Abstract
Emerging out of the tenants’ rights revolution, the implied warranty of habitability has been in effect for over fifty years. Its direct purpose is to provide relief to low-income renters living in substandard conditions who held no bargaining power within the housing market, and thus, could not ensure landlords provided safe and habitable conditions. Unfortunately, the landlord–tenant dynamic remains one of drastic inequality, and millions of low-income renters continue to live in substandard conditions. Most glaringly, the housing market reflects a worsening affordable housing crisis—a crisis that landlords have used to turn a profit. Thus, the very circumstances that gave rise to both the tenant revolution and the implied warranty remain in effect today. This time, the law can, and must, do more to ensure the implied warranty’s goals are realized.
In theory, the implied warranty provides tenants the right to a safe and habitable home. In practice, that right has not been recognized to the extent necessary. Ignoring tenant realities and failing to provide recourse when the basic right to adequate housing—or human dignity—is breached is inexcusable. The result has allowed landlords not only to violate the law without consequences but also to exploit the unfair advantages the law provides them. Therefore, while the right to a habitable home has been established, what must be done now is ensure access to and enforcement of that right.
As a means of enforcement, this Comment argues for courts, legislatures, or both to implement presumed general damages for meritorious habitability claims. Although the American legal and economic systems favor “the owner’s” property interest, this Comment will show how a more forceful implied warranty better reflects its original equitable purpose and fits within traditional legal and economic analysis. Along the way, it will critique mainstream ideals and portray how disparate impacts are ignored by relying on the underlying assumptions of these ideals.
Recommended Citation
Thomas Furlong Jr.,
The Revolution Continues: Revitalizing the Implied Warranty of Habitability with Presumed General Damages,
74
Emory L. J.
1557
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/elj/vol74/iss6/4