← Back to Repairs. Has anyone else noticed that it's been a super wet June (and now July) here in Wisconsin? So much rain. Our email is flooded (heh) with complaints about water and mold.  Now, to be clear, I think mold can be devastating - let's say you're a family with kids, the kids have mold-triggered asthma which leads to bronchitis or, worse, pneumonia. Sickness in the kiddos leads to days home from work for the parents, which means that it's hard to pay rent. Suddenly, this little spore becomes a make-it-or-break-it thing. Of course, it's usually less impactful for most of the folks who read this blog, but it can damage carpets, lead to mild sickness, render furniture unusable. Let's look at some of the steps to deal with mold. Continue reading

Aging is tricky, amiright? For folks that are older, the aging process is uneven, different for everyone, and eventually leads to a deterioration of physical and/or mental capacity. The question of where and how to live becomes a complex issue for almost everyone who goes through this deterioration. So, let's say you're a landlord. And you have tenants who are aging, some less gracefully than others. Maybe you manage a complex that's mostly dedicated to seniors (ages 55 and up), or you're managing a complex that has a higher than normal ratio of seniors that choose to live there. One of the questions you might have, which is frequently asked by landlords in our Housing Law Seminars,  is what to do about people who are aging out (or already aged out) of regular rental housing. Whose abilities (or resources) are less than what is needed to live independently, and how a landlord should deal with that.  It's a difficult question, but let's dig in, shall we? Continue reading

One of our favorite attorneys came in recently, and talked the housing counselors through some murky legal issues. One of the topics that blew my mind was: folks in small claims court can ask the other party (as they sue/are being sued/are one of the people in a small claims case) for the evidence that they are using. Since small claims court is the place of last resort for many tenant-landlord issues, finding out there is a way to make that process be clearer/better/more in line with the facts is kind of amazing. Now, I'm not a lawyer, and I had secretly kind of believed that "discovery," the procedures used to obtain disclosure of evidence before trial, were something that were: A. Only used on tv, B. Especially only for criminal trials and C. Something only lawyers can do. Turns out none of those things are true! Discovery is the tool of the masses! Here's how to do it. Continue reading

I have theories about why summer is our busy season here at the TRC: temperatures go up and so do tempers. Many leases end here in Madison in August, leading to that sense of I-only-have-one-month-left-and-it's-unbearable. But whether or not I'm right, it seems like the folks we talk to are a little feistier than the rest of the year, and we have more conversations about what to expect if you end up in Small Claims Court. Since that's the last resort for many tenant-landlord disputes, and since more cases look like they're headed there.  Today, I'm talking about a strategy (a way of structuring your trial) that some folks use if they're headed to Small Claims Court - who knows, it might work for you! Continue reading

Generally, the best piece of advice that we give to tenants and landlords is to get things in writing. Getting things in writing is the best way to prove that something really happened, and that it happened the way that you remember. It's the way to have that all-important paper trail. But what about the moments where the other person doesn't want to sign an agreement, where they are not interested in negotiating the nitty-gritty? Where the most that you can get is a quick verbal conversation? Then you should send this letter. Or something like it - keep it polite, write down the details, and make sure you write down that last line (that you'll assume this is correct unless you hear otherwise in writing).  Short and sweet today, folks. Continue reading

We get a bunch of phone calls here at the TRC. Right now, we've had some staffing changes, and we're a little bit behind (side note: do you want to volunteer for the TRC???). However, most of those piled-up calls are not folks who want to pick up the phone and connect about how great their tenant-landlord relationship is. It's tenants, landlords, roommates, friends, all struggling with a problem, and needing some information in order to resolve it. We love helping people, and we're glad to do this work. But it's a nice change to go out into Wisconsin, teach the seminars, and help landlords and service providers who are trying to improve their skills. While they may have complex examples in mind, usually these folks that sit in our seminars do not have emergency-level concerns; rather, they are thoughtfully attempting to improve their skills. I love to see that. And I learn a lot from them. Here are some tips from the landlords at this set of spring seminars. Continue reading

So, déjà vu, guys. The Matrix has been altered. You know how 2013 Wisconsin Act 76 gave landlords new rights to tow vehicles on the rental property? We had Parking I, Parking II, and Parking III on this blog to explain those changes, especially as the Dept. of Transportation guidelines lagged behind?  A new round of emergency DOT rules went out on April 30, so here we are, looking at short-term changes, once again, to vehicle towing rules at rental properties. I don't want to give away the ending, but since this is another round of emergency regulations, it looks like we'll be back here again before this is done with. (To be clear, we're aware that not everyone is dying to know about parking rules, but we've heard juuuuust enough stories of tenants waking up one morning to find their car, which they need to get to work, is gone without a trace, that we think this is the stuff that folks really need to know. Check out the tips at the bottom.) Continue reading

Each Spring and Fall, I get the privilege of helping to teach seminars across the state. The crowd of participants is usually a smattering of landlords, social workers and attorneys. I'm always nervous to start - they ask really good/tough questions! But I'm so glad that people come, participate, and take the knowledge we have to spread out into their communities. I always come back with a new appreciation for the difficulty of being a landlord. We serve landlords year-round (our daily clients are tenants AND landlords!), but walking a newbie through nuances of an the course of an entire tenant-landlord relationship really demonstrates the level of skill it requires to be a careful landlord. Good landlords are hard to come by, and we meet a lot of great landlords at our seminars. So, today I'm taking on the landlord's perspective in a situation where a tenant has a long-term guest. Continue reading

When tenants come in to talk to us about non-renewals, it seems like one of those things, where everyone knows non-renewals are a possibility, where they are a recognized fact of rental life... but when it happens to you, when you get non-renewed, it feels kind of like a car wreck. Unexpected. Damaging.  I've written before about the amount of notice required for choosing not to renew a lease, but here we talk about the why. What reasons can a landlord use to choose not to renew a lease? What does it look like for those tenants? How can you respond if it happens to you? Continue reading

The kids and I drove around Wisconsin in a Spring Break Road Trip a couple weeks ago, and it's beautiful out there! We saw sandhill cranes all over, a fox skirting the highway, and cranberry bogs getting their season started. Springtime has pizzazz here in Wisconsin, where seasons always feel full force, whether cold or warm. We're getting a full load of springtime complaints, too, from around the state, and a lot of the concerns that clients are voicing to us are things that we've written about before, in other parts of this website. So, here's a roundup for tenants for lots of the common Spring issues. Continue reading