I know what he's doing is illegal, but I don't know how to confront him about it. I really hate confrontation and I'm not good at this sort of thing. I can't afford a 13% increase, which is triple the annual limit where I live. How do I respond to him? (Serious answers please, no Mao larping.)
Can he kick me out if I don't sign a new lease? I really don't want to be forced out. I'm looking for a new pace now but it's almost impossible to find one that fits my needs in this area (also moving without a car is expensive and time consuming).
I don't know about US laws but I always do this. I check with the tenants org that the contract I'm getting is illegal, play dumb and sign it anyway, then I pretend that the illegal parts don't exist. If they complain and don't want to take my payments, there's a small claims procedure to send them their payments at their cost. If I need repairs and they don't do anything about it, there's a 1 week grace period before I can call someone to fix the place and deduct the cost from the payments. There's nothing they can do.
Trying to call them out would only result in them not renewing.
This is not good to do in the US and could get you in more trouble than refusing to sign.
Courts in the US take the plain text of what people sign pretty seriously
That's good to know,and yet another reason to never set foot there. Hooray for Napoleonic law I guess.