We are campaigning for renter's rights.

Are you against valet garbage and the mandatory junk fees charged by landlords? This Action Network letter campaign is to urge political representatives at the state and federal levels to consider legal code enforcement to protect renters from valet garbage service fees and other junk fees being made mandatory by landlords across the U.S.

For those of you not familiar, valet garbage services are a third-party provider hired by landlords to courier garbage from outside the tenant's door to the garbage chutes or containers at certain times of the day and under certain conditions. In essence, they are hired to manage the flow of garbage in the communal regions of the property. It is the residents who are charged a mandatory utilities fee to supply this service. And they are charged in excess of the cost of the valet garbage service charged to the landlord.

Our letter campaign presents 5 major arguments against valet garbage junk fees in apartment communities.

1. Valet garbage junk fees forcibly monetize our trash.
2. Landlords bill tenants a utilities "service fee" which we cannot opt out of, even if we perform the service ourselves.
3. Landlords are charging tenants in excess of the valet service third-party contracts, thereby profiting from the mandated service.
4. Tenants’ garbage left for hours at a time within hallways and breezeways creates serious public health and safety concerns.
5. Landlords are charging residents á la carte services to maintain the communal premises. 

Our landlord has hired a third-party valet garbage removal service and is charging a mandatory fee that tenants cannot opt out of. Our concerns are not only the $300-400 minimum increase in our yearly housing rates and how they were instituted, but also the public health safety and sanitation of our apartment community considering garbage will line resident hallways on a regular basis.  

Housing Code as it stands, does not support enforcement restricting landlords from ultimately charging the additional amount to transfer our garbage from our unit door to the communal trash area, even if we want to opt out of the program and perform the disposal on our own.

Landlords profit from these fees by charging the resident in excess of the actual fees billed by the third party provider. We argue this business model monetizes our trash. These mandatory service fees collected from tenants will be used to increase net operating income (NOI) and property values for the landlords, as was the reported business model in Property Manager Insider (May 2021, “What to expect when adding valet trash service at an apartment complex”, Section: Increased Net Operating Income). 

Valet garbage has set dangerous precedents in the housing provider industry because landlords are exploiting their responsibilities to maintain the communal premises. The lack of specificity and rental protections in the law opens the door for landlords to impose junk fees, beyond rental rates, for other operating expenses such as cleaning, pest control, landscaping, and more! When landlords bill tenants for operating expenses on top of rental rates, they receive an immediate bump in rental income without reporting an increase in rental rates. This creates false data points in the market as well as a more rapid increase in housing rates. 

Shockingly, there is currently no government regulatory “watchdog” to offer protection for tenants. No one monitors the unfair business practices of these private equity, property management firms. This is especially concerning because of what is coming to light in the RealPage® Antitrust lawsuits. According to a recent publication series in ProPublica, the complainants in the lawsuit argue property management defendants are involved in a price-fixing scheme which uses a revenue management software program called RealPage® by Yieldstar®, to unlawfully coordinate pricing and vacancy. As lawyers build the case against the defendants, they are having difficulty finding tenants to qualify for the lawsuit. The reason being many tenants sign away their rights to bring or join any purported class-action lawsuits when they agree to their lease terms. Which means tenants may not have any rights as a collective group to stand against these property management firms and their junk fees. Does that seem fair to you? 

This is a serious matter. This irresponsible use of junk fees in the rental industry works against fair housing markets. We humbly request a special review session to discuss residents' concerns about junk fees in the rental industry, to include but not limited to, valet garbage fees. Renters are a vulnerable and growing group who require protections from unsavory business practices that are rapidly invading the market. Property management industry needs regulation and tenants need protections.