Attorney: Apartments Downtown settlement good news for tenants

Past and future tenants of Apartments Downtown will benefit from a settlement approved by a district court judge last week, their attorney said Monday.

The settlement includes $65 repayments to about 14,000 tenants who rented from Apartments Downtown and Apartments Near Campus, which have the same owner, from 2010 to 2014 and also establishes a new and unique complaint process, said Chris Warnock, an attorney with the Iowa Tenants' Project who represented tenants in the case.

The repayments are the result of lease provisions ruled to be illegal that included charging an automatic carpet-cleaning fee, regardless of whether the carpet was clean; shifting responsibility for repair and maintenance to tenants, including in common areas of a building; and a variety of illegal fees, penalties and other charges.

Tenants who rented from 2010 to 2014 can find more information and register to collect repayment at adisettlement.com, and will be asked to provide a building address and apartment number.

Warnock said the repayments are expected to total about $1 million. More importantly, he said, the settlement creates a complaint process in which Apartments Downtown will pay to retain attorneys from the Iowa Tenants' Project to represent its tenants over the next three lease years.

"This is really about forging a partnership between the landlord and tenants to help everybody see we need to work together," Warnock said. "This settlement only worked because both sides were willing to trust. There'll be problems along the way, obviously, but this settlement shows Apartments Downtown had real willingness to make this work."

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Through the new process, Warnock said, tenants can submit a written complaint to Apartments Downtown, which, in turn, has 10 days to resolve the complaint. If the tenant is not satisfied with the solution, an attorney with the Iowa Tenants' Project will take on the complaint and examine its validity.

The complaint process is more about mediation than it is about taking every complaint to court, Warnock said.

"A lot of what we're doing is explaining things to tenants, especially the ins and outs of the law. But by having this in place, tenants will immediately have someone to speak on their behalf and to try and settle disagreements out of court," he said.

The new partnership with Apartments Downtown will end in 2019, but the settlement allows for renewal if both parties agree, Warnock said.

The Iowa Tenants' Project initially filed the class-action lawsuit in December 2010 on behalf of former tenant Michael Conroy and other renters over the illegal fees and withholding of unreasonable amounts from security deposits. District Court Judge Chad Kepros certified the class action this past July, and Apartments Downtown appealed the decision in August.

In March, Apartments Downtown filed the settlement jointly with the Iowa Tenants' Project.

Reach Andy Davis at 319-887-5404 or at aldavis@press-citizen.com, and follow him on Twitter as @BylineAndyDavis.