Tenants at City Park Apartments in Salt Lake City Utah this week were met with a rather unusual addendum to their rental contracts: ‘Like’ our Facebook page or you’re in breach of contract. The residents awoke to the demand taped to their doors earlier this week, a move that led to public outrage after a local news station got involved.
Kirk A. Cullimore LLC, a Utah law firm representing the complex owners said the addendum was “not carefully reviewed” and that “at no time was a resident in jeopardy of eviction or action from City Park for failure to sign the addendum.”
The flyers have since been removed.
Another legal professional, who wanted to remain anonymous, told TNW that Cullimore’s statements essentially told her that the apartment complex attempted the move without prior approval of the documents from its attorney — a move he quickly would have squashed had he been made aware. She also points out that this would break at least a half dozen provisions of the Fair Housing Act (and others) as well as any state or local guidelines in existence to protect renters.
The demand also led angry residents to voice their displeasure with the company — who many accused of being generally shitty (pest and rodent control and a lack of upkeep mainly) — on Yelp, ApartmentRatings and Facebook.
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Yelp was so inundated with negative reviews it had to close the account temporarily while the service attempts to figure out what’s what. The social media troubles don’t stop there, either. City Park’s Facebook page seems to have been removed, and a series of negative reviews after the “like” stunt pulled its rating on ApartmentRatings down to a paltry 13 percent.
Interestingly, the demand also assumed residents have internet, or that they’re currently using Facebook. We weren’t able to get our hands on the actual request, but it’d be curious to see how the company planned on dealing with those that didn’t have internet access or a Facebook account.
Who would have thought living in the future would lead to otherwise good tenants being threatened with eviction if they didn’t “like” a Facebook page?
At least it wasn’t Google+.
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