Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Legal Definition

Unless you live in a rent-control jurisdiction, rents can be increased or services decreased at any time on proper notice (usually 60 or 30 days). A resident is someone who lives there and a tenant is someone who rents (or leases) a property. In an apartment complex they should be the same.

Re: Legal Definition

1) The difference between the terms "tenant" or "resident", if any, would be defined in the document where the terms are found. In other words, there is little grammatical difference,( save for the fact that "tenant" denotes that there is a landlord and there is a legal relationship, as opposed to "resident" which simly implies occupancy) but if their use in the same document is intended to refer to or reflect a difference, it would probably be spelled out in that document.

2) The landlord is within his or her rights to commence charging for storage and alter the manner of acceptance of deliveries, for a number of reasons: at the outset, since these are benefits the landlord never agreed to give you to start with, they have not breached the terms of their rental agreement with you; moreover, even if these benefits were in writing somewhere, since you are likely on a month to month tenancy, all they would need to do to alter the terms of the written agreement is to give you the proper notice that they intended to do so, just as they would with an increase in rents--it sounds like that is exactly what they have done. You have acquired no entitlement to these items simply because you have enjoyed them for 20 years; thus it is absurd to think that the landlord would owe YOU something if he chooses to now charge you for something you were never technically entitled to at the outset. Lastly, your recourse in the event that you are not happy with these changes, as it always is with a tenancy, is to move.