This toolkit tells you how to ask your landlord to make repairs, and what to do if your landlord is not making the repairs you requested. For general information, read the Articles. Read the Common Questions if you have a specific question. If you need to write a letter to your landlord asking for something to be fixed, use the Forms link to prepare it. Go to Courts & Agencies for information about the court or agency that will handle your case if you end up in court.
You'll find links to legal aid offices and lawyer referral services under Find A Lawyer. If there is a Self-Help Center in your area you can get more help there. If you need something other than legal help, look in Community Services. If you need a fee waiver, an interpreter, a court to accommodate your disability, or more information about going to court, visit Going to Court.
Common Questions
If there is a needed repair, you can notify your landlord that there is a problem with your home and ask them to fix it. You can use the Do-It-Yourself Letter to Landlord (Repairs) to write a letter to your landlord, including what you think is a reasonable amount of time to repair the problem.
If your landlord doesn’t fix a problem within a reasonable amount of time, you can fix the problem yourself and deduct the costs of the repair from your rent. Let your landlord know before you fix a problem yourself. Keep all receipts from the repair. If you hire a contractor, you should ask around for the best estimate.
To learn more, you can read Tenant Rights and Responsibilities.
An escrow account is a bank account money is deposited in for a specific purpose. Money for other purposes should not be deposited into it.
In a landlord-tenant case, a tenant in a dispute with a landlord about repairs can establish an escrow account to hold rent until the dispute is resolved. This shows the judge the tenant can pay the rent. A judge might also order a tenant to put rent into an escrow account at the court until a case is resolved.
No. Your landlord can’t evict you just for exercising your legal rights as a tenant. This includes reporting your landlord to the housing inspector.
This is called a retaliatory eviction. If your landlord starts an eviction against you within 90 days of when you exercised these rights, the court will assume the eviction is retaliatory. This means your landlord will have to prove the eviction is not retaliatory. If you think the eviction was retaliatory, and it has been more than 90 days, you will need to prove it to the court to defend against the eviction. Learn more about it in the article Common Defenses and Counterclaims in Eviction Cases.