Today I called the Met Council hotline for advice on our landlady issue. The counselor confirmed that if the lease does not explicitly forbid (or even mention) pets, she has no grounds to evict us. He recommended we write her a letter explaining that we intend to stay and we are within our rights to do so. If we were willing to leave, he said “everything is negotiable.” Now it’s time to consider whether we just decide to stay and live with a cranky landlady, or make her an offer to leave. I’m thinking the broker’s fee plus moving expenses, plus a flexible move-out timeline would be fair.

The Met Council (a city-wide tenant’s union) hotline was great in terms of a user experience. No intake or detailed question list. No “wait for the next operator.” No phone tree. Just “(ring) Met Council. What’s the problem?” and “Here’s what I can tell you.” I’m probably going to go ahead and join for $25. Our problem turned out to be simple, but New York City probably has the most byzantine rental market in the country, so they deserve support.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 19th, 2005 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Politics, Personal, Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.