Of course you need to be notified. Talk to the Office of the Tenant Advocate about what to do from here - they will give you a better answer than anybody on Reddit can.

I was just curious about other people’s experience with this situation and what the office has done about things like this

is your lease month-to-month? The most likely outcome is your landlord then giving you the proper notice for the rent increase. All in all it will probably just get your rent increased delayed by 2-3 months

I would talk to the landlord first, remind them what’s in the lease, and ask them to push the rent increase back by 2 months. If they say No, then you go to the OTA. But there’s no need to start with OTA if you’ve not given the landlord a chance to solve the problem first (and OTA will probably ask you “what did the landlord say when you asked” anyway).

You can hit up /r/legaladvice

From my lurking, DC had pretty strong tenant protections.

Yes month to month. Thanks for the info

Good advice thank you

Do something about it now because if you do not, this landlord is going to keep doing this to other people down the line. Think of this as a social justice cause in that regard.

Check with your LL first and ask for date of notification and mailing date if hard copy.

All my rent increase notifications were letter sent by mail, but USPS has been screwed up for a while.

For example my jury duty summons came a month after I got the email notification.

Yeah good idea. I was given a hard copy of a notice last time that I actually had to fill out and return with some information on. So I’m pretty shocked I didn’t get anything this time. I was thinking oh, that’s nice no rent increase this year! Not 🙁

Haha well it's not an unreasonable thought. My building two different missed a rent increase I think it just went under rader and bc I brought up at a tenant association meeting asking if anyone else noticed the same and most gave me the side eye bc they got a yearly rent increase 😬

“Dear Landlord, I noticed this month a 6% increase in rent without proper 60-day notification. Per (insert link to whatever law it is) you must provide this 60-Day notification. I am ok with the 6% rent in 60 days but will be paying my current rent untill then. Please let me know if you have any issues, if so I will have to reach out to (insert name of whatever entity).” Just double check you didn’t miss a piece of mail or email with it months ago. I am in Seattle and moving to DC this month and we have the same rules btw.

The landlord is required to notify you but there's no requirement for you to acknowledge anything. As long as they mailed something, they're probably in the clear unfortunately.

All it takes is your mail carrier to put it in your neighbor's mail slot by mistake or it to get lost in your pile of junk mail, and you might miss it but that's not on the landlord. You should definitely challenge them though, make sure they have proof they sent something.

> As long as they mailed something, they're probably in the clear unfortunately.

With the way USPS operates in the District, it's more surprising if it actually got delivered.

I didn’t get anything in the mail. I’ll ask them to provide me with proof that they mailed it

Your lease will state that you may incur month to month charges. Did you receive a renewal offer? They may be covered if either above are true. No indication need, unfortunately

My lease states that I am to receive a 60 day notice about rent increases period. I’ve been month to month for 3 years now. Last year they notified me, this year they did not.

I lived in an apartment at 4550 Conn NW for years. Every year I got a notice of rent increase based on the annual CPI. The CPI is high at the moment. 8.5 % I think. I lived in a rent- controlled building but annual increase based on CPI is in your contract for sure. Legal.

I’m not complaining about the increase itself, just the fact I wasn’t notified within the contractural time frame. Also though, annual increases based on CPI is not in my lease agreement. Lol.

Only modification to this is that I would ask the landlord to remove the increase before asking that they move it by two months. Then pull in OTA if necessary. (After making sure you didn’t miss the notice somehow.)

Personally, if it’s a year lease renewing for a full year I might push against the increase altogether—they missed their chance for the year by not notifying.

OTA got us a landlord check for nearly 5 figures after they'd blatantly screwed around with illegal renewals/increases, all for the cost of one meeting and a follow-up phone call. This was about 6 years back but definitely worth inquiring.

I believe DC law states that the terms of the original lease remain when you go month to month except for lawful rent increases. But what I don’t know is if that means that the term in your original lease about the 90 days notice remained in place or if the “except for lawful rent increases,” provision is covered within that, meaning they only have to give you 30 days notice. They certainly have to give you some notice, I just don’t know if it’s 60 days.

This would only be if you were in a rent controlled building.