Landlord Atlas

What does Rhode Island law require a landlord to repair?

Verified August 30, 2026 All Rhode Island topics →

Rhode Island requires a landlord to comply with building and housing codes affecting health and safety, make all repairs needed to keep the premises fit and habitable, keep common areas clean and safe, maintain the supplied electrical, plumbing, heating and air conditioning facilities, provide waste receptacles, supply running water and hot water at all times and reasonable heat between October 1 and May 1, and carry at least $100,000 of general liability insurance with a copy of the declaration page given to the tenant.

Cited to R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-18-22 (landlord to maintain premises) (a)-(c) and 20 more cited sources · Verified August 30, 2026

The concrete numbers live in a second title: at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit measured 18 inches above the floor, and a municipal code applies instead where it is more restrictive. On written notice the landlord has twenty days to cure, with the tenancy ending on a date not less than thirty days after receipt if it is not fixed, and fourteen days' notice ends it if the same problem recurs within six months. A tenant may repair and deduct where the reasonable cost is less than $500 in the aggregate per year, and for a failure of heat, water or another essential service may buy substitute service and deduct the cost with no cap, claim the drop in fair rental value, or take substitute housing rent-free, with attorney's fees in every case. Rhode Island has no tenant-initiated rent escrow; rent goes into court only if a judge orders it inside a case the landlord filed. Retaliation is barred, with a defined six-month presumption and remedies worth the greater of three months' rent or treble damages plus fees.

