I am going to be a junior in college.  My college is rather small and therefore only guarantees housing up until our sophomore year, thus, most students upon junior year get an apartment off campus, it is VERY popular and many of the realtors in the area thrive on the fact that students need to find a place to live. 

My friends and I found a house that was turned into an apartment.  Therefore there were two floors in the same house which resulted in two different leases.  When the 2 girls and myself signed the lease we agreed upon 400 dollars a month, each (for you math geniuses 1200 a month for the apartment) and this included all utilities...heat, water, cable, electricity, basically everything one would need in an apartment...within a 130 dollar cap.  A few weeks later we recieve a letter from the landlord who lives in california (the school is in rhode island) that he has decided that he will no longer pay utilites and the tenants are responsible for this and he is taking 50 dollars a month for the rent making it now 1150.  So I have two questions, 1. if he is going to take it away should he not take 130 dollars off of the rent because thats what he was going to pay for so this is obviously what he expects it would cost us to both heat (oil!!!) and add electricity to the house and 2. can he even do that!?  my friends and i signed a lease that said we would be paying for all those things, the letter he sent did not require us to sign anything so we did not agree upon this new arrangement.  My parents and I are thinking about getting a lawyer involved just to see if this is in fact, legal.  Can the landlord change something without our written consent that he can do so?