Q: I received my lease renewal offer / notice, I live in Oregon. It only includes the amount of rent and states that the

A: It is legal for a landlord to bill back their tenants for utilities that the landlord pays in a lump sum, such as water, sewer, and trash in many/most apartment complexes. BUT there are a slew of regulations that the landlord must comply with in doing so, including providing the information in a written lease; a disclosure of the equation or formula used to determine how a tenant's share will be determined (what if one apartment has five residents and another only one? The five presumably use more water and sewer than the one. What if a unit is vacant for part or all of a month? Does the landlord "pay" that apartment's share for the month? Etc.); they have to either include a statement telling you that you can inspect each month's monthly master water bill to the landlord or they have to include a copy in their bill to you; etc. To the extent that a landlord fails to comply, and you can prove it, it is likely worth a month's rent to you, plus your court costs and attorneys fees. IF you have a violation, it is likely that all tenants in the complex have the same violation - and that can get very expensive to a landlord so you likely have settlement leverage. One thing to consider is IF you are interested in trying to recover your damages from the landlord, you may wish to stay silent until you have a well established track record of their violations - and then spring the damages claim on them when they likely will have little or no defense. Then there is the issue if the landlord violates the rules in January, and again in February, are you entitled to recover 2 months rent? Clearly if they violated the rules in January but caught their error and did not violate it in February, you would still be entitled to recover a month's rent for the January violation - so why shouldn't you be entitled to a second month's rent if there is a second violation in February? Unfortunately it is not clear in the statutes and there are no appellate court opinions on the matter to establish an answer, so lots of potential questions but IF there are multiple months of violations and multiple tenants with the same claims in a complex, that could end up being very expensive for a landlord if the other tenants wanted to join in. All in all, if you are interested in pursuing the matter, consider reviewing it all in person with a local landlord-tenant attorney. Good luck.