Landlord turns a tenant’s apartment into a 3-month-long renovation experiment, then raises rent because the unit is now considered upgraded

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  via Natalia Blauth

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• Landleech used my apartment like a test unit for months and now wants more rent for the "upgrades"

  
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• Landlords have discovered that the word upgraded is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the rental market right now. Slap some gray vinyl flooring over the old floor, swap out two light fixtures, paint over the trim, install a bathroom fan that sounds like a small aircraft, and suddenly you have a modernized unit that justifies a rent increase. The fact that someone was living inside the renovation the entire time is more of a logistical detail than a moral consideration.

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  via Sable Flow

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• The upgrades themselves are worth examining because they reveal a lot about who the renovation was actually for. Cheap gray flooring that goes over the existing floor rather than replacing it, bright overhead lighting that makes a living room feel clinical, a rattling bathroom fan. None of these things improve the experience of living in the apartment. They improve the photos of the apartment. The renovation was not for the tenant. It was for the next tenant, or the listing, or some vague sense of asset value that the landlord is now trying to convert into monthly income.

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  via TinkerBramble

• Getting handed a rent increase because your unit has been updated is one thing. Getting handed a rent increase because your unit was used as the practice run for a cheap renovation that you funded with your own inconvenience and also provided feedback on for free is a different thing entirely. It is the kind of situation that feels made up until you remember that this is just a very standard Tuesday in the rental market.

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  via Odile

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• The sink was in the hallway for four days. The rent still went up.

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