Welcome to the Richmond Tenants’ Defense Council news page! While we have been busy organizing for much of the past year, we are only now getting around to posting about some of our actions. Our goal for this page is to keep you informed about recent developments in our campaigns. We also plan to post news stories about issues affecting tenants here in Virginia and elsewhere across the US.
Here is some quick background on one of our campaigns.
On Friday, August 16, 2019, RTDC issued a certified mail letter to a local property management company with a well-documented history of serious maintenance issues and tenants rights violations. We received a response from the company that was postmarked on the final day of the deadline we set. In their response, the property management company effectively denied any knowledge or responsibility for the issues cited in our letter. However, they did send a maintenance person shortly afterwards to fix one of the problems we raised. After nearly six months and multiple complaints from individual tenants, the second floor of the apartment building has lights in its hallways again!
We are happy to claim this as a partial victory, but there are more serious complaints in our letter that still need to be addressed. After a series of conversations, we have decided to continue the campaign until the property manager and owner address their unreasonable and excessive towing policies.
There is no reason tenants should have to worry about whether their in-home health aides will be towed while they are providing necessary medical services. Moreover, it is completely unacceptable that tenants should feel anxious to invite their friends and family to visit for a few hours. These are working peoples’ homes!
Many apartments with dedicated parking areas in the city restrict towing to specific hours and issue at least one short-term guest parking hang tag to their tenants. This is an easy solution that could be cheaply implemented, so it’s even more shameful that we have to fight so hard for them. But here we are…
We will post more updates on this campaign as they happen. Stay tuned for more!