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Comment by ThrustVectoring | Hacker News Reader

> What if you have a dispute with this landlord - can you compete in court with their lawyers?

Bold of you to assume that they wouldn't just cancel your lease, share your do-not-rent status with the other mega-landlords, and hope that homelessness makes you go away.

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I moved into a house from From a mega rental. All the windows were open when we did The inspection. Had a massive chemical smell after we closed it up. Company kept making excuses about smell. Well in 3 months family suffered a whole series of strokes and other issues. Eventually found a gas leak. It didn’t have the rotten egg smell so took awhile to figure out.

Plus we just were gone mentally.

Doctors wouldn’t fill paperwork saying that high levels of toxic gas caused medical issues, so lawyers wouldn’t take the case.

Why didn’t you just leave and stop paying rent?

This is often hard. Even if you find a new place and move, your landlord will come after you for the remaining rent on the lease. If you don't succeed, you'll have a ding on your credit report that makes it harder to get a home loan and may make it nearly impossible to find places to rent.

Yep. Basically couldn’t move again for 3 years because we broke lease. Eventually went on an online campaign telling my tail. Company contacted me. They Agreed to remove negative remarks. And send me my deposit. They tried to get me to sign paper work saying I couldn’t talk about. I refused. They still sent sent Money and removed neg marks. Its not justice, but at least I can get housing again.

Damn. I never tried that in the US so I assume it would be fine, but I guess that infamous credit score system really is preventing you from doing that. When I was in England I just stopped paying my rent when I had issues with my landlord and they just fixed the issues. In France it’s also pretty common to not pay the last month when you want to leave so they’re forced to use the deposit for that. Unfortunately a lot of landlords are quite shitty and that’s a good way to deal with them.

Maybe it was in winter, alleyways are kind of cold to sleep in that time of year.

You can find another rent

We eventually did.

What kind of toxic gas leaks into households that can’t be detected by smell? Radon?

Natural gas. Some sort of butane. Leak was in attic.

Growing up gas had a rotten egg smell. So we didn’t realize. Also when we called they kept insisting it was the carpet, the floors, the paint. They would come out and say nothing was wrong and that smell would go away.

There was also a carbon monoxide leak that the dector was going off on. That was what make us stupid as shit while dealing with it.

Natural gas is odorless. It only smells when a odor agent is added to it.

Name and location? If you’re comfortable could you email me more details

Nullserver gmail Georgia

Wouldn’t many of these disputes fall to small claims court? I thought lawyers weren’t a thing and big COs just settle in small claims

Sure, you technically have the right to file a lawsuit, possibly in small claims court. The question is whether exercising your rights leaves you better off as a practical matter. Like, there's a similar issue with most credit-card based disputes with merchants, where you technically can file a chargeback, but practically speaking you'd rather not get blacklisted from Amazon/Uber/whatever so that's off the table completely.

Let's not forget that plenty of landlords will outright refuse to rent to anyone who has been in legal proceedings with a prior landlord. So having a landlord try to evict you (wrongfully or not) can often have the effect of leaving a renter unable to secure housing anywhere else.

The problem with America is that individuals are penalized for their history but corporations aren't.

If there was only a way to review landlords/owners.

Small claims have dollar limits and most corporate landlords enforce arbitration agreements to prevent any possibility of a smaller court from damaging their interests.

Exactly— this stuff would end up in pro-corporate arbitration, depending on the jurisdiction.

I mean, this is presumably also something that you might attempt to contest in court.

Renters have abismal rights when it comes to property disputes. As a class, renters are more likely to be living paycheck to paycheck, they are less likely to be connected to government or local community, and are dependent on their current landlord/credit agencies to secure shelter in the future.

If you are paycheck to paycheck, a lawyer is a crazy expense at the outset. If suing your landlord means that you are out of a home… and their mention to the credit bureau or landlord friends kills your next lease. Then you probably aren’t going to be able to stay around long enough for the court case to play out.

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