, typically the lower your monthly rent. You're month-to-month? A 200 dollar difference sounds right in my experience.

What the internet says doesn't matter, the landlord can give you whatever rate they please so long as you agree. They may say 975 when you walk in the door, but if you're like "oh man I don't know about that..." and they're hurting for tenants, you could maybe get it cheaper. As for your rate, you got the apartment and agreed to the rate years ago, in a whole different world. If the rates have gone down in the last years, like I said earlier, they're not going to volunteer to lose money.

You could probably walk in their office right now and be like "oh man that 1100 is getting tight, we may have to leave, is there anything we can do to avoid that?" and walk out paying 900-1000.

As for discrimination, I'm pretty sure the landlord could be like "oh man, you're Mexican? I'll cut you a deal" and that would be just perfectly legal. If the apartments are owned by a large company and he's just the property manager, as opposed to the actual landlord, that might be against company policy, but if he owns the property, I'm not sure it's any different than if I go looking for a roommate of a particular gender.

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

first off, the number of people staying in a place doesn't matter WRT the rent. The size of the place matters and a bunch of other things matter, but you're paying to rent the space, not paying for a number of people.

If you're month to month at X$ and you know that new tenants are being signed or offered month to month at <X$, why not just go in and ask for the lower rate? Maybe they'll give it to you, maybe they'll negotiate, maybe they'll tell you to get bent. If it's the latter, you can always walk. We're in the middle of the best renter's market in years.

Gilder

I myself only recently learned about this whole rent thing, but I guess my mom had known for a while. So I'll tell her she should go talk to the landlord and see if she can get anything done. I'll also look up some laws to see if we can go in with any kind of ammunition. I'm pretty sure there's a couple things landlords are supposed to do that we've never had so maybe we can use it as leverage if it comes down to it. And yeah, the occupancy does affect the rent here in terms of water, but nothing else. I don't know why we pay for it but whatever, it's not that much. That's why occupancy was bothering me. It should at least make the people below us have like $5 extra on their rent, but we seem to be the same. Personally I think we have some left over grudge charges from the previous owner. She didn't like us very much for some reason. We never really did anything, but she's gone now so it doesn't really matter.

Unfortunately walking isn't an option if we get rejected. We're way more strapped for cash now than before, so we can't even afford the down payment anywhere else. So even lowering it by $100 would really help us out. I think that angle might help us get it down.