There is no single number for landlord problems in Boston. Which office can help you depends entirely on what kind of problem you have, and the most common mistake renters make is sending a repair or heat complaint to the Attorney General's office, which does not handle those. Here's what each office actually covers, and how to reach it.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. A complaint filed with the wrong body doesn't get forwarded to the right one. It sits, and you find out weeks later, usually while the apartment is still cold.
Which office handles your landlord problem?
| What's wrong | Who handles it | How to reach them |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit not returned, junk or surprise fees, deceptive practices | Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, Consumer Advocacy & Response Division (CARD) | Consumer hotline 617-727-8400. Filing is free. See also our step-by-step guide to reporting an illegal broker fee |
| No heat or hot water, pests, unsafe or unrepaired conditions | Boston Inspectional Services Department, or your city or town's board of health | Request an inspection. Timing matters — see whether to report code violations before you move out |
| Notice to quit, eviction filing, pressure to move out | Boston Office of Housing Stability, plus a lawyer, quickly | 617-635-4200. They can refer you to an attorney. Only a court can order you to leave |
| Public or assisted housing | Boston Housing Authority | Through BHA directly; it runs on a separate system from private tenancies |
| You want money back through a court | Housing Court, or small claims for smaller amounts | Talk to a lawyer or legal aid first |
Most people call one office for everything, and that is the single biggest reason nothing happens. These offices have genuinely different jobs, and none of them is a general-purpose landlord complaint line.
Fees, deposits and deceptive practices: the Attorney General
If your problem involves money that shouldn't have been charged, or money that should have come back, the Attorney General's office is the right call.
The relevant team is the Consumer Advocacy & Response Division, usually written as CARD. It handles unfair and deceptive business practices, and landlord-tenant disputes over security deposits and fees fall squarely inside that. Filing costs nothing, and you can reach the consumer hotline at 617-727-8400.
Two things are worth understanding about what happens next, because they shape whether this is worth your time.
The AG's office is not your lawyer. It won't represent you, and it can't guarantee you get your money back. What it can do is mediate between you and the landlord, which resolves a meaningful number of disputes without anyone going to court.
Your complaint counts even if your own case stalls. The office uses complaint data to spot patterns across the state, and a landlord who generates a stack of similar complaints becomes a different kind of problem for them than a landlord who generates one. That's not a consolation prize. It's how state enforcement actions against repeat offenders start.
Fees are also where Massachusetts law is unusually clear about what's permitted at the start of a tenancy, which makes them easier to challenge than most disputes.
Conditions, heat and repairs: Inspectional Services
Code enforcement in Massachusetts is local. The State Sanitary Code sets the standards a rental has to meet, but it is enforced by city and town health authorities. In Boston that's the Inspectional Services Department. Outside Boston it's your municipality's board of health or its equivalent. A no-heat complaint, a pest infestation, a leak nobody will fix, a broken lock — those go to the local inspector, not to the state.
This is the one people get wrong, and it comes up constantly. When a renter asks online where to complain about a landlord, someone will recommend the Attorney General for everything — sketchy fees, bad conditions, general disputes. And someone else will correct them, accurately: the Attorney General's office doesn't handle bad conditions, and it isn't your best bet to contact.
Both halves of that exchange are half right, which is why the confusion survives. The Attorney General is the right call for fees. For conditions, it isn't.
If pests are the issue specifically, our guide to what to check and who pays for pest problems covers where the landlord's responsibility begins and ends.
What an inspection actually does
An inspector visits, documents what they find against the code, and issues violations to the owner with a deadline to fix them. That creates something you did not have before: an official, dated record by a third party that the condition existed.
That record is the real value, and it's worth requesting an inspection even when you think the landlord will eventually get around to the repair. A landlord's memory of when you first complained will not match yours.
What an inspection does not do is move fast enough to be an emergency response, or guarantee a repair on your timeline.
Eviction and notices: where this stops being a phone-number problem
If you have received a notice to quit, been served court papers, or are being pressured to leave, this article has reached its limit and you should stop reading it and call someone.
The Office of Housing Stability in Boston is at 617-635-4200. They help tenants in a housing crisis from eviction, fire, natural disaster or condemnation, and they can refer you to an attorney.
Only a court can order you to leave your home. The formal eviction process in Massachusetts is called Summary Process, and it begins when a landlord serves you a Summons and Complaint. A text message, a letter, a change of locks or a verbal demand is not an eviction, and landlords sometimes rely on tenants not knowing that.
Beyond that, this page is not going to give you deadlines, filing steps or tactics, because eviction timelines are unforgiving and the details of your tenancy change the answer. Get actual advice, quickly and free if needed, from a tenant-rights attorney or legal aid organization.
