Editor's Note: This is the second in a series of articles about local landlords who have escaped legal scrutiny of their questionable tactics.
Yet another local real estate company has broken tenants' rights laws by renting dangerously substandard housing to students, withholding security deposits and failing to adequately explain exorbitant damage charges, according to several students who have recently rented apartments from J&R Properties Unlimited.
Students say that both company employees and its owner, Jerry Rich of Manchester, are deceitful and impossible to contact, complaints that come in the wake of strikingly similar revelations about two Hanover real estate companies owned by local orthodontist Fred "Dr. Sal" Salvatoriello.
While some students who rented from J&R describe what they considered run-of-the-mill tenant frustrations, many pointed to questionable and sometimes illegal behavior that underscores the town of Hanover's general ineffectiveness at ensuring fair rental practices.
Representatives from J&R maintain that they run an honest operation, deal promptly with maintenance requests and do not charge tenants unless they caused the damage, said property manager Steve Landon. Of the approximately 100 Hanover apartments J&R rents to students, Rich owns only a few himself; the rest J&R manages for their owners, Landon said.
The students with the most serious complaints had rented properties owned by William Drake of White River Junction, Vt. and Barbara Grossman of Sharon, Mass., neither of whom could be reached for comment.
Nevertheless, Rich remains the ultimate authority for all complaints about billing matters. Getting in touch with him directly is virtually impossible without physically driving to the company office in Lebanon, students said, especially since his home number is unlisted.
Rich did not return phone messages left for him by The Dartmouth over two days.
Several students, including Connor Price '02 and Heather Kofke-Egger '02, who subleased 8 Summer Street from Price in the summer of 2001, said that J&R rented them properties with unstable internal and external framework that not only posed a major safety hazard but violated state laws.
Ryan Sinclair '02 rented another Summer St. apartment from J&R between 1999 and 2001. He said J&R confiscated his private property and later withheld most of his $900 security deposit for what he said were vastly inflated cleaning service bills.
Julia Pinover '02, Joel Schudson '02 and Mary Cipollone '02 have yet to receive their $2,250 security deposit from J&R. The company also charged them $900 for cleaning that was never performed.
Pinover and Cipollone currently live at 16 West Wheelock Street for which J&R had them sign an outdated lease but held them to the standards of a newer, revised contract.
Jill Garrido '02, who rented the house before Pinover and Cipollone, said that J&R charged her for plumbing that was broken when she arrived, a clear violation of state law. Garrido and Schudman said that J&R prematurely posted eviction notices on their doors, claiming they had defaulted on rent that they had in fact paid.
As is the case for Salvatoriello's questionably legal actions, town and College authorities have little jurisdiction over the company's actions. Tenants' rights laws for returning security deposits and maintaining minimum standards of building upkeep and cleanliness are covered under state law, and Hanover has no code or formal inspection of rental properties.
Having seen numerous health and safety hazards in rental properties in recent years, Hanover officials plan to institute a rental housing inspection program by summer 2003. The town officials added that by delaying plans to build new dorms, Dartmouth may be forcing students into limited and often substandard off-campus housing.
Many students still choose to rent off-campus despite the less-than-stellar reputation of Hanover landlords. Pinover and Cipollone -- after having their security deposit withheld by J&R in their senior fall -- decided to rent another J&R property for the following year.
While Cippollone, Pinover and Schudson were living in 75 Lebanon Street from Sept. 2000 until June 2001, they shivered for over a week while J&R, in violation of state law, delayed fixing their broken heating system.
At another point, a rusted bathroom mirror fell off the wall onto Cipollone and cut her.
Landon said that J&R "does its best" to fix all problems as quickly as possible.
Over the summer of 2001, Cipollone, Pinover and Schudson sublet the property to sophomores who were in Hanover for Summer term. Upon moving out, J&R billed the three leaseholders for the mess they left. However, the subletters cleaned the house themselves -- J&R put in neither the time nor the labor, but still charged for it.
