Rights for tenants at will

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Hey BP,

I've got a couple questions regarding tenancy-at-will. A friend of mine lives at home with her family and rather than paying rent, her father (a house painter by profession) paints for several of the landlord's units once or twice a week to make up for the rent. As I understand it, this is a tenancy-at-will.

However, a situation has come up which has concerned her family about their rights as tenants. One of their neighbor's parking spaces sits next to a broken sprinkler that is spraying water onto their car, dirtying it up or perhaps "damaging it" according to the neighbor. This neighbor has decided that he would like to have my friend's parking spot instead.

The landlord is okay with this idea and has mandated that my friend switch parking spots with the neighbor. However, I must concede my friend's point that rather than ruin her personal property instead of this neighbor (who, according to the landlord, "pays a lot of money for rent," which is a poor excuse as he probably saves a lot of money getting free paint jobs on the fly from her father) should instead fix the sprinkler out of his operating budget.

This is for a 13-unit building and my friend and her family have been designated as managers who need to make these sorts of adjustments for the other tenants. As this is a tenancy at will, there is no contract that states they are managers, and whether there was ever an oral agreement or not, her family has never been designated any managerial duties from the onset of their tenancy. They simply inhabit the dwelling as any other tenant. The landlord also countered with a threat by stating that he isn't obligated to give them any parking space at all.

My questions are the following: given their tenancy status, do they have equal rights to stand their ground and not feel obligated to swap spaces with this other tenant? Is a property owner obligated to provide at least one parking space to every tenant in this type of multi-family setup, given that there actually are enough spaces for each unit, or is he able to play favorites and provide two or even three spaces to one unit when there exist enough to cover each individual unit? Lastly, is the landlord even legally justified to inconvenience tenants under a tenancy-at-will arrangement and force them to ruin their vehicle against their desires just to please another tenant who pays rent, since realistically he should repair the sprinkler system?