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!