Rhode Island habitability & repairs at a glance

Where the duty comes from Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it
Duty source details The duty comes from R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-18-22 in the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and it stands alone. The chapter states its own displacing effect: the principles of law and equity supplement its provisions unless displaced by them, and the chapter controls over the neighbouring landlord-tenant chapters of the same title, with an express instruction that no part of it is to be treated as impliedly repealed by later legislation where that reading can reasonably be avoided. On the landlord's maintenance duty the chapter is comprehensive, so it displaces. Rhode Island does have a judge-made implied warranty of habitability, but it belongs to a different body of law and a different pair of parties: it runs from a builder-vendor to the buyer of a new or under-construction house, the Supreme Court refused to extend it to a used house sold by a non-builder in 1978, and it restated the doctrine in those same builder-vendor terms as recently as 2023. It has never been a landlord's duty to a tenant.
Who is covered Statewide — no coverage split
Where the repair standards live More than one source does real work — the details on this page say which
What must be kept in repair Rhode Island's standards sit in two titles and neither is complete without the other. Section 34-18-22(a) requires the landlord to comply with applicable building and housing codes affecting health and safety; make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises fit and habitable; keep all common areas clean and safe; maintain in good and safe working order all electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating, air conditioning and other facilities and appliances, including elevators, that the landlord supplies or must supply; provide and maintain waste receptacles and conveniences as required by § 45-24.3-6 and arrange removal; supply running water and reasonable hot water at all times as required by § 45-24.3-7 and reasonable heat as required by § 45-24.3-9 between October 1 and May 1; and carry general liability insurance of at least $100,000 for people injured on the premises through the landlord's negligence, delivering the carrier's declaration page to the tenant with the lease and again at every renewal. The three cross-references are where the concrete numbers live, in the Housing Maintenance and Occupancy Code: heating facilities capable of heating habitable rooms to at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit measured 18 inches above the floor under average winter conditions, with unvented flame space heaters prohibited; a kitchen sink properly connected to an approved water supply providing an adequate amount of heated and unheated running water under pressure at all times, storage and food-preparation surfaces, a cooking stove, a refrigerator keeping food between 32 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit, a flush water closet and lavatory basin in a non-habitable room, a private room with a bathtub or shower, and dual means of egress with at least six feet six inches of headroom for units above the first floor. That code also allocates duties the tenant-facing chapter never mentions: the owner of a dwelling with four or more units must supply refuse containers while in one-, two- and three-family dwellings that falls on the occupant, screens and storm windows become the occupant's to maintain once installed for a season absent a written agreement, and extermination falls on the owner where the infestation is owner-caused, reaches two or more units, or affects shared parts. Two of the pointers in § 34-18-22(a) end with the words or applicable local codes if more restrictive, so the operative floor is the higher of the state minimum and the municipal code. Where the duty to comply with codes is greater than any other duty in the subsection, the section directs that the landlord's duty be measured by the codes duty.
Heat standard type A duty to supply heat or maintain temperatures while the unit is occupied
Heat standard details The landlord must supply reasonable heat between October 1 and May 1, and the standard the duty points to is a number rather than a word: heating facilities must be properly installed, maintained in safe and working condition, and capable of safely and adequately heating all habitable rooms, bathrooms and water closet compartments to at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit measured 18 inches above the floor under average winter conditions. The state standard is framed as a capability of the equipment while the landlord's own duty is framed as supplying the heat, so both halves have to be read together. Unvented flame space heaters are prohibited, and approved portable electric heaters are acceptable only where they meet the same standard. The duty does not apply where the building is not required by law to be equipped for the purpose, or where the unit is built so that heat or hot water is generated by an installation within the tenant's exclusive control supplied by a direct public utility connection. A more restrictive municipal code displaces the state minimum.
Headline repair day count 20 days
Notice and repair-window rules Rhode Island runs on two numbers and neither states the rule alone. Where the landlord fails to comply with the rental agreement or with § 34-18-22 in a way materially affecting health and safety, the tenant delivers a written notice specifying the acts and omissions constituting the breach and stating that the rental agreement will terminate on a date not less than thirty days after receipt of the notice if the breach is not remedied in twenty days. The cure period is twenty days; the termination date is at least thirty days out. If the breach is remediable and the landlord adequately remedies it before the date in the notice, the agreement does not terminate. Where substantially the same act or omission recurs within six months of a notice, the tenant may terminate on at least fourteen days' written notice specifying the breach and the termination date. A tenant may not terminate for a condition caused by the deliberate or negligent act or omission of the tenant, a member of the tenant's family, or another person on the premises with the tenant's consent. The repair-and-deduct track uses the same twenty days measured from the tenant's written notice of intention to correct, with an emergency branch that has no day count at all, and the essential-services track replaces the clock with a reasonable-notice standard.
Repair and deduct Yes — authorized by statute — Limit: The reasonable cost of compliance must be less than $500 in the aggregate per year. Both halves of that changed on January 1, 2024: before then the text read less than $125, and it carried no aggregation or annual qualifier at all, so the amendment both quadrupled the ceiling and turned a per-repair limit into an annual budget that a tenant can exhaust. Older sources still show $125. — The remedy covers only some of the landlord's duties — the codes duty, the fit-and-habitable duty, the working-facilities duty, the waste-receptacle duty and the water-and-heat duty. Common areas and the liability-insurance duty are outside it. The tenant must notify the landlord of an intention to correct the condition at the landlord's expense; the landlord must then fail to comply within twenty days, or fail to demonstrate ongoing, good faith efforts to comply, or, in an emergency, either be unreachable or fail to comply as promptly as conditions require; and the tenant must submit an itemized statement of the cost or the fair and reasonable value of the repairs. The work must be done in a skilled manner and in compliance with applicable state and local codes, but Rhode Island puts no restriction on who does it and gives the landlord no right to choose the repairer. The remedy is unavailable where the condition was caused by the deliberate or negligent act or omission of the tenant, a member of the tenant's family, or another person on the premises with the tenant's consent, and a tenant who proceeds under the essential-services section may not also use this one for that breach.
