RPA Tenant Rights Blog » Frustrated Renter

bedbugs

missy — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 12:56:57 +0000

I moved into this apartment about 3 months ago. I have 2 daughters which one started getting these bites which doctor said was budbugs. I notified the landlord but they brushed it off. Now apartment next door complained so they sent in bug people and sure enough they are so bad that you can see them. They sprayed and wanted us to throw out all of our furniture. I can’t afford new furniture. we have so many bites that we are scared. I did not have them in my prev. apartment and I seeked medical advice and been treating bites. Now the landlord says they are comming back in 30 days and if bugs are still here they are kicking all tentants out and letting apartments stay empty to let bugs die. iI can’t afford another deposit on new apartment pus utility deposits. I have two kids and work part time and living pay check to pay check. Help what can I do?

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am i responsible or is the land lord?

Matthew — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 00:48:59 +0000

Are ac went out and we asked them to come fix it they put a new air filter in and said it should start working give it a few hours. We did so and told them it still wasnt working theyt had a guy come out and look at it but he worked on the wrong unit so we went back to the office and let them now it still wasnt working and they sent another guy out. This guy went all thought the system and got it working and we where very happy. We live in a all bills paied apartment with a cap of 100 dollers for electricty anything over we have to pay. 1 month after fixing the ac we went over 50 on are electrcity. This month 2 months from them fixing the ac we went over 100 on are electrict. Perior to them working on the ac we only went over 1 time each month it goes up now since they fixed the ac. After recieveing the 100 doller bill we shut everything done like we would not be home. Walked out to are meter and noticed it was just spinning very rapidely so we went to the office and asked them to have it checked so they sent one of there employees to check it and he said that the ac needed ferion in it and that is why are electricy would be high. Are question is are we responsible for this outradious electric bill or are they?

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Is the landlord responsible for thse repairs?

John Reyes — Sun, 26 Apr 2015 00:30:41 +0000

Hi, i live in Lowell,ma. I was wondering, my kitchen counter is falling apart its splitting has a bow in it from water damage he never sealed around the sink.

Is my landlord req by law to fix this issue?

I call and call he tells me we will get to it tells me a day he will send someone in and then nothing.

Also i know if he provides a fridge he has to repair it if it breaks but, is it the same with an a/c? The a/c is built in to the wall and mine broke

i ask him to repair it and gives me the run around and the paint job is horrible he did not repaint after the last tenant left.

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I renewed my lease, but I want out.

Raphael DaCosta — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 23:36:27 +0000

Hello,

My lease will be up on January 18th of 2011 and I made the mistake of signing the new lease agreement. My wife and I have decided to rent a house, so I spoke with the property manager that I no longer want to renew my lease. According to her, once I signed, I am responsible for paying for the 6 months (Lenght of my renewed lease) in order to move out without any penalties in my credit. I am extremely disappointed by the fact that I have been a tenant there for over 4 years. the day I notified her still within the 60 notice to vacate, but also, the property manager states that it no longer applies to me simply by the fact that I am still living on the same apartment and that I already signed the new lease agreement. Also, the lease is on both my name and my wife’s name, but I am the only one who signed it. I live in a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom aptartment and need to move to a house so I can accomodate 10 people, which I know that the apartment will not allow.

Am I really entitled to this new lease even tho I haven’t moved in?

Thank you in advance,

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problem with landlord repair

denver renter — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 11:32:10 +0000

I am a renter and my house is in foreclosure so I pay rent to a receivership who acts as my landlord and has taken over the lease. He will not repair a broken dishwasher and says this is my responsibility although I find no such thing in my lease except in cases of negligence for renter to be responsible for repairs. Please advice

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Can My Landlord Do This?

Tamara — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 23:18:51 +0000

So I rent from a landlady who has a 20+ yr old delinquent daughter. The landlady cannot (or does not) want to deal with her daughter’s problems so the landlady moved her daughter right next to me and my fiance in our complex. This daughter siphons electricity and cable from the other tenants and from the building itself; she smokes so much inside the apartment that the smell creeps into our apartment either through vents or through the attic and makes our entire apartment smell like an ashtray; she feeds, coddles and lets stray cats into her apartment but refuses to take any responsibility for them when they become troublesome; she is constantly spilling trash that is left out in her front hallway and due to the wind tunnel we have through our complex, the trash ends up in front of our door; she wakes us up at all hours of the night because she has drunken fights with the random men she brings home; and just this morning, my fiance and I were woken up by the sound of a dog barking and loud yelling, we go outside to see what was going on and there were cops swarming the complex and a K-9 unit forcefully removing one of the random guys she brought home! This was scary as he**! Our landlady knows that these things happen either because I tell her or they have happened before. So the landlady does nothing to improve the situation. She even bad mouths her daughter to the tenants, shaking her head and rolling her eyes at us because she’s heard it all before! Now my situation is even WORSE because the daughter cracked a vertibre because she was chasing 1 of the stray cats up on out roof. Well now that her back is hurt, our landlady has decided to become Mother of the Year and yelled at me for coming to her with a problem regarding her daughter! I don’t know what to do anymore and we can’t afford to move right now

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Habitable living conditions

Staci — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 11:13:12 +0000

I currently live in a two bedroom house. The only type of heat is a wood fireplace. Some of the windows do not close, open, lock, have no screens, and are broken with tape holding it together.

The doors to the outside have a 1/2 to an 1 inch gap between the floor and the bottom of the door.

In my kitchen, none of the drawers or cabinets close properly and have layers of paint chipping off of them.

The biggest concern in the kitchen is in one of the bottom cabinets has a 6 x 6 inch hole in the bottom straight into dirt!

There is not one fire/smoke detector in the house!

