Ceiling Collapsed, What Are Our Rights?
A few days ago the ceiling in the living room of my apartment collapsed. I live with roommates and we all rent month-to-month. The roommate who has been here longest collects our rent checks and writes a single check himself to the landlady, who lives in the building and is 83 years old. The collapse…
A few days ago the ceiling in the living room of my apartment collapsed. I live with roommates and we all rent month-to-month. The roommate who has been here longest collects our rent checks and writes a single check himself to the landlady, who lives in the building and is 83 years old.
The collapse was during some especially rainy days, and my room, off the living room, was the most directly affected. When I say collapsed, I don’t mean a little bit of plaster. I mean huge chunks of stucco that shook the wooden floors when they fell. Left a hole of about four feet. Could have very seriously injured someone, and I am not exaggerating on this point. I was home alone. I collected my landlady and my roommates within the hour, and then we were all there to witness how a second huge chunk came crashing down. This was about 6 pm, and the landlady called the maintenance guy she uses for the building. At about 9 pm he arrived to say that he could do nothing that night and that whoever was living in the room off the living room (that would be me) should sleep elsewhere. The landlady refused to put me up in a hotel and since I had nowhere else to go, I camped out in my own room, stepping over the rubble.
There had been water marks in the living room stucco ceiling even before I moved in (about 3 months prior). Within a couple of days of this collapse, my roommates reported that two other rooms in the apartment were experiencing leaks. The landlord apparently knew that these leaks existed (a couple of us are quite new to the apartment) and had done nothing about them. I have heard tell that there had been some issues with the roof when the previous tenants were here, but it seems that the modus operandi of this landlord is to do as little as possible in such circumstances. All indications would suggest that the living room ceiling collapsing is also due to the obviously badly leaky roof. My landlady wants to claim absurdities like: the ceiling collapsed because someone had drilled a hole to install a light fixture (this can’t possibly be the reason, as the light fixture had been installed for many months before the collapse). She has denied the wooden beams underneath the stucco being wet so forcefully and repeatedly, even before anyone suggested this, that it has to make you wonder.
They’ve since slapped on some sheet rock to cover the moldy, wet beams. I don’t care to think about what’s really under there or how long it will be before we see more rot or collapse. As background: this building is filthy and decrepit in every way. The bathroom tiles are falling out, exposing swatches of years-old moldy gunk underneath. No one had taken a vacuum cleaner to the stairwell in years, until I very recently and very loudly complained about it. There is simply NO maintenance of this building, period. In addition, my landlady’s dealings with me are clearly in bad faith. She has often, and absurdly, denied problems which I can plainly see with my own eyes. “I don’t see a water stain there†she answers when it is pointed out to her. Come on!
Clearly I need to move out and quickly. Clearly, I have little faith that issues can be negotiated as though among reasonable adults. My question is: do I actually have to have had a piece of stucco fall on my head in order for the danger to my health and safety to be eminently clear? I feel that some serious abuse is going on here and would like for the landlord, at minimum, to acknowledge the ordeal of the past days by paying my moving expenses to a new place. An inspector came by to see the premises at the stage in the disaster when workers had already scraped off the entire stucco ceiling and left the naked beams above. The landlord was issued a class B violation , and now, as a result, the workers slapped on this layer of sheet rock. Ostensibly, this is supposed to fix the problem and get the inspector to go away.
What I’d like is for the landlord to pay the broker’s fee for my finding a new apartment and the cost of hiring a truck to move my things, so about $3000. Does anyone have any advice for how to achieve this? I’m a pragmatist and would just like to find a way of negotiating my exit out of this nightmare. Clearly the landlord and her family have no intention of paying anything unless they feel some greater financial threat. Advice?
At this point you need to stop expecting LL to do ANYTHING for you, and start being thankful you are month-to-month, not on a yearly lease. Hello? you can leave with 30 days notice with zero hassles of lease obligations. Go find yourself another apartment stat, and chock this experience upto naïveté.
Primary leaseholder is your landlord, not your landlady. And, I would suspect, they are paying considerably less than they charged you, so take it up with them. In all of your outrage about the landlady, why is there none for them? You are, technically, a sublessee of the original tenant. I think (and I could be wrong here, but not sure I am), that you basically have no rights. And you certainly don’t get money back from the landlady.
3k? Yeahright. You and your crew need to stop paying a single penny, move the fuck out and make sure you post the address on every forum so people know to avoid them like the plague.
Instead of trying to shake down the landlady, you should be negotiating something with your roommates. It would seem that the person who actually pays the rent to the landlord would have the most standing. Shouldn’t they be the person seeking compensation?
However, the person who’s been there the longest( and actually pays the landlord the rent) must have known about the conditions as well? Weren’t they the ones that deceived you? Shouldn’t you direct some of your angry toward their deception?
And no, sheetrocking over the problem, even if it looks nice when it’s put up, is NOT going to resolve the underlying water proble. it’ll likely fall down in a week or so.
As a former tenant in a place that had similar issues, I feel your frustration. As a landlord with limited funds, I feel for your landlord, especially since she is quite elderly, and may well be overwhelmed. That said, you should have a safe and up to code home. I think you need to move as well, but you lose me in sympathy in thinking you are entitled to have the landlady pay your moving expenses. As others have said, by paying rent you accepted many of the conditions. Not a collapsed ceiling, but basic building maintainance, etc. Perhaps you can negotiate to not pay your final month or 2 month’s rent, as you look for an apartment and then move, but expecting the landlady to pay you to move is a bit much. If she can’t afford to fix things, where is she supposed to come up with 3 grand to move you out? You may be trying to squeeze water from a stone, and trying to squeeze it out of an 83 year old lady is bad karma. My advice – try to negotiate with her first. If that doesn’t work, do what Bxgrl said.
Yeah. Hate to agree with the landlady, but just because the sheet rock is ugly doesn’t make it the wrong solution. And the ceiling probably DID fall down from drilling. There are precautions usually taken by when drilling into old plaster. Oh, and how often were you guys up on the roof in the hot weather?
You have only lived there for 3 months; it is a share and by your own admission it was “filthy and decrepit in every way”. Have you even paid the landlord $3000? A thousand dollars a month for a disgusting share sounds unlikely, yet you are asking the landlord to give you $3000?
If your safety is your main concern, find another room to rent on Craigslist (broker fee free) and get some friends to help you move out.
Housing court can take months and is not worth the aggravation; use your time, effort and money in finding a better place to live.
Agree with bxgrl above. By leasing you the apartment the landlord gives you an implied a warranty of habitability which basically means that you are entitled to a safe, decent and sanitary apartment. That’s the case even if there is no lease. You could probably take the landlord to court for a rent reduction, but I would say your best option here is to just move out if you can. It seems to me more trouble than its worth to pursue it.