Rent withholding or escrow Only on conditions that commonly defeat it — see this page — How: withholding raised as a defense once the landlord sues — Rhode Island has no tenant-initiated escrow and no statutory right to withhold rent, and it should not be described as an escrow state: nothing lets a tenant deposit rent with a court or agency before the landlord goes to court. What exists is defensive. In an action for possession based on nonpayment, or an action for rent while the tenant is in possession, the tenant may counterclaim for any amount recoverable under the rental agreement or the chapter, and the court may from time to time order the tenant to pay all or part of the accrued and accruing rent into court. The court then determines what each party is owed, pays the party owed a net amount first from the money paid in and the balance from the other party, and enters judgment for the tenant in the possession action if no rent remains due. The pay-in is discretionary, not automatic, and it exists only inside litigation the landlord started. A tenant no longer in possession may counterclaim without paying anything in. The risk running the other way is real and should be weighed before withholding: if the tenant's defense or counterclaim is frivolous or without any basis in fact, the landlord may recover reasonable attorney's fees.
Termination over habitability failures Yes — a statute states the right — The general route is the § 34-18-28 notice: written notice specifying the breach and setting a termination date not less than thirty days after receipt, with the agreement ending on that date unless the landlord cures within twenty days, and a fourteen-day notice where substantially the same problem recurs within six months. Fire and casualty are handled separately and faster. Where the unit or premises are damaged or destroyed by fire or casualty to an extent that substantially impairs enjoyment of the unit, the tenant may vacate immediately and then notify the landlord in writing within fourteen days of an intention to terminate, in which case the agreement ends as of the date of vacating; or, if continued occupancy is lawful, the tenant may vacate only the part rendered unusable, in which case liability for rent is reduced in proportion to the diminution in the fair rental value. That proportional reduction is the one abatement in Rhode Island law that needs no notice period, no landlord cure window and no court order. On any termination the landlord must return all recoverable security and prepaid rent, and after a fire or casualty the accounting is made as of the date of the fire or casualty. A tenant who elects the essential-services remedies may not also terminate under the general section for that same breach.
Essential-service remedies Yes — distinct statutory remedies for essential-service failures — Where the landlord willfully or negligently fails to supply heat, running water, hot water, electric, gas or other essential service, the tenant gives reasonable notice specifying the breach — Rhode Island states no hour or day count here, it removes the clock — and may then take one of three routes. The tenant may take reasonable and appropriate measures to secure reasonable amounts of the service during the noncompliance and deduct the actual and reasonable costs from the periodic rent, with no dollar cap. Or the tenant may recover damages based on the diminution in the fair rental value of the unit, fair rental value being a defined term meaning rent comparable to other rental properties of similar size and condition in the contiguous neighbourhood. Or the tenant may procure reasonable substitute housing for the period of noncompliance, in which case the tenant is excused from paying rent for that period and may additionally recover the cost or fair and reasonable value of the substitute housing up to an amount equal to the periodic rent. In any case under this section the tenant may recover reasonable attorney's fees. Rights do not arise until the tenant has given notice, and the section does not apply where the tenant's own side caused the condition. Electing this section forecloses the general termination-and-damages section and the repair-and-deduct section for that breach. Where the landlord is the one interrupting the service, § 34-18-34 applies instead and is worth far more: unlawful removal or exclusion of the tenant, or willfully diminishing services by interrupting heat, running water, hot water, electric, gas or other essential service, lets the tenant recover possession or terminate and, either way, recover not more than three months' periodic rent or threefold the actual damages, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney's fees.
Retaliation protection Protected by a general retaliation statute — Six months, and it operates as an evidentiary presumption rather than a deadline. In an action by or against the tenant, evidence of a complaint made within six months before the alleged act of retaliation creates a presumption that the landlord's conduct was retaliatory. Two qualifications decide cases. The presumption does not arise if the tenant made the complaint after notice of a proposed rent increase or diminution of services, so a complaint that follows the increase notice earns no help — though the claim itself survives, because the presumption is an aid to proof and not the cause of action. And the statute defines the word: a presumption means the trier of fact must find the presumed fact unless and until evidence is introduced that would support a finding of its nonexistence. That is a burden on the landlord to produce contrary evidence, not a burden to disprove retaliation. — A landlord who retaliates by increasing rent, decreasing services, or bringing or threatening a possession action owes the tenant the remedies of § 34-18-34 — recovery of possession or termination, plus not more than three months' periodic rent or threefold the actual damages, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney's fees — and the tenant also has a defense in any retaliatory action for possession. The landlord may still bring a possession action in three situations: where the code violation was caused primarily by lack of reasonable care by the tenant's side; where the tenant is in default in rent; or where compliance with the code or another public action such as eminent domain requires alteration, remodeling or demolition that would effectively deprive the tenant of the use of the unit and the municipality has met its relocation requirements. Bringing one of those actions does not release the landlord from liability for damages for its own noncompliance. From July 1, 2026 one new express carve-out applies: a landlord who replaces a tenant-installed lock of inferior quality, or seeks reimbursement for it, is deemed not to be retaliating. — Four acts, and the fourth is open-ended: complaining to a governmental agency charged with enforcing a building or housing code about a violation applicable to the premises that materially affects health and safety; complaining to the landlord of a violation of the landlord's maintenance duties; organizing or becoming a member of a tenants' union or similar organization; and availing oneself of any other lawful rights and remedies. That last category means a tenant who uses any of the chapter's other remedies — repair and deduct, the essential-services routes, a counterclaim — is protected without having to fit one of the named boxes.
