(CA) Coin-operated laundry and renter’s rights
Hi all! I have a bit of a funny situation. We have coin-operated laundry in my 3 person unit. In my lease, laundry is just an add-on, and not guaranteed.
I pay rent in just one monthly chunk. In other words, we don’t pay an extra/separate utility bill to property management (PM) but I suspect it’s included in the rent price. We do pay PGE independently for energy, so again, I’m guessing water is just included in the rent price. It’s a bit hard to tell though because I’ve never seen a full breakdown of the utilities we pay to PM, and the RUBS sheet in my lease was not completely filled out by PM.
Regarding the laundry machine- PM actually gave the laundry machine keys to one of the 3 tenants here. So she regularly empties the machines, stashes the quarters, and we keep feeding the machine more quarters. Neither our landlord or PM has come to collect the quarters in probably 2 years now. My question is this, who do the quarters belong to? I don’t believe any of the coin-op agreement is in writing- but maybe it doesn’t need to be? Maybe it’s just implied the quarters are PM property? Or maybe they’re our property because we pay energy and water? Would love to be able to just keep reusing the quarters because I honestly don’t think they’re ever going to come to collect them lol.
Edit: Wow there are some real big feelings about this quarter question.