This is also a perfect opportunity to conduct a building survey—to make a record of all the problems in the individual apartments and public areas of the building. Your responsibilities are set out in your tenancy agreement and tenant handbook. Groups of tenants can file challenges to the MCI together. Housing law guarantees your right to meet in a public space in your building, so feel free to use the lobby or any other public space for your meetings. A note under the door is the easiest way to reach everyone in the building, especially if you want to alert people to an event—like an upcoming tenant association meeting. The housing secretary recently announced that housing association tenants will be allowed to buy 10% of their homes in a shared ownership style scheme under the right to buy. While your housing association has certain responsibilities to you, you also have certain responsibilities. Have an agenda. Include the names and home phone numbers of the representatives of the association. But besides working together to make the conditions in your building better, there are other good reasons for forming a tenant association. Many housing association bylaws require boards to have a certain number of tenant representatives on the board. The officers may be a president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer, plus floor captains for each floor (who may or may not be on the steering committee). Housing, eviction, tenant, landlord, ab3088, Tenant Protections. Do end at a set time, so that people can plan their other activities around the meeting. If you’re not happy with your landlord's service you can use the complaints procedure. You can also post flyers around the building announcing tenant association activities. Do I need to formalize the tenant association? It's a way for the tenant to be involved in the decision-making progress that occurs during discussions about improving the standard of housing conditions and services. Housing associations first appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century as part of the growth in philanthropic and voluntary organisations brought about by the growth of the middle classes in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.Early examples are the Guinness Trust, Peabody Trust and the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes. Once your tenant association is up and running, you may or may not want to have a formal structure with elected officers, committees, and by-laws. When a housing association tenant dies it is possible that a family member could inherit their tenancy but this depends on the type of tenancy and the exact type of relationship to the deceased. The amount of rent you pay should not go up more than once per year, unless by mutual agreement, and you should always be given at least four weeks’ written notice. What types of legal actions can tenant associations do? If your landlord sues multiple tenants from your building in Housing Court at the same time, you may be able to get the cases consolidated and dealt with all at once. In a Group HP Action, tenants from multiple apartments in the same building are asking for repairs or services in all of their individual apartments and/or in common areas of the building or areas (like the roof) which affect multiple apartments. Funding for this site is provided by the NI Housing Executive, Housing association and tenant responsibilities, Your responsibilities as a housing association tenant, Social landlord's responsibilities to tenants. The issues must be related to each other, and not specific to each individual tenant. 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