With the help of Pinover's father, an attorney, the three sent a threatening letter demanding invoices from the cleaning company.
"After that," Pinover said, "J&R 'magically' reduced the bill."
When the lease expired in Sept. 2001, Cipollone, Pinover and Schudson received no explanation of why J&R was withholding their security deposit and charging them an additional $150 in damages.
Under N.H. state law, landlords must return security deposits within 30 days of the termination of the lease, or provide the renter with both an itemized bill explaining the deductions and with concrete evidence that the repairs have been made.
Most rental leases require tenants to pay a security deposit of one month's rent in case the tenant defaults on rent or causes damages to the property.
When Schudson met with Jerry Rich to go over the specific charges, he found J&R's billing system convoluted and deliberately deceptive.
When he questioned a $150 charge for repairs on windows that still had not been repaired, Rich told him that the company bases such charges on estimates, not on actual hours of labor or cost of materials.
Schudson recalled Rich saying, "This is what we do -- we estimate what we think it's going to cost and then we charge you that estimate."
Landon said this is necessary since the company cannot always fix all damages within 30 days. Anytime J&R overestimates the actual costs, he said they return the overcharged amount to the tenant.
Schudson added that the rent money he and his roommates sent in never went towards paying actual rent, since J&R used the money to cover any outstanding repairs.
Without explanation of these charges, the students would then receive notices informing them that they owed rent, when in fact the rent had been paid. Jill Garrido '02 had a similar experience.
Landon said that all rent money goes towards paying rent, not towards damage charges. He added that it is rare to charge tenants for damages while they are still living in the apartment. "I don't think we do that here," he said.
But students insist J&R does just that.
In September, Pinover and Cipollone signed a lease for a new apartment, this time for an apartment at 16 West Wheelock Street. They read the lease carefully beforehand to make sure they would be allowed to have their dog, North, in the apartment.
J&R later insisted that according to the lease, dogs were not allowed and threatened to evict the girls if they did not get rid of him within 30 days.
When Pinover and Cipollone produced the original lease they signed, J&R said the company had mistakenly had them sign an old lease, but that the girls would be held to the terms of the new one anyway.
"It was so sad," Cipollone said. "We had to get rid of North."
J&R also withheld part of Price's $900 security deposit without explanation, and only sent an itemized bill after several weeks of requests. The bill charged a blanket fee of $35 per hour for all maintenance work, regardless of the extent or nature of damage.
Other students confirmed that J&R has its own maintenance crew, and routinely charges $35 per hour even for minimal garbage removal.
J&R said it has only two maintenance crew workers and routinely relies on outside plumbers and contractors for more involved work.
8 Summer Street where Price lived, had dangerously flimsy second floor balcony railings and unstable interior doorways. Price described the doors as "being like balsa wood."
Over the summer of 2001, Price sublet the apartment to Heather Kofke-Egger. Kofke-Egger described putting her foot against a balcony railing as she sat in a chair, and having the part of the railing give out and fall to the ground two stories below.
N.H. law prohibits renting properties where porches, stairs or railings are not structurally sound.
J&R also charged Kofke-Egger for breaking the railing, but the company rescinded its claim when she told J&R that her father, a carpenter, had noticed how shoddily and improperly the railings were installed.
Sinclair lived in a Summer St. apartment from 2000 to 2001, which he described as "an overall great experience." However, his former landlord sold the property to J&R while he was living there, and when he came back after subletting it to sophomores over summer term he found that J&R had cut the lock on his storage locker and confiscated everything in it.
Under state law, landlords cannot seize tenants' property unless they receive legal permission to do so.
When Sinclair approached J&R about his missing property, the company denied knowledge of it, adding that any agreements he had made with his former landlord were now invalid.
Such dealing by the company seem to be based on an assumption that students are unfamiliar with state tenant law. While J&R indeed acted illegally, most of the student renters did not describe J&R's actions as such, but rather the company operating, as Schudson said, "in the gray regions of the law."
