Hello

This is lengthy, but if you could read it and respond it would REALLY help me out!

I recently moved into an apartment in los angeles. While my room mate and I were looking at the apartment, we asked about pets and after making a joke about whether pets were allowed, he finally said that we could potentially add a pet deposit, but that we could cross that bridge when we got to it. First question: Is that a verbal agreement?

All right, well, "we" finally signed the lease agreement. I was out of town at the time, so my room mate is the only one who signed it. She asked for a copy of the lease and the landlord said he would bring us a copy when we moved into the apartment. Second and third question: is the tenant entitled to a copy of the lease or is it just a smart idea? And, am I entitled to any of the things stipulated on the lease (even so far as to say, being legally considered a tenant? )? I am still not on the lease agreement...

A month into living in the apartment, I found a rescue dog that is about 15 LBS that I wanted to adopt. The day I made the decision, I told my landlord about my intentions, hoping that we could discuss how much a pet deposit would be. He flatly said he wasn't comfortable with me having a pet in the apartment, that he had had bad experiences in the past, that we might consider it once I'd lived in the apartment for longer than a month, and that he didn't recall agreeing to a pet deposit or a pet at all.

I asked my room mate if there had been anything about pets on the lease and she said that there wasn't. Question 4: Does saying nothing on the lease mean that it's up to the landlord's case-by-case discretion or does it mean anything goes? At this point, I decided what we needed more than a dog was simply a copy of the lease. Since my room mate has a better rapport with my landlord, I asked her to call him and ask for a copy. She did, left a message and never heard back. I ended up taking on the task of calling him and did so repeatedly -- he kept saying that he couldn't find the lease, so he couldn't make a copy. I think this was a lie because I spoke to one of my neighbors and she said that she got the same answer from him and that she just had to keep harassing him until he finally "found" it.

A few final questions that didn't necessarily fit into my story:

- My apartment building has four units. In one, there is a black lab, in a second there is a german shepherd and in the third there are two cats... Can my landlord decide about pets on a case-by-case basis like that or is it a black and white issue: either the building allows pets or not?

- Do I even have a leg to stand on since I'm not on the lease?

Under California law, the landlord must give the renter a signed cp[y of the lease within 15 days.
California Tenants - California Department of Consumer Affairs (http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/landlordbook/when-rent.shtml)
Ths lease should specify if pets are allowed. If it doesn't then they aren't.

Since you aren't listed on the lease, you may not have any say. You would be considered a subtenant of your roommate.

And, I do believe that the landlord has a right to decide on a case-by-case basis if he will allow pets. The fact that one tenant has a pet cat, for example, doesn't mean that someone else can bring in a pet pig.

And any rescue group worth adopting from is going to check with your landlord on whether he will allow the pet.

So it seems to me that you have a few options. Since you aren't actually on the lease, it seems to me that you could just find a different apartment. Your roomie is probably not going to like that, but that's a separate issue. You could both try getting out of the lease in favor of place that will actually take animals. Make sure of that up front. Or, you wait out this lease term, save up for the animal (pets are expensive, especially in the first year when you wind up buying a lot of "stuff" for them), and move to a pet-friendly place at the end of the lease and adopt a dog then.