Damages, penalties, and defenses For general noncompliance with the rental agreement or the maintenance duty, the tenant may recover actual damages and obtain injunctive relief, and that remedy is in addition to the right to terminate. Attorney's fees are where Rhode Island's structure rewards choosing the right section. Fees for general noncompliance require the landlord's noncompliance to be willful, and willful is a defined term in the chapter meaning an act performed intentionally, knowingly and purposely, not accidentally or inadvertently and without justifiable excuse — a demanding standard. Fees under the essential-services section carry no wilfulness requirement at all and are available in any case under it, so a tenant with a heat or water failure is generally better off electing that section, and the election is exclusive. The ouster and service-diminution section carries the largest figure in the chapter, the greater of three months' periodic rent or treble actual damages plus fees, and it is reachable directly or through a retaliation claim. Deliberate use of a prohibited lease clause adds actual damages plus up to three months' rent and fees. Running the other way, a frivolous or baseless tenant defense or counterclaim exposes the tenant to the landlord's reasonable attorney's fees, and the landlord has a mirror-image repair remedy: where the tenant's own breach materially affects health and safety and the tenant fails to act as promptly as conditions require in an emergency or within twenty days of written notice, the landlord may enter, do the work in a skilled manner and bill the actual and reasonable cost as rent on the next rent day, with no cap on the amount. Both sides have a duty to mitigate damages. The landlord's stated defenses across these sections are conditions caused by the deliberate or negligent act or omission of the tenant, the tenant's family or someone on the premises with the tenant's consent, and the absence of the notice each remedy requires.
Can the duty be waived or shifted A delegation provision reaches beyond the usual single-family limits
Waiver and delegation rules Rhode Island bars waiver and then pays the tenant for a landlord who tries it. Section 34-18-17(a) forbids a rental agreement providing that the tenant waives or forgoes rights or remedies under the chapter, authorizes anyone to confess judgment, agrees to pay the landlord's attorney's fees inconsistent with the chapter, or agrees to exculpate or limit the landlord's liability arising under law or to indemnify the landlord for it. A prohibited provision is unenforceable, and where the landlord deliberately uses an agreement containing provisions known to be prohibited the tenant may recover actual damages plus up to three months' periodic rent and reasonable attorney's fees. Section 34-18-18 separately forbids any rental agreement, assignment, conveyance, trust deed or security instrument permitting the receipt of rent free of the obligation to comply with § 34-18-22(a), which since January 1, 2022 includes the insurance duty. Section 34-18-13 lets a court refuse to enforce an unconscionable rental agreement or clause, and unusually it reaches settlements too, so a settlement in which a party waived a claim or right under the chapter can be reviewed as unconscionable when made. Against all that, § 34-18-22(c) does let the landlord and tenant of any dwelling unit agree in writing that the tenant will perform specified repairs, maintenance tasks, alterations and remodeling, on three conditions: the agreement is entered into in good faith, set out in a writing signed by the parties and supported by adequate consideration; the work is not necessary to cure noncompliance with the codes duty; and the agreement does not diminish or affect the landlord's obligation to other tenants. There is no single-family limit on that clause and no dollar limit, so the shift is available in a building of any size. From July 1, 2026 a second, section-specific bar applies: a waiver of the new survivor early-termination and lock-change sections is void and unenforceable.
Leading court decisions Sousa v. Albino, 120 R.I. 461, 388 A.2d 804 (1978) — Held that Rhode Island's implied warranty of habitability does not apply to a used house sold by a person who was not its builder, and declined to expand the doctrine. The court described the warranty as one a builder-vendor gives when selling a house, new or under construction, that the construction has been or will be done in a workmanlike manner and the dwelling will be reasonably fit for human habitation, and noted that courts recognizing the warranty have almost uniformly limited it to buyers of new homes suing builder-vendors. The decision matters here for what it shows the doctrine is not: it is a rule about buying a house, not about renting one. • Premier Land Development, Inc. v. Kishfy, Supreme Court Nos. 2021-72-Appeal and 2021-73-Appeal (R.I. Jan. 11, 2023) — Restated the implied warranty of habitability in builder-vendor terms and refused to apply it where the contractor was neither the builder nor the seller of an existing house and was engaged to complete renovations to an existing structure. It is the court's most recent statement of the doctrine, and it neither mentions a lease, a landlord, a tenant, nor the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, which is why a landlord's maintenance duty in Rhode Island rests on the statute alone.
Local rules Local codes are built into the state duty rather than displaced by it. Two of the pointers in § 34-18-22(a) — waste receptacles and the water-and-heat standards — apply the state minimum or applicable local codes if more restrictive, so the binding floor in any Rhode Island city or town is the higher of the two, and the codes duty itself reaches any law, ordinance or governmental regulation concerning fitness for habitation or the construction, maintenance, operation, occupancy, use or appearance of the premises. Local enforcement also triggers a duty the chapter states directly: a landlord cited by a state or local minimum housing code enforcement agency must deliver a copy of the notice of violation to each residential tenant of the affected building within thirty days of receiving it, unless the violations are corrected to the agency's satisfaction inside that period, and must tell a prospective tenant about any outstanding minimum housing code violations on the building before entering into a rental agreement.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Rhode Island Habitability & Repair Laws (verified August 30, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/habitability/rhode-island/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Notes and caveats

