US renters call for action to combat surge of ‘take it or leave it’ apartment fees

View of windows at night of an apartment building in Brooklyn, New York. Photograph: Diana Robinson Photography/Getty Images View image in fullscreen View of windows at night of an apartment building in Brooklyn, New York. Photograph: Diana Robinson Photography/Getty Images US renters call for action to combat surge of ‘take it or leave it’ apartment fees Tenants push for tougher rules against unfair add-on charges. Industry players argue against policies that they say could limit the ‘effective use of fees’ ‘Extremely overwhelmed’: apartment renters face rising tide of fees Across the US, many renters are calling for national action to stem add-on charges that spike their housing costs and increase their risk of eviction. “The rental housing market is one where consumers have little power,” Farah Momin, a renter in Seattle, told the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in April. “Landlords can impose fees through take-it-or-leave-it lease terms, and the cost/disruption of moving means that tenants may absorb unfair charges rather than leave. Federal baseline protections are needed to level this playing field.” Momin – who said she has “experienced firsthand the confusion, financial strain and sense of powerlessness that rental junk fees create” – offered her remarks as one of hundreds of tenants, activists and industry officials who have weighed in on the FTC’s new rulemaking process for developing regulations on rental housing fees. Of 471 comments available for public download, nearly 400 explicitly supported regulation or listed problems with junk fees, according to a Guardian analysis. More than 60 commenters opposed or raised concerns about regulation, most of them members or representatives of trade groups. ‘Extremely overwhelmed’: apartment renters face rising tide of fees Read more “Restrictions on reasonable fees create practical barriers, inflate base housing costs, and reduce access to valued resident services,” leading industry groups said in a joint statement to the FTC. “Fees and charges are a necessary part of pricing structures.” Tenants have faced a surge in fees on top of rent as the property management industry, which uses fees to expand profit margins , has expanded across new swaths of American housing. Buildings run by property managers have increased their share of the rental market by 47% in the last decade, according to a Guardian analysis of census data. Professional management is most common in complexes with 50 units or more, the only segment where it is used in more than half of all units. Federal changes coming? The effort to regulate junk fees in rental housing comes after years of back and forth between industry leaders and public officials, and a growing body of lawsuits challenging fees. In 2022, the Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission considered including rental housing in a broad effort to regulate junk fees. The National Apartment Association (NAA) and other industry players pushed back, coordinating 3,