Does filing a complaint actually do anything?
Sometimes yes, and there is a concrete local answer to this rather than an encouraging one.
In an enforcement action announced by the Attorney General's office, AG Campbell secured a $500,000 settlement with Green Ocean Property Management, LLC, a Boston-based company managing 377 units across Greater Boston, clustered around universities and hospitals.
The allegation was illegal junk fees charged to tenants, operating as "new lease" and "lease renewal" fees. Under the settlement the company pays $500,000, used for restitution to the affected tenants, and stops collecting the fees.
The AG's office has also adopted junk-fee regulations making hidden fees of this kind unlawful under the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act.
That is what a stack of individual complaints can turn into, and the tenants who got restitution were not individually litigating. They were on a list.
The honest other half: this is slow. Enforcement actions take months or years, most individual complaints resolve through mediation or not at all, and nobody at any of these offices will call you back the same day. If you need something fixed this week, the inspection route moves faster than the complaint route.
What to have ready before you call
Every one of these offices will ask for roughly the same things, and having them assembled is the difference between a complaint that goes somewhere and one that stalls.
- The lease, including anything you signed separately, like an addendum or a fee schedule.
- Dates. When the problem started, when you first reported it, and every time since.
- Your written requests. Texts, emails, portal tickets. If you have only ever asked in person or by phone, send one written request now so a record exists from today forward.
- Photos or video, dated, of anything physical.
- The amounts, if money is involved, and what you were told each charge was for.
- Names. The landlord, the management company, the individual you have been dealing with.
If you have been asking verbally for months, you do not have a record of asking. That is the most common gap, and it is fixable in ten minutes.
I called and nothing happened
This is a normal outcome, not a sign you did it wrong.
If it's a conditions problem and the inspection produced violations that the owner ignored, go back to Inspectional Services — an unresolved violation is a live enforcement matter and the follow-up is on them, but they need to know it wasn't fixed.
If it's a fee or deposit problem and mediation went nowhere, the remaining routes are legal ones: small claims for smaller amounts, or Housing Court. Both are worth a conversation with legal aid before you file rather than after.
And if you are getting nowhere everywhere, that is the point to call a tenant-rights attorney or a legal aid organization rather than another agency. Some problems are not administrative problems.
Where this stops being general advice
This article describes which offices handle which categories of problem. It can't tell you what your specific situation is, and several of the questions renters most want answered depend on facts we can't see:
- Whether your particular problem is a code violation, a consumer protection matter, or neither.
- Anything about an active or threatened eviction, including how long you have.
- Whether to withhold rent, put it in escrow, or repair and deduct. These are real remedies in Massachusetts and they have real preconditions. Renters lose cases by using them incorrectly, and this page is not going to walk you through them.
For any of those, talk to someone: the Office of Housing Stability, MassLegalHelp, Greater Boston Legal Services, or a tenant-rights attorney. Most of that help is free.
Frequently asked questions
Who do I call if my landlord won't make a repair? Boston Inspectional Services, or your town's board of health. They enforce the State Sanitary Code. The Attorney General's office does not handle repair and condition complaints.
Who do I call about a security deposit I didn't get back? The Attorney General's Consumer Advocacy & Response Division, at 617-727-8400. Deposits and fees are consumer matters and this is the right channel.
Does it cost anything to file a complaint with the Attorney General? No. Filing is free, and you do not need a lawyer to do it.
Will the Attorney General take my case? Not as your lawyer. The office mediates disputes and uses complaints to identify patterns across the state, which is what leads to enforcement actions against repeat offenders.
My landlord says I have to move out. Is that an eviction? Not by itself. Only a court can order you to leave, through a process called Summary Process that starts with a Summons and Complaint. If you have been told to go, get advice quickly.
How long does any of this take? Longer than you want. Inspections are the fastest route for a physical problem. Complaint mediation takes weeks or months, and enforcement actions take far longer.
What if I live in public or subsidized housing? Contact the Boston Housing Authority. Assisted housing runs on a separate system with its own complaint and grievance procedures.
How we sourced this
The scope of each office comes from the offices themselves: the Attorney General's Consumer Advocacy & Response Division and its Guide to Landlord and Tenant Rights, Boston's Inspectional Services and Office of Housing Stability, and MassLegalHelp on repairs and conditions.
The enforcement figures come from the Attorney General's own announcement of the Green Ocean Property Management settlement. We cite it as a public enforcement action on the state's own account of it.
Phone numbers and departmental responsibilities change. Check the linked pages before relying on a number here.
This article is informational and isn't legal advice.