Need an advice on illegal apartment conversions (apartments, lease)

[abedenko]

Hi,
maybe you will give me an advise.

My two years lease expired on 4/30/07 and landlord is not in rush to extend it, nor find another tenant. When I wrote a letter to her, she promised me to mail me an extention, which i am waiting for a month now, and I called her several times about it. And then I found that on the DOB website, our lovely building (that used to be a factory, but was nicely renovated into apartments, has a lot of violations, mainly for converting into residence, and my unit 2-D even mentioned there. I could not believe my eyes.
What should I do? At this point I have not mailed them July rent, since I don't have papers, and they never provide me with receipts for rent payments, I do not want to move, love the area, it is bustling now with hipsters much more than 2 years ago, people walking, etc. I love the apartment. My question, do I, as a tenant, need to worry about those violations and that one day the city decides to crack down and simply seals the building? Did it ever happen?

['thaDOME']

Originally Posted by abedenko

Hi,
maybe you will give me an advise.

My two years lease expired on 4/30/07 and landlord is not in rush to extend it, nor find another tenant. When I wrote a letter to her, she promised me to mail me an extention, which i am waiting for a month now, and I called her several times about it. And then I found that on the DOB website, our lovely building (that used to be a factory, but was nicely renovated into apartments, has a lot of violations, mainly for converting into residence, and my unit 2-D even mentioned there. I could not believe my eyes.
What should I do? At this point I have not mailed them July rent, since I don't have papers, and they never provide me with receipts for rent payments, I do not want to move, love the area, it is bustling now with hipsters much more than 2 years ago, people walking, etc. I love the apartment. My question, do I, as a tenant, need to worry about those violations and that one day the city decides to crack down and simply seals the building? Did it ever happen?

You got all your answers already. Probably should not pay the rent (may lost money that you'll have to go to court to fight for espically hard to recover with no rent receipt unless you pay by checks) and start stacking away that rent money and look for elsewhere. Never know when the city my require people to move.

[the?oftheday]

Why do tenants have to or seem to be the blame for a misunderstanding on codes for the Landlord VS the City, I was renting an illegal apartment for 9 months when I finally called the city and had it inspected and came to find out I was right that the basement apartment was in fact illegal and now she is blaming me for moving without me giving her notice personally, but the city asked me to move..?