Bars on first floor?
I live on the first floor of a brownstone. At the back of the apartment there is a door and window to a private garden. The door and the window are GLASS. which means, someone could easily break the glass and unlock any lock I put on the door. is it reasonable to request that…
I live on the first floor of a brownstone. At the back of the apartment there is a door and window to a private garden. The door and the window are GLASS. which means, someone could easily break the glass and unlock any lock I put on the door. is it reasonable to request that my landlord put an iron gate on the window and door? I would venture to say that the neighborhood is not all that safe.
I also disagree with Mrs. Limestone.
How can requesting something be unreasonable?
Not everyone is able to fully consider everything about an apartment during the rental process. Perhaps Mrs. Limestone has forgotten that a renter typically gets a limited amount of time to see a place before they have to move forward or someone else will rent the place.
I guess when you become a LL you forget these things and your reactions become very much by the book.
While it is true that the LL most likely has no legal obligation to provide the security bars, it does not seem like an unreasonable thing to request and discuss.
you must live in bed-stuy
Just have to say, those garden front windows in Brownstones all have ironwork protection on them – original to the house – because, even in 1890, it was considered dumb to have your 1st floor windows easy to break into.
And, if you don’t like the look of cheap window bars on your house, landlord, there are plenty of iron fabricators around who can make something beautiful, like the original old ones.
Get some price quotes yourself first and then go the LL — maybe consiuder paying for 50 or 75% yourself too.
Depends on the type of glass, and the type of door. I have a double-reinforced glass door with double deadbolt locks on my garden door, making the door much more secure than the wooden door I had in a garden brownstone apartment years ago that a thief was able to break through with a crowbar.
i think we are all forgetting that the landlord put a GLASS DOOR leading to the outside. i think this is a huge oversight on his/her part. the landlord must provide basic locks and doors that are safe and a glass door without proper reinforcement (ie bars) is not safe. also, in response to those who said this should be taken care of before signing the lease, we all know that potential tenents are pushed through apts as quickly as possible by brokers/landlords and there is no way that the tenent, who only saw the property once and briefly, can expect to remember all of the detaisl in the apartment and ask for all the necessary upgrades.
I am a landlord and I had a tenant make this request for the garden front windows after she moved in. I was annoyed. She asked many safety questions before signing the lease and then made the request 1 month after she moved in. I had the bars installed although I did not think it was necessary and I do not like the look of them. She of course asked to get out of her lease a couple of months later because she bought a condo. (i did not object.) I think that you should make the calculation before you sign the lease. As for the argument that the landlord is somehow responsible for the tenant’s safety, this is not true. I know of no legal obligation to put bars on the windows for tenants, aside from child safety bars.
What about your safety when it comes to a fire? The Fire Dept frowns on window bar and gated doors for obvious reasons.
From a homeowners/landlord perspective, bars are not worth the hassle. I know several homeowners who have been fined because they have keyed deadbolts on their gated rear doors.
Someone brought up liability issues.
If someone breaks in and steals your stuff that not really the landlord’s problem, he is not liable. That’s what renter’s insurance is for.
Windows and doors with bars put owners in tremendous legal jeopardy. Imagine if a fire breaks out and a tenant can’t escape because the ‘fire exit’ is locked.
And, Mrs. Limestone, wanting to be secure in an apartment is never an unreasonable request, whether it comes before or after the lease is signed – that is pretty basic, however much it might cost.