Is it legal for an apartment complex to start charging a mandatory fee for door-to-door garbage pickup?
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Is it legal for an apartment complex to start charging a mandatory fee for door-to-door garbage pickup?
We have been told we will be charged a $10 per month fee for a company to come once a week and pickup our garbage. There will be no garbage cans to put our bags or anything, we just put it outside of our building on the curb. We currently have a big trash compactor that everyone in the complex has to walk to and many people were upset with the walk. We happen to live right next to it, so we don’t want to pay $10 per month for someone to walk our garbage for 30 seconds for us. They have decided to add the fee to our utilities, not our rent, in order to avoid the problem of altering our lease.
Asked on November 22, 2011 under Real Estate Law, Ohio
Answers:
FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 12 years ago | Contributor
The best way to answer your question would be for you to carefully read your presumed written lease in that its terms and conditions control the obligations owed to you by the landlord and vice versa in the absence of conflicting state law. If the new garbage charge is not listed or if there is no mention that the charge can be increased unilaterally, the property manager cannot contractually charge you the increase.
I would write the property manager a letter setting forth your position requesting a written response. If you do not like the response to your letter, small claims might be an option just out of principle.
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