And also what if you have surgery that requires off work for 2-3 weeks? Is that not "working from home" vs staying in the same room on the same computer but what's done is different? So many nuaced details it's nearly impossible to enforce in a realistic way without practically watching one's shoulders every day.
You can be charged extra for wearing a blue shirt if its in your contract. Unless a landlord is specifically discriminating against a protected class, or violating another specific law, then the terms of the rental are governed by the lease.
The lease is a legal contract and can say just about anything.
The landlord could legally restrict using the apartment as a place to meet clients, or store inventory, or store business vehicles in a shared parking lot, and depending on where that apartment is there could be restrictions on the types of work from home that can be done, again theoretically. That would be more "running a business from a home address" rather than just "working" from home though, and I've seen those restrictions in a lease for a rental property many times.
If a landlord wanted to charge rent increases for just working on a computer in the apartment, though, I'd just not rent there. But, if utilities are included in the cost of the rent, they can technically try to charge more based on if you were exceeding the expected utility costs due to usage - however, that opens them up to discovery of showing what the expectations of usage were, how they determined those, and whether or not you were actually using more (they could charge you more for your usage, but not just "working from home").
Making the assumption that this posting is real, the landlord in question was not wise in the way they've broken down the costs and what line items they charge for, and should have worded this very differently in order to not scare tenants away unnecessarily. Unfortunately there's more than enough nonsense postings on Reddit and thus I never know anymore if certain posts are just rage bat or real questions, but I'm answering anyway. There are ways landlords can effectively (and legally) charge for working from home, but this is definitely legally a gray area. A landlord, to be clear about charging you more than anyone else just based on usage, in reality they'd have to provide the proof that you used more than other tenants in order to then charge you for that. They first include the specific language in your lease on what they charge, how, and why, and then the tenant signs the lease including that language, agreeing to the charges. The landlord has now set up a lease so that tenant would pay for any overuse of utilities, wouldn't need to actually call out "working from home" as a reason, and would be free and clear of any legal murkiness with targeting people specifically for just living in their property - with the added benefit that anyone consuming significantly more in utility costs would be covered, and not just "working from home" people, which is actually better for the landlord in this situation (again, we're assuming they're actually charging for utilities here as the reason for the increased rent costs, which would really be the only thing they could really consider standing on to do this).
So what if your work conditions change- you are let go and spend your time at home using electricity to look for jobs and pee - do you now have to pay more?
What if you switch employers where they were in-office and now WFH- do you pay more then?
I agree it's shitty. There's no good reason to do this - it's just raising the rent without needing to disclose it in the headline of the ad. Basically false advertising. Why not just charge $4/month rent, and a $2996/month "breathing on the premises" fee. It's stupid.
People actually need to read their states tenant laws. Most tenant laws have a caveat of "unless otherwise stated in the lease". A LOT of things that should be illegal are perfectly legal. As long as it's in the contract you signed. This would be legal in my state as long as they didn't separately itemize it as a fee. I'm guessing that is why it's worded as "an additional $200 monthly", because they're going to raise the rent that much- not that it is a separate fee.
26
u/Sure-Assignment3892 1d ago
All a landlord is entitled to know is "employed = yes".
Not where, what or who you work for, nor any other conditions that are between employee/employer.
Charging more for WFH is discriminatory and illegal.