Leaseholds

Tenant allowed to keep emotional support dog

/ Fair Housing Act, Leaseholds

A tenant with AIDS and related illnesses won $25,000 in emotional distress damages from his landlord for refusing to make an exception to a no-pets policy to allow the tenant to live with his emotional support dog. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination made the award and ordered the landlord to allow the dog as a reasonable accommodation to his disability which included depression and anxiety. The landlord was also fined $5,000. read article

Banks charged with failing to maintain foreclosed properties

/ Leaseholds, Mortgages, Nuisance

When banks foreclose on property and then purchase the property at the foreclosure sale, they become the new owners of the property. They would like to resell the property as soon as possible. But in a recession, that is not always possible and when banks retain title to those foreclosed properties, they are subject to local law regulations to maintain the property and ensure that it does not become dilapidated. But many banks have been failing in that regard. They are in the business of financing the sale of property not in managing it. That has prompted the City of Boston to impose more than $80,000 in fines on Wells Fargo & Co and Bank of America for allowing many vacant properties in their possession ‘to fall into disrepair and blight neighborhoods.” Megan Woolhouse, Banks high on list of delinquent property owners, Boston Globe, Apr. 15, 2011. Bank officials deny they own some …

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New Massachusetts law protects rent-paying tenants from being evicted from foreclosed property

/ Leaseholds, Mortgages

Assuming Governor Deval Patrick signs the law, the Massachusetts legislature just passed a statute called “An Act to Stabilize Neighborhoods” that protects tenants from being evicted from property after foreclosure as long as they are paying the rent. Tenants can be evicted if the property is being sold to a third party, but if the lender buys the property at foreclosure, it must continue renting to the tenant–and complying the landlord’s obligations under state law to provide habitable housing. The law also requires lenders to have at least one meeting with the defaulting borrower to try to work in good faith to negotiate a new arrangement; this must happen before the bank forecloses on the property. If the lender does not do this, it must wait an extra two months before beginning foreclosure proceedings.  The bill also criminalizes mortgage fraud. read article

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