Tenants Rights

Question: I ordered satellite service for my apartment, but the landlord refused to let me have the dish installed. How can I persuade him to change his mind? Answer: The Federal Communications Commission has done the work for you, enacting a detailed set of rules and regulations in 1996 that on many levels prohibit a property owner from restricting a tenant's right to satellite service. Unfortunately, many people are in the dark about the FCC's elaborate guidelines.

It's known as the "28-day shuffle" -- the long-standing yet illegal practice by skid row hotels of forcing residents out of their rooms before the one-month point to avoid them becoming legal "tenants" and receiving certain rights under state law. For years, homeless advocates have complained that the shuffle is a huge barrier blocking transients and poor families from establishing permanent routines and gaining even tenuous roots in the community.

For Roxanne Aquino, whose lupus and rheumatoid arthritis led to depression, relief came in the form of a cat -- pet therapy prescribed by her psychiatrist. But when she and her family tried to move into a North Hollywood shelter for the homeless, she ran into a problem. The shelter management forbade pets. "They ... didn't understand that my cat is an assistance animal, not a pet," Aquino said.

Question: I want to start a business at home, but my landlord refuses even to listen to my request. Why would he care? How can I change his mind? Answer: Since there are hundreds of home-based business possibilities, the landlord may be wary of what yours might bring, including outside visitors, noise, parking problems and stress to neighbors. Other concerns might include insurance claims, increased costs for utilities, fire and safety issues and that the business violates the law.

In another sign of the growing potency of low-income housing as a political issue in Los Angeles, a group of about 100 tenants held a forum Saturday to press elected leaders to create more affordable units and to prosecute slum landlords. Meeting in a South Los Angeles community center, tenants speaking English and Spanish told stories of utilities cut off for no reason, eviction notices delivered without cause and unabated rats and cockroaches.

Responding to the continuing recession, San Francisco passed legislation Tuesday that advocates for landlords and renters said add some of the state's strongest tenant protections to the city's rent-control law. Supervisor Chris Daly introduced the legislation in March, saying that the downturn has left more of the city's renters in danger of eviction. The new laws limit rent increases and allow tenants to add roommates to help cover costs.

After a night of electioneering, a bleary-eyed Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved an ordinance that prevents landlords from evicting rent-control tenants after major renovations and another that allows adult drug users and others to buy syringes without a prescription. One of Los Angeles' long-standing housing problems is that the city has a large number of apartments -- particularly in poor neighborhoods -- that are in very run-down condition. Many are rent-controlled.

After scattering hundreds of copies of her suicide note from the seventh-floor ledge of a downtown building, Mary Jesus held her nose and raised an arm in the air. Then, like a swimmer taking a plunge, she leapt to her death. "Goodbye cruel world and all that," said the note, which blamed her suicide on an eviction she had battled fiercely -- and unsuccessfully. "Everyone will say what they always say when something totally preventable isn't prevented, 'Why didn't anybody do anything?'

Tenants don't just rent a product and take it home. The product is their home. Questions crop up at every turn: Can the landlord charge a $100 bounced-check fee? Turn down a family with kids? Walk in unannounced? Fortunately, several excellent websites exist that brim with housing and consumer information. One mega-linked resource, FirstGov for Consumers, is provided free by the federal government. Its home page at www.consumer.

Since January, renters in California have had for the first time the right to demand documentation for deductions landlords make from security deposits for repairs or cleaning. That is just the latest in a series of landlord-tenant regulations -- many of them providing protections to renters -- enacted at the state and local levels in the last six years.