Renters & Healthy Housing

The spaces we live in can impact our ability to learn and grow properly. Housing can be a contributing factor to health issues like asthma, allergies, lead exposure and other chronic illnesses. Poor housing conditions, chipping and peeling paint, pest infestations and holes in walls can be detrimental to health. WHE educates individuals about environmental risks and provides tools, resources and action steps tenants can take to ensure safe and healthy rental housing while helping create healthy spaces for families to live, learn, grow and play together.

Renters Guide to Healthy Housing

What every tenant needs to know about their rights to habitability.

Understanding Tenant’s Right to a Habitable Home

As a tenant, you are entitled to live in an environment both safe and habitable. It is important to understand what your rights are and how you can work with your landlord to maintain a healthy and safe space. The implied warranty of habitability applies in all cases where someone is renting a place to live — whether a house, apartment, mobile home or lot in a mobile home park. It applies whether you have a written lease or an oral agreement with a landlord. The warranty is so important, it is in effect whether or not you and the landlord have specifically agreed to it. It cannot be given up (waived).

Under State Law

A landlord must make repairs necessary to keep your home in a safe, sanitary and healthy condition, provided you as a tenant did not cause the problem and provided you are current on your rent when the problem(s) develop.

This includes only serious defects such as:

Leaking roof
Dangerous wiring
Broken floor
Lack of water
Infestations

If the landlord does not make repairs, the tenant has the right to repair and deduct the cost of repair from future payments to the landlord.

How to Assert Your Right to a Habitable Home

How to Assert Your Right to a Habitable Home Try to work the problem out with your landlord in a way that’s fair to both of you. If that doesn’t work, then you should:

Step 1

Tell the landlord about the problem. Tell your landlord, in writing, what the problem is and what you plan to do about it. Keep a copy of the letter to prove that the landlord was notified. Your letter should describe the problem(s), ask the landlord to fix it, and say what you will do if it is not fixed within a reasonable time.

Step 2

Allow your landlord time to repair. The law gives your landlord a reasonable amount of time to make the repairs. The amount of time depends on the seriousness of the defect. The more serious the problem, the sooner it should be fixed. Emergencies such as lack of heat in winter should be fixed very promptly.

Step 3

Collect evidence to show that the landlord did not make repairs. You want to be able to show the judge what the problem was, that you gave the landlord notice, and that the problem was not fixed within a reasonable time. A copy of the letter sent to the landlord can be used as evidence, so can pictures, witnesses, or the report of a housing code inspector. If repairs are needed, it is also helpful to get a contractor, plumber, or electrician to give you an estimate to repair the problem(s), if possible.