Challenging some of Iowa City’s largest landlords in the courtroom, Iowa City Attorney Christopher Warnock has led a career that seeks to define the relationships between landlords and tenants where the government fell short.
“What I’m doing is educating and inspiring people on the stuff that can be changed,” Warnock said. “There’s plenty of stuff the system handles. Well, what I do is come in when the system’s not handling things. When stuff falls between the cracks.”
Starting his law practice in 1990, Warnock worked as a public defender in Washington, D.C., for 25 years. He moved to Iowa City with his wife, who grew up in the area, in 2005, but said he had no intention of getting into landlord-tenant law.
More than half of Iowa City’s properties are occupied by renters due to the high population of students in town. Warnock said he noticed a general disdain in the city toward landlords, but a conversation with his friend Michael Conroy sparked his landlord-tenant practice.
Conroy rented with Apartments Downtown, the largest landlord company in Iowa City, and was charged more than $400 for a carpet cleaning cost he said was unjustified because there were no damages to the carpet when he left. Apartments Downtown argued it was a provision in the lease Conroy entered and was mandatory.
“They were trying to hustle money out of me, and so I didn’t want to pay that,” Conroy said. “I decided I wasn’t going to pay that come hell or high water.”
He brought his concerns to Warnock and, after his review of the lease, Warnock believed the carpet cleaning provision was prohibited by the Iowa Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act.
While he did not have previous experience in the practice, Warnock decided to file a class action suit, which totaled more than 14,000 tenants, against Apartments Downtown for their lease provisions. In 2016, a settlement led to removing the carpet cleaning provision and a monetary award to impacted tenants.
“It was just sort of a process of being on a trapeze and jumping in without having anything to grab onto, and then there would always be something to grab onto,” Warnock said.
Warnock founded the Iowa Landlord Tenant Project to continue representing both landlords and tenants against injustice and argued five landlord-tenant cases in the Iowa Supreme Court, two of which were against Apartments Downtown.
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Currently, Warnock is representing a case under review by the Iowa Supreme Court. Butter vs. Midwest Property Management deals with a dispute between a landlord who repeatedly entered Butter’s residence during their lease period and claims the landlord gave too little notice.
While the landlord has the right to enter the property, Warnock argues it requires some amount of notice and the ability for the tenant to decline a landlord entering the home within reason. He hopes this new case will set a precedent for how landlords can enter their tenants’ homes.
He believes educating residents about their rights as both landlords and tenants is something Johnson County can expand on. Warnock appeared before the Johnson County Board of Supervisors on Feb. 18 to discuss potentially embedding his services within the county.
Supervisor Mandi Remington said she was unsure of using county funds for Warnock because the resources available to tenants are already depleted. Supervisor Lisa Green-Douglass also said there would need to be an open application to pursue a contract with educating residents on landlord-tenant issues.
Supervisor Rod Sullivan said there is room for growth in dealing with landlord-tenant disputes and wants more conversations to take place before they make a decision.
“We know we’ve got a lot of issues in this county with landlord-tenant relationships,” Sullivan said. “I don’t think it hurts for us to consider some things.”
Looking over his career, Warnock said he believes anyone can make social change through finding opportunities where they can. For him, it was by representing landlords and tenants.
“It was never about fighting landlords,” Warnock said. “It’s about inspiring people. It’s basically so everyone can get along, you know. Let’s make this work.”