INDIANAPOLIS — Each week, WRTV receives multiple calls, emails and messages from frustrated Indiana renters who are dealing with unhealthy and sometimes dangerous conditions that their landlords or apartment management will not fix.
Advocates and tenants will be at the statehouse pushing for more accountability. Mainly because in Indiana landlords have more rights than tenants.
"The ceiling in the kitchen has actually collapsed 3 times we are going on the 4th time,” Mahogany Mann a renter who has been dealing with uninhabitable conditions said.
“I've tried to be as proactive as I can and inform the maintenance team and the owners and they are just refusing to do anything about it.”
Mahogany Mann’s story isn't uncommon. She's one of many people WRTV has spoken to over the years dealing with unresolved maintenance issues. After the city and state got involved her apartment complex was recently sold to new management but she's still waiting on repairs.
"44 states allow tenants definitively via statute or case law from the highest court to withhold their rent and our habitability statute passed in 2002 did not allow tenants to that,” Jacob Purcell a researcher with the Indiana University school of law said.
Purcell spent 8 months researching rental policy in Indiana. He and his colleagues found that tenant rights in Indiana are few and far between.
"The state of Indiana take priority in landlords there are not very many tenant rights there are so many steps that we can take as individuals and as tenants, but it only goes so far,” Mann said.
Because of renters like Mann who have experienced poor living conditions with little to no results, researchers say Indiana lawmakers need to address this growing problem.
"Granting them the right to withhold rent trying to bolster anti retaliation protections,” Purcell said. “Our current anti retaliation statute for tenants it really lacks the necessary protections for tenants "
Anti-retaliation laws protect tenants if they report a landlord for improperly maintaining the property they are renting. Indiana currently doesn't have a code dedicated to that protection.
"When Indianapolis legal services has tried catalog the number of evictions that were retaliatory in nature it was like 20 out of 200," Purcell said.
The researchers say if something doesn't change those who will pay the most will be Hoosier taxpayers. Mainly because those that are most guilty of not fixing issues tenants bring to their attention are large corporate landlords.
"A lot of these expenses will continue both to Indiana taxpayers but also Indiana tenants,” Purcell said.
The researchers involved in the housing study say senate bill 202would address several issues facing renters in Indiana. Another amendment working through the statehouse would crack down on non-profit companies that have mis-managed rental properties. To read the full study clickhere.
