Is this Section 8 housing?
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Is this Section 8 housing?
I think it is unreasonable as well. But unless there is some law in the state where the OP lives that says otherwise she can sign a lease with a condition that you or I would find unreasonable. Because a court is going to assume that the OP felt the condition was reasonable when they signed the lease.
I'm going to suggest that because this is the cheapest place the OP has found to rent and because of the description of the cigarette butts/dog fecal matter outside that perhaps others tenants are not as careful as the OP in keeping their units clean. Thus the emphasis on focusing on minute details during monthly inspections.
As suggested, complaining about what might be found during these inspections isn't really a smart move until that new lease is signed. Otherwise there is nothing stopping management from simply failing to renew the current which appears to be due to end very soon.
Gail
It is not section 8 housing. But it is an income restricted property. You cannot make more than "x" amount of dollars per "x" amount of occupants to live here when you first qualify to move in. We will be here three years at March's lease renewal. As it turns out we now make above the income limit but that does not matter because that is only considered when you initially move in. We got our lease renewal letter before the end of the year and turned in all the paperwork and we are just waiting on an appointment to go sign the lease.
I will not lie. It IS unsightly clutter. But it is not garbage. There are no odors. There is not a pest control problem. In my opinion, it is not unsafe because it is in a dining room corner that has no doors or windows. What the clutter consists of is some larger pieces of children's toys or equipment such as a plastic art easel that belongs to our daughter, my son's walker, the highchair, and there is a desk and a table. Those have some extra food that cannot fit into our limited kitchen cabinet space such as unopened cereal boxes, some baby food containers, and at the time she was in here for inspection there were some strands of Christmas lights that had recently come down that we need to neatly box up and take to our storage unit. To be fair, this apartment is too small for us. It helps that we co-sleep, but our hope is to buy our own (three bedroom) place when we can afford to do so. Right now I am a full time student and a stay at home mom and my husband is the only income earner. There are other places we could move to but they are hundreds dollars more per month and that would not help with our desire to save to buy a house.
I remember last year she even made a remark about our Christmas tree, saying "I won't say anything about that because it will be coming down soon".
I believe it is the owners of the property that require these inspections. She is the second manager that has been here since we have moved in. The first manager never gave us problems. The monthly inspection is in the lease and we actually don't really have a problem with it. They bring in pest control and check our air filter and the smoke detectors to make sure they are working. What I do have a problem with is the micromanaging, nitpicking telling us where we have to place our stuff. If it were damaging the property or hurting anyone I would understand it. These are not luxury apartments and to be quite frank there are some weird people living here...like the young man and woman who hang out at the mailboxes every.single.day smoking for a couple of hours. They had a nice pile of cigarette butts accumulated under a bush next to the mail box shelter (which it meant to be lit but has only had working lights maybe one month out of the nearly three years we have lived here).
The manager herself is a chain smoker. More than half of the time when we drive up to our place we spot her on the office back porch having a smoke break. So yeah, I do wonder where she finds the time to get her work done. And when she comes into our place she smells like smoke to the point I can barely breathe around her and I certainly don't want that around my children.
I don't believe a landlord can put whatever language they want in a lease. It must pertain to what they have authority over like the wellbeing of their property. Picking up toys and where you store your cereal is not the landlord's concern.
Example: If there was language in a lease that allowed/required the landlord to choose what you wore each day, and you signed it, do you really think they could legally evict you in a courtroom over non-compliance? No way, and the same with the OP. Both cases would be laughed out of the courtroom IMO.
When a stupid person writes a lease and a naive person signs it, it isn't automatically binding.
I'm not saying it won't get dismissed by a judge but it would make it through preliminary hearings as there isn't a specific law against it.
With a lease clause such as we are discussing, I'd question the intelligence of both parties but stupid people are allowed to write themselves into a bind.
Common sense. A basic understanding of contract law. What is your experience makes you believe otherwise?
Although I will grant you this based on your wording of the issue. If by stupid and naive, you mean that one or both parties do not possess sufficient mental capacity to be considered capable of entering into a contract, that would not be a problem.