It’s hard to find. I know I was nervous I was in the wrong spot when getting the bus the first time.

It is in the upper busway, take a right out of the door and it’s all the way at the end.

Well now I feel like a genius 🫣

It is in the upper busway all the way at the end to your right when you enter.

I also think that pedestrians should be required to wear reflective vests and carry little flags across the street with them -- and if a collision is unavoidable despite all this, they should get down on their knees and be thankful that the motorist will suffer no injury or punishment.

If anyone is driving their car fast enough on brattle to flip it they should have their licenses taken away

Your comment on r/CambridgeMA was deemed to be either uncivil or harassment. Repeated incivility and harassment will result in a ban

Yeah it’s a crap situation.

I don’t think they can incorporate by reference policies that they can change any time that cost you extra fees. You probably have a strong argument there, and if you were okay with not renewing the lease that might be the way to go. But the big risk is that they might not renew the lease.

This was a slim black guy, definitely mental issues at play

Definitely check the lease. Lots of leases do specify that you can't install AC on your own and there's nothing in Mass that guarantees access to cooling like we guarantee heat. Often landlords don't want people installing AC units because often people put large/heavy units and put all the weight on the window - or they're installing a support structure and making penetrations into the exterior of the building.

For the winter, the landlords probably have a good case argument that it isn't weather tight for a Boston winter and that they don't want the added weight of snow/ice on top of the AC unit putting more stress on the building/window.

You might be able to negotiate it with the management company. You have two units and maybe you can get them down to $45/each. It's just one trip for their service person.

I think they should reasonably come down from the $180 for 2 units, but I don't think it's a scam on gullible tenants, ACs should be taken out for the winter, and there are good reasons to disallow tenant installation of AC units - it's overprotective for sure in most cases, but there are good reasons.

I'm guessing the lease stipulates this and they're going to have to comply, but maybe it doesn't.

There's also the question of whether $90 or 180/year ($7.50 or $15/mo) is the hill one wants to die on. When renting apartments, one often doesn't get to choose the exact rent. If this is the one thing that's pissing you off about this management company, I'd ignore it. Would you rather find a different place that's $100/mo more? Maybe your place is over priced, maybe management is annoying about lots of things, etc. Or maybe it's not worth the fight. Plus, even if you rarely turn on the heat, it's still some money there and probably $50+ even if you rarely turn on the heat.

If it's the hill you want to die on, it's the hill you want to die on. However, if the rest of things are great, I wouldn't make that the hill to die on. Yea, it's annoying, but the cost is minuscule compared to Cambridge rent. What are we talking? 0.5% of annual rent at a time when annual rent increases are in the 5-15% range? I just wouldn't make it my hill to die on.

Thank you

I doubt you'll notice a difference within the Boston Metro. You might notice a lack or decrease in quality of City/Town services if you move to say Arlington or Medford over say Cambridge or Somerville. But that would just be due to size of the town/city. Boston vs Cambridge vs Somerville vs Brookline etc won't have enough of a difference to really justify one over the other. I would just pick whichever neighborhood has an apartment/condo/house you like the best and which has a reasonable enough commute to your work/hobbys/etc.

Probably the stand-alone unit would cost more, especially with energy prices rising (though I guess Cambridge won't feel that until 2024 if you're on the community aggregation). Department of Energy standards that go into effect for 2025 note that portable AC units are actually only doing about 70% of the cooling that was previously assumed - and they were already considered horrendously inefficient. Consumer Reports notes that a portable AC unit will take three times longer to cool a room - and three times the electricity in the process.

If you're spending $50/mo on cooling and you're suddenly using 3x the electricity, you're then using an extra $100/mo. Even if it's just double the electricity, you're still going to eat through an extra $150/unit over the summer.

knock him out. Who cares?

Even dinner time early/midweek is probably fine too, unless it’s much more busy than it used to be.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at.

It's more important if a location rates well in safety and other things, which is my priority and have already determined from research.

There really isn't a statistic out there for a city's personality but since cambridge is a medium sized city, figured first hand accounts might help.

Appreciate the input.

I definitely wouldn’t attempt all by myself. I checked the lease though and it says no self-installation

It says I can’t use it in the winter, but doesn’t mention removal. That being said, there is a $200 “Violation of AC Units Policy” fee. Which is essentially the same amount as the reinstall cost…

I’ve taken a closer look at my lease, and specifically the air conditioning portion, and it looks like in my lease I can’t run it from Nov 1 - Apr 1, but it doesn’t specifically say I’m required to remove it by a certain date. However, it says that failure to adhere to any of the installation or usage policies is a $200 fine and of course the ever looming threat of non-renewal/eviction. So the cost of installing them again is essentially the same as the fine ironically.

It just seems like another way to squeeze money out of tenants unfortunately (the whole installation takes less than 10 minutes) but I guess I’ll go with it in hopes that my rent doesn’t jump up too much this year.

You’re asking if, across all types of “service” (ex. car service, retail jobs, food service… even landlords, like you mention), Cambridge has a discernible difference in customer service vs Boston? This sort of metric is just not really a static thing.

I would assume if it was in the lease that tenant can't install their own and has to pay $90 per unit to have them installed, and the lease contained a requirement to remove them in the winter, then it's probably not illegal. I tried to find some legal language and came up completely empty handed. It's a bizarre situation. All I'm finding about odd fees is landlords can't require payment of amenity fees - but can restrict tenants right to access the amenities if the tenant chooses not to pay the fee.

Does your lease require you to remove the air conditioners? If no, you don't have to remove them.

https://www.masslegalhelp.org/housing/lt1-chapter-5-rent.pdf This doesn't mention anything about fees, and it's a pretty comprehensive guide to rent in MA. So I don't think there is anything else about fees or actions that are in your lease.

If the lease requires the fee to install ACs, then that is something you can't get around. My guess is it's not in your lease to remove the ACs. That means, probably, that you don't have to remove the ACs, meaning you would not need an install in the summer, meaning you wouldn't incur the cost. However, best case scenario there is the landlord does nothing (possible, since it sounds like you need to keep your windows open in the winter to stay cool - btw look into outlet thermostats plus a window fan that has manual, non-electric controls - that's a life-saver in those situations). I would expect though that your landlord will write it into all lease renewals in the future that window ACs must be removed before a certain date, at which point you would either need to accept the terms or move (or try to negotiate it out, but that's unlikely). There's also the risk that the landlord would not renew your lease if you push back, or increase the rent, or take other retaliatory actions, which is crappy but that's what might happen.

If both the install fee, and the removal requirement, were in the lease, then there's not much you can do. It's basically a higher rent amount but only if you want those services, which my guess is legal in MA. So then you need to decide if this new higher rent amount is worth it.

Doesn’t mean the incident isn’t worth reporting. If this guy is doing this to a lot of people (and based on the comments here, he is), the police may actually do something if they keep getting reports. They will certainly do nothing if no report is filed.

this looks like a really great suggestion. thank you!

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