Table of Contents

• Steps You Can Take to Try to Resolve Housing Problems
• Working with Attorneys – Best Practices
• Tips & Best Practices When Advocating for Yourself with a Housing Provider
• Advocating for Yourself in Court

Steps You Can Take to Try to Resolve Housing Problems

Step 1: Find Out Information About Your Rights

When you know what your rights are, you will feel more comfortable advocating for yourself and educating your housing provider about your rights. You can also find out whether you have strong legal protections in your situation. Some good places to find information about your rights include local tenants’ unions, local legal aid agencies, government or court websites, and community organizing groups.

DRC’s website may even have information on the specific issue you are facing. You can find our publications on housing law on our Housing/Homelessness resources website.

Step 2: Figure Out What Your Goals Are

If you are having a problem with your housing, first think about how you would like the problem to be fixed (your goal). Once you know your goal, then you can come up with an action plan to try to meet your goal.

Sometimes clients say their goal is to file a lawsuit, but filing a lawsuit alone is not a goal. A lawsuit is a legal tool to attempt to reach a goal, but it is possible that you may lose your lawsuit and filing a lawsuit may not actually fix your housing problem. Instead, ask what outcome could fix your housing problem (that is, what will meet your goal) and then find out if a lawsuit is the best tool to get to that goal.

Below are 3 different legal action plans based on different tenant goals:

These examples show that once you know your goal, you can take actions to try to meet your goal.

Step 3: Ask for What You Need and Follow Up

Don’t be shy about asking for what you need or letting your housing provider know about your housing problems. Until your housing provider knows about a problem, they may not legally be required to fix it. When you let your housing provider know about the problem, that may start the housing provider’s legal duty to try to fix the problem. That being said, it is good to consider how your housing provider may respond to you. Although retaliation is illegal, it still happens. To learn more about retaliation, please see this publication: Retaliation by your Landlord: Know Your Housing Rights.

Whenever you are talking about your housing contract (lease) with your housing provider, it is a good idea to follow up in writing and to keep your own records of your communications. You can write your housing provider a letter that confirms you had a conversation, explains what you discussed during that conversation, and explains what you understand the next steps will be based on your conversation. You may also write down detailed notes to keep your own record of what you discussed.

Working with Attorneys – Best Practices

Role of an attorney/legal advocate

While attorneys can go over common goals with you, the attorney’s job is not to decide what you want or what is best for you. The attorney’s job is to first learn from you what your goals are along with relevant information about what has happened, and then based on this information, attorneys can suggest possible strategies and steps for you to take to try to reach your goals. Attorneys can go over the benefits and risks of different action plans with you. It is then the client’s job to decide how they want to move forward based on the attorney’s advice and guidance.

Attorneys cannot promise results. Attorneys can only advise you on steps they think would be useful in trying to meet your goals. If you take an action, the situation could get better, worse, or stay the same. Nobody can guarantee that a particular course of action will result in a particular outcome, but attorneys may be able to advise you as to whether a particular course of action will likely help you to reach your goals.

Services offered by attorneys/legal advocates

Attorneys may offer different levels or types of services. For example, some attorneys will represent you to sue landlords in court, some will only help prepare demand letters to landlords, and some will only provide you with legal advice. If you are looking for an attorney to represent you in court, you will need to find an attorney that agrees to provide that level of service for you.

Most lawsuits take a lot of time, resources, and careful preparation. Because of this, attorneys cannot take on a lot of cases at this high level of service. But not every situation requires a lawsuit to fix a problem. There are many other legal tools that can be used to fix problems, including self-advocacy. DRC provides free legal advice on many types of problems so clients can get advice on what steps they can take to try to meet their individual goals.

Active participation from the client is needed

Even when attorneys file lawsuits on behalf of clients, attorneys still need a lot of participation from clients during the entire representation. Clients don’t just hand over legal problems to attorneys. Attorneys need authorization from clients and information from clients throughout their representation.

Additionally, attorneys cannot know what your housing provider is thinking or doing. They may be able to make an educated guess, but without specific information this guess may be incorrect. Attorneys will be able to give you better advice if they have specific information about the situation and your goals from you. This is why attorneys need to ask you questions about your legal problem.

When attorneys ask you specific questions, you should always answer those specific questions directly and honestly. Be mindful about giving long explanations about information that may not be relevant to the question asked. This makes the conversation less efficient for both the client and the attorney and may make it more difficult for the attorney to give the best legal advice possible. Often legal analysis can change based on small pieces of information, so at times attorneys need to have certain questions answered before others. It is helpful when clients simply answer their questions so their legal analysis can continue.

Clients and potential clients can feel comfortable being honest with attorneys and their staff because these conversations are confidential. There are very limited situations where attorneys can be legally required to share confidential information, but as a general rule, attorneys and all staff who work for them have a duty to keep your information secret.

Tips & Best Practices When Advocating for Yourself with a Housing Provider

Avoid Hostile or Confrontational Interactions

Just because there is a disagreement does not mean the situation has to be hostile. Language that is aggressive or blames the other party can be unhelpful because:

1. This might be the first time your housing provider is learning about the issue, and they may be less willing to communicate with you if they feel threatened;
2. You’re in a long-term business relationship with your housing provider and will have to interact with them again in the future;
3. If you go to court in the future, the court will likely see or hear about your communications with the landlord. Judges and juries prefer polite and neutral language and may be more likely to agree with you if you avoid hostile language; and
4. You might accidentally reveal too much or information that is harmful to you in the heat of an argument.

