Dear Legislators,
Many people in this state believe that the laws in MA are very anti-landlord and they need to be modified. As landlords here are the top 3 things we NEED from this legislative session:
1. Mandatory Rent Escrow. That will address tenant retaliation which is currently legal in MA. We want to be notified in writing about poor conditions. Currently there is no requirement that a tenant notifies us in writing before they start to “withhold” rent. With email and text available that should not be an issue. Basically, if a tenant is not able to show that they notified us and gave us a chance to repair and escrowed all the money for the rent, then they should not be able to claim any habitational issues in court. It is not up to them to decide how much of our property to “withhold” (unless they choose to repair and deduct). Withholding our property (the rent) is unconstitutional if it is done without a Court Hearing. Currently tenants are allowed to not contact us about “poor conditions”, call the Health Board, withhold 100% of the rent and use habitational issues against us even when done in bad faith – after they receive a notice from us or when they have no more money for the rent. That is unconstitutional, absurd and is unnecessarily clogging the court system. Who pays for that? All taxpayers.
2. Storage Laws. The requirement that the storage facility is a publicly bonded warehouse must be removed. Since this law was enacted in 2004, the bonded storage companies in MA have turned into monopolies. Two years ago they were 29 and now they are only 15 of them for the whole state (there is only one option in Worcester area, for example and only 2 for the whole Western MA). They used to ask for 2 months pre-paid, now they are demanding 6 months pre-paid because they can.
3. Late Fees. Banks are charging us late fees after 15 days but we can’t charge the tenants until 30 days. Something’s got to give. Either make banks charge us after 30 days or allow us to charge tenants after 15 days.
Copy and paste any of the blogs into your email and send it as is or modified to one or more of the following groups of legislators. Keep in mind some of the legislators belong to multiple groups.
Here are the emails of All Legislators in Massachusetts
Here are the emails of the Joint Committee on Housing
Here are the emails of the Joint Committee on Judiciary
If you want to send emails to the Legislators who are representing your specific zip code, then you can find them here