Thanks for sharing your story. I sort of have a card up my sleeve. I reached out to a Pittsburgh newspaper investigations editor when I first started dealing with this. Another tenant & friend of mine also got stiffed upon move-out. As did my downstairs neighbor. No returned deposit, no itemized list of deductions, nada. She let it go, didn't bother to fight after living there 7 years. The other guy did, and his story would make you cringe. It did sour me, but after researching this company & seeing pages and pages of court records with the same story, it charged me up. The paper was doing stories at the time about corrupt landlords & decrepit buildings, & I saw an opportunity. The editor called me the day after I emailed him and we talked for 30 minutes. He was interested, but then the bridge collapsed & their focus diverted. I am hopeful that he will pick it back up & include this company in their next article, as he said he wanted to, particularly since they were evicting tenants for whom their rent was paid by COVID protections for several months, likely illegally. For them to get away with this for more than a decade, seemingly unchecked, something is amiss, & 2 of my former building neighbors are on board with me. Honestly I am exhausted by it & wanted to say to hell with it last night as I was gathering paperwork. What's also motivating me is why my attorney at the time said to me. She was also a real estate agent w/30 years in the business. After reading my lease she said it was one of the 3 worst leases she had ever seen. That it contained terms already struck down by the Supreme Court, including a Confession of Judgement, which is only legal in commercial leases. It says that if I didn't pay rent that they could come into my apartment & confiscate anything they wanted, & that I forfeited my right to object. Lawyer told me this is in commercial leases for people who start a new business, buy a bunch of equipment to run it, and then fail. Landlord can recoup their money by taking said equipment. She recommended I report them to HUD. The reason I left in the first place was they retro billed me for rent -- my lease ended at the end of June, and unlike after my first year there, they did not send me a lease renewal letter. So I paid my July rent as usual. They cashed the check around the 8th. Then on the 27th or 28th I get their lease renewal letter. It says they are increasing my rent by $50/month, and the increase starts July 1st -- they mailed this the day before I got it, so 7/27. It states that I am delinquent by $50 and must pay it immediately before they will even extend my lease. Mind you -- I already paid my June rent in full, & they had cashed my check 3 weeks prior. So now I supposedly owe them $50 for June, plus an additional $50 for July, which is due in 4 or 5 days. This is when I hire the attorney who strongly advises me not to re-sign this lease. She tells me to pay my previously agreed upon rent and to decline to sign the new lease. They send me a second notice a week or so later, this time threatening legal action if I don't pay them the extra $50 for the previous month. I am a mature college graduate & professional with a fair amount legal knowledge. If they think they can pull one over on me, imagine what they are doing to their other tenants? The idea shook me. I cannot in good conscience let it go.

The states law is similar to every other state and it's for the protection of everybody. There's basically no such thing as "small claims court", unless you can reach something which is very specific and fixed in place. I don't know why you'd even assume there was anything for the sheriff to attach on your judgment.