Communicate in Writing

If you write to your housing provider, it may be easier for them to remember what you said than a verbal conversation. Writing things down allows you time to explain everything the way you want to explain it and can help avoid misunderstandings. Writing a letter to your housing provider might help them to understand that you are serious about your request. You may not need to go through all the difficulties of a lawsuit; you might just need to get your landlord’s attention. Importantly, if you do end up going to court, then you can use your letters as proof that you told your housing provider about a problem. Because a court could end up seeing these letters, it is important that you avoid aggressive or threatening language for all the reasons listed in the previous section. These letters should stick to the facts and be as clear as possible as to what the problem is and how you would like it to be resolved.

If you do end up having a verbal conversation with your housing provider about an issue, you can write your housing provider a letter afterwards that confirms you had a conversation, explains what you discussed during that conversation, and explains what each side is responsible for doing next based on the conversation. This is called a confirming letter. Sending a confirming letter by email, regular mail, or hand-delivery can help each person to remember and understand their responsibilities and can be used as proof in the future if you need to show what your agreement was. Save copies of your confirming letters. If you hand-deliver a letter, you can request that your housing provider sign and date your duplicate copy so that you can show proof your housing provider received it.

Taking notes about these details as soon as they happen can help you to keep clear records in case you need to take further legal action later and can prevent you from forgetting important details over time. You also can review your notes to see if patterns are developing or problems are getting better or worse over time.

Another reason to take notes immediately is to protect yourself in the future. Legal problems often take a long time to resolve, and tenants must prove their case with evidence if they are in court. There are no “disability rights police” that can come and fix problems right on the spot. There may be many ways to approach your legal problem, but if you end up needing to enforce your rights in court, it could take years to reach a result. For example, today you might remember all the details about what the maintenance worker did last week, but you might not remember a year from now who did or said something, or when it happened. Also, if your housing provider accuses you of something in the future, you may be able to use notes you take today to defend yourself.

Save important records about your tenancy, such as:

1. Paper or electronic notices from your landlord
2. Rent receipts and other proof of your payments
3. Your initial walk-through inspection
4. Your lease - if you signed a lease but don’t have a copy of your lease, request it. You have a right to a copy of your lease.
5. Photos of apartment conditions when you start your tenancy, photos of any problems with your unit during your tenancy, and photos of the unit after you have moved your belongings out.

Review How to Rent an Apartment Part 1: Finding a Suitable Unit for more tips on how to protect yourself before moving into a rental property.

Ask Questions

If you don’t understand why your housing provider is doing something or what they mean, ask questions. You don’t need to know everything; you just need to understand what your housing provider is saying so you can decide how to respond. Also, if you need more time to respond to your housing provider’s questions, you can ask for more time. Here are some examples showing the benefits of asking your housing provider questions:

Advocating for Yourself in Court

When you cannot reach an agreement with the other side, you can use the court system to try to enforce your legal rights. Review the information below for tips about how you can advocate for yourself in court.

Ask for What you Need in Order to Participate in or Access the Court

For example, if you need reasonable accommodations that are not obvious or need an interpreter to understand what is happening in the courtroom, then you must ask for them. It is not the judge or jury’s job to make sure your disability-related needs are met in court if you haven’t made a request. You’ll need to ask if you need something, but it is important to keep in mind how to communicate with the court staff. Please see tips for communicating in court from our other publications:

Checking Into and Speaking in Court - Courtroom Culture

Courtroom Basics

The judge says she’s going to postpone your case to July 30th, but you have a surgery on that date that was very hard to schedule with your medical provider.

Use Evidence to Prove Your Case

In court judges or juries review both sides’ evidence to decide if someone is legally responsible for a problem. It is not the judge or jury’s job to investigate your case nor to tell you what you’re supposed to do in court. The judge and jury observe both you and the other side while you each try to explain what happened. Then they decide who they believe.

Collect and organize all the evidence you can to help the judge or jury to believe you instead of the other side. Evidence can include witnesses speaking in court after swearing an oath to tell the truth (called “testimony”). You can also testify in your own case to provide evidence. However, keep in mind that the other side will get to ask you questions as well. Evidence can also include documents, physical items, photographs, and other aids.

You also need to have enough evidence to meet your burden(s) of proof. “Burdens of proof” are the legal standards judges and juries use to weigh who should win the legal case. For example, a burden of proof in criminal cases often heard on television is “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Housing cases are not criminal cases; they are civil cases. In most civil cases, the standard of proof is a “preponderance of the evidence.” This means that to prove a claim, the jury or judge must decide that your version of the story is more likely true than not true, or in other words, that there is a 51% or more chance of a claim being true.

Before court, review your notes, memories, documents, or other information about what happened so you can focus the judge or jury’s attention on facts that prove your claims or defenses.

Communicate Clearly and Focus on Relevant Details

When you are in court, if you can, speak loudly and clearly. Also, include relevant, truthful details when you are speaking because it will make you sound more believable to the judge or jury.

The key is relevant and truthful details. In the example above, it likely is not relevant what color nail polish your landlord had on, if it was cloudy outside, or what you were doing when your landlord knocked on the door. Too many details can cause the jury or judge to be distracted from what you are trying to prove.