The Landlord Reporting and Rent Debt Tool

We launched the Landlord Reporting and Rent Debt Tool in order to fight back against rent debts, and help tenants and debtors organize to abolish them. The tool will ask you a series of questions about landlord business practices that may be deceptive, abusive, and potentially unlawful, which may be responsible for inflating your rental balance or harming you as a tenant.

If you have rent debt, you can use the tool to generate letters you can send to collections agencies, credit bureaus, and regulatory agencies, as part of your debt dispute process. If thousands of people dispute their debts, and inform regulators of these disputes, it will raise the cost of collecting these debts. For more information on the debt dispute process click here.

More importantly, we developed this tool to bring debtors together and organize collectively to challenge the terms of our indebtedness. The debt dispute process is not set up to resolve the problems most debtors face, which demand that we organize together for a political solution.

We are currently organizing with tenants, former tenants, and rent debtors of Equity Residential (EQR), one of the county’s largest landlords, to win debt cancellation and build tenant power. If you are an EQR tenant or former tenant and want to get in touch visit eqrdtu.org to learn more about our campaign.

If you do not have rent debt, and are not a current or former EQR tenant, we still want to hear from you! While in the immediate term we are only organizing EQR tenants and debtors, our long term ambitions for this campaign are much broader.

Who should use this tool?

  • Current and former tenants of Equity Residential.

  • Anyone who owes rent debt to their current or former landlord.

  • Tenants and former tenants of other landlords, particularly corporate landlords, who want a written account of their practices.

What is Rent Debt?

If you owe unpaid rent to your landlord, you’re in the right place! Did you know that tenants across the country owe over 10 billion dollars in rent debt? Over 5 million households across the United States are behind on rent. That’s right! If you owe back rent, you are not alone! As tenants we are stronger if we respond to this situation together.

Some information about your rights as a rent debtor

  1. Collections Protection: Debt collectors - including your landlord or your landlord’s lawyer - can’t use unfair or deceptive practices to try and collect a debt. This means if a debt collector harasses you or makes false or misleading statements to collect rental debt, they may be breaking federal law. If you believe that a debt collector or your landlord or their lawyer is using an unfair practice when collecting a debt, you can submit a federal complaint or call (855) 411-2372. You can also file a California state complaint if your tenancy was in California. You can and should always demand verification of and dispute your debts if you believe they were caused or inflated by unfair practices. Use the Landlord Reporting and Rent Debt Tool to easily generate dispute letters which you can upload to your collection agency’s online portal, or mail to them directly. While this tool helps you assemble documents, we do not mail or upload these letters for you, as you may not yet have been contacted by collectors or otherwise want to use them on your own timeline. For more detailed information on the debt dispute process click here.

  2. Credit Reporting: If your debt has been sold or assigned to a debt collector, it might appear on your credit reports. You can check your credit reports for free once per week at www.annualcreditreport.com. If you believe the reporting is inaccurate, you can dispute it. There are also special credit reports for tenant issues, called tenant screening reports. The same credit reporting rules apply to these, too. If you are denied for an apartment due to a past eviction or rental debt, the landlord who denied you should give you a statement in writing telling you what report they looked at and how you can get a copy. You can check to make sure the information in that report is accurate, and dispute it if necessary and report unaddressed issues to the FTC, or to the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation.

  3. Sealed Cases: If your eviction case is sealed, or your debt is otherwise a result of a sealed legal proceeding, credit bureaus should not place this information on your report, and collectors and creditors should not be sharing this information with credit bureaus or tenant screening companies.

  4. Small Claims: Is your landlord or your landlord’s lawyer trying to take you to small claims court for your rent debt? The procedures for defending yourself — and the possible legal defenses that might apply — can vary based on where you are. Here are some resources made for Californians, but they include defenses that may apply more broadly. Using the Landlord Reporting and Rent Debt Dispute Tool can help you document some of your claims.

  5. Getting Organized: Tenants and debtors are always stronger when we fight together. Do you know other tenants who might owe this same landlord money? Definitely worth knocking on their door or putting a call out on social media. Definitely send them to our Landlord Reporting and Rent Debt Tool too! You can learn from one another, support one another, and even potentially try to bargain together. (Veritas Tenants did it!) Or, is there a tenants union near you? If so, reach out! Join a meeting! If not, here are some great resources from the Los Angeles Tenants Union that can help you get one started near you! If you are a current or former tenant of Equity Residential (EQR) visit EQRDTU.org to learn more about our organizing and to get in touch with the campaign.

I need help with the tool or understanding how to dispute my debt

No problem! You can email alex@debtcollective.org with questions.