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Every Tenant's Legal Guide
The essential all-in-one book for anyone paying rent! Every Tenant's Legal Guide gives you the legal and practical information you need to deal with your landlord and other tenants, and protect your rights when things go wrong. Written in plain English, it shows you how to inspect a place before you move in, negotiate a lease or rental agreement, put roommate relationships on a sound legal footing, understand key rules on rent increases and rent control, get needed repairs and maintenance, protect your privacy, fight illegal discrimination, break a lease with minimum financial liability, get your security deposit back and understand and prepare for eviction proceedings. The updated 5th edition of Every Tenant's Legal Guide comes complete with tear-out forms, as well as charts that help you find and understand the latest laws of your state.
464 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 1999
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 3, 2025
In many ways this guide expects a “perfect” tenant and offers them little in return. I don’t think it ever really gets to the inherent power imbalance of tenancy in the US, and it’s maybe silly to expect it to. I guess it’s telling that the author also wrote the counterpart legal guide for landlords. Just really would’ve liked for it to be more punk.
TLDR the answer to pretty much everything is: check your lease and your state’s housing statute. Try to resolve with strongly worded letters to your landlord, and if that doesn’t work, complain to a regulatory body, and if that doesn’t work, try mediation, and if that doesn’t work, go to small claims court.
Most states’ tenant protections are pretty weak (including VA’s) so I’m skeptical that there’s any real legal option that protects tenants at an individual scale. Organized tenant unions are where it’s at, I fear.
This book DOES make me wanna read some residential building codes and some of my friends leases… I also wonder if certain parts of this book may be outdated considering that the the American rental market has increasingly become and algorithmic cartel largely controlled by private equity in recent years. Just a thought…
TLDR the answer to pretty much everything is: check your lease and your state’s housing statute. Try to resolve with strongly worded letters to your landlord, and if that doesn’t work, complain to a regulatory body, and if that doesn’t work, try mediation, and if that doesn’t work, go to small claims court.
Most states’ tenant protections are pretty weak (including VA’s) so I’m skeptical that there’s any real legal option that protects tenants at an individual scale. Organized tenant unions are where it’s at, I fear.
This book DOES make me wanna read some residential building codes and some of my friends leases… I also wonder if certain parts of this book may be outdated considering that the the American rental market has increasingly become and algorithmic cartel largely controlled by private equity in recent years. Just a thought…
Displaying 1 of 1 review