Unrepentant Tenant: Is your lease fair?

Publisher, Fran Zankowski Circulation Manager, Cal Winn

EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief, Caitlin Rockett Arts & Culture Editor, Jezy J. Gray General Assignment Reporter, Will Matuska Food Editor, John Lehndorff Intern, Chad Robert Peterson

Contributing Writers: Dave Anderson, Emma Athena, Will Brendza, Rob Brezsny, Michael J. Casey, Angela K. Evans, Mark Fearer, Kaylee Harter, Nick Hutchinson, Dave Kirby, Ari LeVaux, Adam Perry, Dan Savage, Bart Schaneman, Alan Sculley, Toni Tresca, Gregory Wakeman, Colin Wrenn

SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager,

Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Carter Ferryman, Chris Allred Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar

PRODUCTION

Art Director, Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman

CIRCULATION TEAM

Sue Butcher, Ken Rott, Chris Bauer

BUSINESS OFFICE

Bookkeeper, Emily Weinberg

Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer

Nov. 17, 2022

Volume XXX, number 14

Cover photo, History Colorado

As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism, and thought-provoking opinion writing. Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper.

690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com

Boulder Weekly is published every Thursday. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. © 2022 Boulder Weekly, Inc., all rights reserved.

Boulder Weekly

welcomes your correspondence via email (letters@boulderweekly.com). Preference will be given to short letters (under 300 words) that deal with recent stories or local issues, and letters may be edited for style, length and libel. Letters should include your name, address and telephone number for verifcation. We do not publish anonymous letters or those signed with pseudonyms. Letters become the property of Boulder Weekly and will be published on our website.

Is your lease fair, and what’s the alternative?

by Mark Fearer

In my June 30 column ( e Unrepentant Tenant, “Interest on deposits and repairs for tenants”), I was skipping through the issues the Boulder Tenants Union (BTU) raised in 1982, namely trying to get interest on deposits, and warranty of habitability (something I went into much more detail in my Sept. 8 column). Neither was attained that year, but would gain traction later.

Now I want to return to an issue I mentioned in my June 2 column, a petition BTU started calling for a fair standardized lease in 1980. First some context, that requires my standard disclaimer: I’m not an attorney, and none of what I write is legal advice.

Leases/rental agreements are generally accepted as binding legal contracts, and as such, parties to any contract should have the right to negotiate. In home sales, both seller and buyer are seen as equal, and usually have an attorney and/or realtor negotiate between them. No such equality exists between landlord and tenant — especially in a tight housing market, which is perpetually the state of Boulder’s (and most of the Front Range’s) housing market. Landlords would likely smother a chuckle if tenants asked to negotiate such terms as the rent, fees, deposits, duration or rules. eir attitude is generally “sign our lease as it is, or live somewhere else.”

When I counseled many tenants during the rst half of the 1980s for BTU, one issue they would raise would be about leases they were required to sign (or had already signed, to their regret). It was often full of legalese,

and written to the advantage of the landlord. While the vast majority of leases are created/approved by attorneys hired by landlords, it is rare for a tenant to run a lease by a lawyer before signing. And even if they did, and were empowered enough to try and negotiate the worst parts, see my smothered chuckle observation.

On one end of the spectrum, rental agreements ranged from handwritten one-page (or less) notebook paper, to generic leases used by small landlords bought in o ce supply stores (that were not even speci c to Colorado). On the other end of that spectrum were complex six-page (or more) documents drafted by corporate lawyers for property management companies. is is still the case, underscoring the wide variety and complexity of these kinds of contracts.

Additionally, since many leases were written for the advantage of the landlord, there might well be illegal and/or unenforceable clauses in them. For example, the lease might state that tenants are nancially responsible for all repairs regardless of cause (including landlord negligence); cleaning fees charged regardless of how clean it was on move out; or agreeing to waive legal rights or notice. Courts would generally not enforce these kinds of clauses, but since tenants don’t know that, they felt they had no recourse.

While landlords have reasonable expectations and concerns about renting out their units, their leases may not re ect that reasonability. BTU believed tenants shouldn’t be coerced into signing unreasonable leases, and started a petition that would require Boulder’s City Council to create a standardized lease that was fair to both parties. Again, my June 2 column gives more history, and a link to the 1982 outcome of that e ort, the Boulder model lease.

But there were other leasing issues that needed to be addressed.

While most landlords required a tenant sign a lease, some landlords didn’t. Where there was only an oral agreement or handshake, some landlords would claim the tenant broke a rule, even though there was nothing in writing. And landlords would sometimes refuse to give a written lease.

So BTU brought the issue to Boulder’s Human Relations Committee (HRC), which is where City Council dumped referred tenant issues. HRC recommended City Council pass the BTU-sponsored proposal to require written leases for any occupancy that would be more than 30 days, and a copy of that lease be given to the tenant within seven to 10 days. Although landlords opposed such a common sense proposal, City Council nally passed it in 1983. Boulder likely has the only such ordinance requiring that — it is not a state law.

is opinion column does not necessarily re ect the views of Boulder Weekly.