Common questions: Rhode Island habitability & repairs

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Does Rhode Island have an implied warranty of habitability?
Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it. The duty comes from R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-18-22 in the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and it stands alone. The chapter states its own displacing effect: the principles of law and equity supplement its provisions unless displaced by them, and the chapter controls over the neighbouring landlord-tenant chapters of the same title, with an express instruction that no part of it is to be treated as impliedly repealed by later legislation where that reading can reasonably be avoided.
How long does a landlord have to make repairs in Rhode Island?
20 days. Rhode Island runs on two numbers and neither states the rule alone. Where the landlord fails to comply with the rental agreement or with § 34-18-22 in a way materially affecting health and safety, the tenant delivers a written notice specifying the acts and omissions constituting the breach and stating that the rental agreement will terminate on a date not less than thirty days after receipt of the notice if the breach is not remedied in twenty days.
Can a tenant repair and deduct in Rhode Island?
Yes — authorized by statute — Limit: The reasonable cost of compliance must be less than $500 in the aggregate per year. Both halves of that changed on January 1, 2024: before then the text read less than $125, and it carried no aggregation or annual qualifier at all, so the amendment both quadrupled the ceiling and turned a per-repair limit into an annual budget that a tenant can exhaust.
Can a tenant withhold rent for repair problems in Rhode Island?
Only on conditions that commonly defeat it — see this page — How: withholding raised as a defense once the landlord sues — Rhode Island has no tenant-initiated escrow and no statutory right to withhold rent, and it should not be described as an escrow state: nothing lets a tenant deposit rent with a court or agency before the landlord goes to court. What exists is defensive.
Can a landlord retaliate against a tenant who complains about repairs in Rhode Island?
Protected by a general retaliation statute — Six months, and it operates as an evidentiary presumption rather than a deadline. In an action by or against the tenant, evidence of a complaint made within six months before the alleged act of retaliation creates a presumption that the landlord's conduct was retaliatory.
Can a lease make the tenant responsible for repairs in Rhode Island?
A delegation provision reaches beyond the usual single-family limits. Rhode Island bars waiver and then pays the tenant for a landlord who tries it. Section 34-18-17(a) forbids a rental agreement providing that the tenant waives or forgoes rights or remedies under the chapter, authorizes anyone to confess judgment, agrees to pay the landlord's attorney's fees inconsistent with the chapter, or agrees to exculpate or limit the landlord's liability arising under law or to indemnify the landlord for it.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of R.I. Gen. Laws chapter 34-18 on the General Assembly's official statutes server, starting from the complete chapter index and taking in the History of Section line for every one of its sections, with §§ 34-18-3, 34-18-4, 34-18-11, 34-18-13, 34-18-15, 34-18-17, 34-18-18, 34-18-22, 34-18-22.1, 34-18-22.2, 34-18-22.3, 34-18-28, 34-18-30, 34-18-31, 34-18-32, 34-18-33, 34-18-34, 34-18-39, 34-18-46 and 34-18-58 read in full; §§ 45-24.3-6, 45-24.3-7 and 45-24.3-9 of the Housing Maintenance and Occupancy Code read in full; the enacted texts of Public Laws 2021 chapter 210, 2023 chapter 286 and 2026 chapters 147 and 148 read from the official session-law texts, whose markup preserves the exact words each act struck and added; all 427 public laws of the 2026 session read for any amendment to chapter 34-18; and the official texts of Sousa v. Albino, 120 R.I. 461 (1978), Mondoux v. Vanghel (2021) and Premier Land Development, Inc. v. Kishfy (2023), each read in full.