Imagine renting a house you own to the city to use to house refugees. If you got into a disagreement with the city about who was responsible for repairs, would you let the city win or stand your ground even if it meant going to court?

In this story, one woman is in this situation, and she chooses the second option. Let’s see whose side the judge is on.

Maybe you should read your contract before insisting your landlady to do sth

My mum rents out 2 houses.

One is the house she bought when she married her first husband.

One is the house her first husband lived in after they divorced.

When he died my brother inherited it (I’m from the second marriage) and he asked my mum to manage it.

But they don’t rent out the homes to individuals.

Both houses are rented out to the city they’re located in and they use it as social housing for refugees.

Because of this, they pay less rent than is usual for the area. But to make up for that, they have pretty unique clauses in their contract, e.g. that they are responsible to fix anything that wasn’t caused by weather.

That’s not legal to do in a contract with private persons, but since the renter is the city, it’s legal.

There was a big problem that needed to be fixed.

Recently, the city approached my mum and told her that some appliances broke and since the people living there didn’t notify the city immediately, water seeped into the walls and caused mold to form within the walls.

They assumed that the same rules as for private renters would apply to them and demanded that my mum should renovate.

My mum told them that they should have a look into their contract, Point 4, Sentence 2 (yes, she even gave them the exact sentence they should look at).

They insisted and also told her that she needed to hire companies that work with the city to do the renovation because they would only trust those companies.

They agreed…kind of.

My mum then asked if that means they are delegating the organisation to her and are unwilling to work with any other companies.

As they said yes, she acted.

She organised everything and let the bills be send to the city.

The city returned the bills stating that mum has to pay them.

They ended up going to court.

My mum send them a copy of the contract with the applying sentences highlighted and told them if they refused to pay she’d have to go to a lawyer and those costs would add to that.

The city denied any responsibility for paying.

They took it to court where, because our courts are notoriously overwhelmed with cases, an out of court settlement was adviced.

When presented with everything, the person from the court told the city they were definitely in the wrong.

It’s a good thing she had it in writing!

But then the city said that my mum deliberately chose the most expensive companies and they would only pay for a part of the bill because of that.

Well, my mum had it in writing that they ordered her which companies to hire, so that was quickly resolved.

Had they told my mum ‘listen, could you organise it and have the bills send to us?’ she’d have picked companies with about half the cost. But well, that’s life.

OP’s mom handled that situation really well!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person shares what they loved about the story.

I hope so too.

This is a good point.

Someone who works for a city government weighs in.

Getting it in writing really paid off!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a tenant who called the landlord after they hadn’t seen or heard their neighbor in days.