Ask Bostonist: Take My Fridge, Please

So I have an apartment that I love with one problem: a faulty, f***ed up, awful refrigerator. It should be BURNED. I can't even have frozen vegetables because the freezer part is one giant block of ice.

However, in the lease the owners have cunningly put "a refrigerator unit is a privilege, not a right. If it breaks, it's on you" (essentially). Doesn't that break tenant-landlord stuff? Don't we renters have a right to a refrigeration unit that keeps food so we can eat?

Well, it turns out that landlords are not required to provide you with a refrigerator in Massachusetts. Plumbing, electrical, and gas fixtures, yes. Refrigerator, no. That means that if you find yourself in an apartment sans fridge and are wondering what to do with all the ice cream you just brought home, you face a situation known in the legal community as S.O.L.

However, the landlord is required by law to provide the proper space and hook-ups for a refrigerator, and make sure the hook-ups are, in the words of the Attorney General's web site, "free from defects which would make them difficult to clean." To our way of looking at things, if the refrigerator hook-up is obstructed by a non-working refrigerator, that's a violation. Naturally, there's room for argument over what constitutes a "non-working" refrigerator (in Bostonist's experience, landlords will try to quibble over what exactly constitutes "hot" water, although luckily, the law actually answers that question).

It's also possible that if the landlord told you or gave you the impression when you rented the place that it contained a working refrigerator, s/he engaged in some deceptive advertising (certainly, the fact that the 'fridge is mentioned in the lease suggests this - a non-working 'fridge wouldn't be much of a "privilege"). We couldn't find any legal cases in this area, but it at least seems to us like a good argument.

Your more immediate problem, though, is your landlord. It's all well and good to have a winning court case, but you actually have to find a lawyer and go to court, and that would take so long that all your food would spoil. The better approach is simply to tell your landlord the refrigerator is worthless and you need him/her to fix it or get rid of it. Mention casually that you conferred with the Attorney General's office, and they say it's illegal to block the refrigerator hook-up. Hopefully, the landlord will realize that the apartment will be much easier to rent in the future with a working 'fridge, and will just fix or replace it. If not, call the A.G. and tell them your situation - a letter on Commonwealth stationery can be more persuasive to landlords than any number of calls from tenants. The worst scenario would be that that landlord calls your bluff and throws the thing out. But even that wouldn't be so bad, because then you could finally go out and buy your dream refrigerator.