Can someone tell me if any of these issues are considered uninhabitable?

PLEASE HELP ASAP!

Thank you,

Living horribly!

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Landlord Harassment and “Changing her mind”

Amber Webb — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 22:26:04 +0000

Hey, there. I’ll try to shorten this to something as manageable as possible.

My landlady and I have been on uneasy ground for awhile, but since April of this year she has become extremely irrational and uncooperative. In April, I sent our rent out to her on March 30. The latest it could get in was April 3, which (since we live in the same, decent-sized town) should’ve been fine. However, she claimed it took FIVE days and harassed me via text for three days. She then demanded a $59 late fee.

Fast forward. This month, we paid our rent around the same time, but I got tracking on the mail to see if it got in as late as she said. It got in right on time. However, my landlady sent me a letter claiming I violated a clause in our contract but not paying the $59 late fee ASAP super speedy quick and therefore had defaulted on all our payments — including our on-time May rent.

I emailed her about it, trying to figure out what to do, and she told me that if I paid the default ($59) ASAP, "We can still work with you if the default is fixed now." So I let her know I’d get it to her the day of, quickly got the money (I had been paid, woo) drove straight up to her house and knocked on her door to give it to her. No one answered, so I left it under the door, called and emailed her to confirm. She told me she got it, but then exploded at me for coming to her house uninvited and yaddayaddayadda she changed her mind and we STILL had to be out of the house by May 31st because "Just because we CAN work with you doesn’t mean we will."

I have records of her texts to me (she refuses to answer calls or deal with me face to face) and a witness who was with me the day of the late-fee fiasco.

I’m really tired of being harassed by this woman when I have been on-time for my rent except for the month of April, and I am tired of her trying to hold this over my head when she clearly stated that she would work with me if I paid this fee. I feel like she’s making up rules and trying to bully me, and I’m not sure what I can do to protect my rights and keep this house for one more month. Trying to deal with her face-to-face and talk it out is impossible (as she pretends she isn’t home), and she will not speak with me over the phone. I don’t like texting her because I find it unprofessional and she harasses me constantly if I don’t respond immediately to her.

Advice?

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Breaking My Lease

Kissalvoe — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 10:22:10 +0000

I have been with my apartment complex in Albuquerque, NM since May. We signed an 8 month lease and it ends as of January 31st. However, I do not want to stay that long. I don’t feel secure in staying for a few more months.

Several times we have placed work orders for maintenance to fix a door or our ceiling fan (the light no longer worked!). It took 4 weeks for them to even go LOOK at the fan. They said they would replace it the following week but never did. Two weeks later, there was a leak, apparently from our master bathroom toilet, which flooded our apartment and the apartment below us. The call went to the office around 10am. I leave for work at 5am and don’t use that bathroom other than for showers.

THe office never recorded our new contact numbers from months before. They were always able to get ahold of us through our agent/alternate contact, but not on this day! They never notified us of the problem. Maintenance went in the apartment and ruined things with their negligence. They threw wet items all over the bed, onto the living room floor, filled backpacks with expensive electronic equipment and left it in puddles of water.

I didn’t come home til after 6pm and when I did, I had no knowledge of what happened. My apartment was thrown upside down. The carpet was torn up and a blower was running to dry underneath. All of the lights (that worked) and fans in the house had been running all day. All without our knowledge.

I took a complaint to my apartment manager who said it was our fault. The negligence was on OUR part because we “left the water running”. I asked him if I was supposed to shut the water to the toilets off everytime I left the house. He said it was a leak we didn’t report. And why? BECAUSE IT WAS A LEAK WE HAD NO KNOWLEDGE ABOUT. When I left for work that morning, there was nothing out of place. The floor in the bathroom was completely dry. He refuses to take any responsibility for the fact that nobody bothered to contact us, the fact that the maintenance men were negligent and not only ruined things on their own (NOT due to water damage directly from the leak), and that they left all electricity running for 8 hours, using up resources that WE have to pay for.

On top of all of this, and the reason I really don’t want to stay… The master bedroom, where the carpet was lifted for the blower, smells like mold. It’s damp (two weeks later) and smells moldy. The apartment manager refuses to work with us at all. What can I do to either make him work with us or get our of our lease so we can move somewhere SAFE and free of mold?

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Is a broken gas pipe in a fireplace safe?

renting_sucks101 — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 22:07:39 +0000

Hello everyone, so my family and I just moved into a house 2-3 weeks ago. We signed the contract before doing a walk-through (biggest mistake ever…we were moving from out of state and desperate for a place). The day we moved in, the house was horribly dirty…roach feces everywhere with 2 dead roaches in the bathroom. It took them 5 days to install a carbon monoxide detector, the ceiling fan and light in the dining room doesn’t work, shingles are missing on our covered patio (exposing ceiling fan wire to natural elements), and many other issues. Most of these were noted on the inspection sheet. However, after moving in…our landlord told us that the fireplace has a broken gas pipe. They left the key in the ignition (I have a 3 year old that could’ve turned it on) and it hasn’t been cleaned in 11 years…kind of funny considering they used the fireplace as a selling point for the house. And also, none of the electrical outlets in the bathrooms work…I can’t blow-dry my hair or anything like that. I feel that we are paying way too much money for a house that’s broken. We sent a certified letter to the property management demanding a shorter lease or lower rent because we do not feel safe here with the electrical issues and broken gas pipe. They responded by email and told us they would notify the landlords for a roach spray and chimney sweeping. No mention of our demands, electrical issues, broken gas pipe…NOTHING. So what is the next step?? I have called every attorney…fair housing…chamber of commerce…health and safety department. I’m leaving messages constantly with these people and it seems like noone can help us. This is not right at all.

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