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Ok so I have lived in the same apartment my entire life. It is a very old building (100+ years), and it has many problems. Most of the radiators are broken. They either do no work well, or they are messed up to the point where crazy amounts of steam pour out. The radiator in my living room has been like this for over a year now. It had even caused mold to grow on the walls, and most of the paint has chipped, and is beginning to fall. Almost all of our windows are broken (won't open at all, or don't shut all the way). Our neighbors upstairs have a washing machine (which they were told they could not have. This occasionally causes leaks in our kitchen, and has created a yard long "gash" in our ceiling. There are also about 10 people living in that apartment (fairly small 3 BR). They have kids living there ranging from about two to 26. They recently asked my landlord if they could pull up their carpeting, and put tiles down. I happened to move my bedroom into a different room at the same time. I started o hear banging, stomping, rolling above my head. I wanted to pull my hair out! I tried to ignore it, thinking I was just being a diva. It became to much, and I spoke to my LL. He was the one who told them it was ok to tile their floors!. I don't know about anyone else, but I would never have allowed that. I have spoken to him 3 times, nothing has changed. The nail in the coffin came when I got home late last night, and saw a 6 inch long hole in my BR ceiling. It is right near the radiator, and it must have been leaking the whole day! The only reason my room didn't blow up is because my cats' scratching post absorbed most of the water (now my poor cats can't sit in their favorite spot). I would like to know if I should even speak to my landlord, or just try and get an inspector to come? I am only 19, and I live with my parents. I am planning on moving out in a few years, but this is disgusting and unacceptable living conditions. My family fell on some hard times, and we fell a little behind in the rent. My mother plans on giving him the back rent in February, but should we withhold it till he repairs everything? Should I contact housing regulations. (As I type this, the dripping noise is getting worse from my ceiling). I am at my wits end, and I have no idea what course of action I should take.
Your parents are probably the lease holders and they need to address the issue with the LL. You can have your parents write a letter to the LL and sned it certified return receipt to notify the LL of the issues. Follow the proper proceedures. Also, your parents being behind in the rent may or may not cause the LL to drag his/her feet in repairs. Get up to date on the rent and then write the letters. ERrr.....your parents who hold the lease need to take the action, not you.
First of all since you and/or your parents haven't paid all rent, that leaves not many options open.
You can pay rent into the court registry and demand repairs to take place but no judge will be lienent to tenants who are not paying on time...First you need to catch up and than complain...and move which to me is the best option but probably hard to get another rental with your history (parents)
What state do you live in? You can help your parents with this situation by finding out what the state and city laws ( if any) are for your area. If you tell me what state you live in I will try to help you find the laws and resources if any exist to try and get these problems taken care of.
Do your parents have a lease or are they renting month-to-month? If the later, the landlord could ask them to leave with a 30 day notice if he doesn't like how they go about addressing this problem. He could even evict if they have a lease and fall too far behind on the rent.
We live in Brooklyn. My parents have a 2 year lease at the moment. They only fell behind about one and a half months worth of rent. My mom recently became full time at her job, and we discussed this with the LL. He sent someone to look around the apartment, and the guy just shook his head and said the condition of the apartment wasn't good at all, and it needed to be corrected right away. It has been 2 weeks since that happened. We plan on withholding the rent, and make him do the repairs before we give him all of the backrent. We may have been wrong for missing some of our rent, but he had known about some of the conditions before we even fell behind. There were some minor things that were annoying, but livable with, so we just hoped he would eventually come around and fix everything. I am actually leaving on my own in the summer, so it will eventually become my parents problem, not mine.
We live in Brooklyn. My parents have a 2 year lease at the moment. They only fell behind about one and a half months worth of rent. My mom recently became full time at her job, and we discussed this with the LL. He sent someone to look around the apartment, and the guy just shook his head and said the condition of the apartment wasn't good at all, and it needed to be corrected right away. It has been 2 weeks since that happened. We plan on withholding the rent, and make him do the repairs before we give him all of the backrent. We may have been wrong for missing some of our rent, but he had known about some of the conditions before we even fell behind. There were some minor things that were annoying, but livable with, so we just hoped he would eventually come around and fix everything. I am actually leaving on my own in the summer, so it will eventually become my parents problem, not mine.
If you do not mind a hostile relationship with your neighbor call 311 and they will send an inspector out and fine the landlord until he fixes everything. I assume your parents are rent stabilized so this means you will have to call 311 to get anything fixed.
You will not be able to withold back rent. A better idea is to pay the back rent a couple days before the new rent is due and then withold the new rent(March), if you have fullfilled all the criteria to withold rent, and the repair qualifies as something to withold rent over.
Do not withhold rent unless the apartment is legally "uninhabitable". Also, if they should try to evict you for complaining, they can't do that either. It's called retaliation and frowned upon. Only 1 1/2 months behind is not too bad. Get caught up on the rent.
Withholding rent for repairs is kind of apples and oranges - unless the situation is extreme, unhealthy, uninhabitable one really doesn't have much bearing on the other.
I do agree with you 100% that the repairs should be done. However, it seems that your parents have let these things go un-repaired for a long time, and never done much about it w/ the landlord so they really need to step up and handle the entire situation from rent to demanding repairs.
What state do you live in? You can help your parents with this situation by finding out what the state and city laws ( if any) are for your area. If you tell me what state you live in I will try to help you find the laws and resources if any exist to try and get these problems taken care of.
Do your parents have a lease or are they renting month-to-month? If the later, the landlord could ask them to leave with a 30 day notice if he doesn't like how they go about addressing this problem. He could even evict if they have a lease and fall too far behind on the rent.
Since the OP lives in a 100 year old building the unit is likely stabilized which means the landlord must renew the lease forever unless some certain criteria are met( not a primary residence, rent reaches over $2000 and an income criteria and some other things).
Since the OP lives in a 100 year old building the unit is likely stabilized which means the landlord must renew the lease forever unless some certain criteria are met( not a primary residence, rent reaches over $2000 and an income criteria and some other things).
Depends on where she lives. None of that applies in Texas.
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