Hello, we currently live in the state of Illinois and have no lease, meaning it's a month-to-month contract. According to the city we live in, it's listed as a single-family dwelling, and my city doesn't recognize that there's an apartment upstairs. I live in Cook County if that helps.
When we moved in the landlord agreed to pay half of the utilities since the house we live in, has an upstairs, and someone lives there. This is not in writing, just an oral agreement.
What our problem is, is that for the past 6 months, we have been responsible for paying the entire utilities, and he has not paid half of anything since March 2010. We pay gas, electricity, water, and cable. The only thing we haven't been responsible for the whole amount is the water bill, as it's in our landlord's name.
Now the man upstairs pays $680 a month in rent, and I guess his agreement with our landlord is that his utilities are included in his rent...plus cable TV. OUR cable TV. The cable company came over since we were having problems with our lines (cable, phone, and internet all in one bundle) and the cable guy told me that the upstairs house is wired using our lines and account. Not only did we not agree to this, but our landlord owns a body shop next door, and HE had a cable line running to his shop!! My landlord brought it upon himself to enter our basement without my knowledge to run cable lines. After I told Comcast to cut it, my landlord screamed at me since everyone else who was stealing our cable, and not paying for it, got cut off.
The same day the Comcast guy left, my neighbor was outside re-rigging the lines since he was upset his cable got cut. He took it upon himself to do it, so I called the police
But what I'm really upset about is that we're pretty behind on rent, and our utilities because of my landlords inability to pay the other half that he agreed orally to pay. He harasses us every Saturday morning for rent money, which 9 out of 10 times we have for him, but we now have a deferred payment on our electric bill, which accumulated to over $1000. Only because our landlord demanded we pay him every week. We are roughly behind on our rent the same amount since some weeks we didn't give him anything to pay these outrageous bills.
When we first moved in, it was totally "do-able" that we could afford our $750/month rent plus only half of the utilities. Our average electric bill in the summer was $300 and gas in the winter is about $300 as well...since we have a boiler. Gas in summer has been about $20-30, and electric in the winter has been about $100 or so.
Not to mention that at the beginning of March, the blower for our boiler was broken and we were out of heat...a total for about a week and a half. He fixed it, but then broke and had to order a new part, which took a week for him to get and install. He didn't offer to get us any space heaters or to relocate us temporarily. And on top of that, he didn't even inform of the neighbor upstairs that the heat was broken, and he was using the oven constantly to heat his apartment. (Fire risk?) We had to borrow space heaters for the last few days that we were out of heat. But prior to that, we were cuddled up under lots of blankets with our dog, who was also freezing cold. It was actually warmer in our fridge, than it was everywhere else in the house.
Our landlord's inability to work with us with our utilities has us increasing debt day by day. And he still demands that we pay him every week (getting sick and tired and stressing us both out over it) and we just can't pay these utilities that the man upstairs has basically been getting for free. Plus, stealing our cable on top of it.
Thank you to anyone who has read this
Your response as to what we can do is GREATLY appreciated.
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