Hello, I live in a building with about 80 residential tenants and the landlord last year tried to increase our rent by 50% when the leaseholder left. I told him that the property had not even been renovated and we didn't even have a real kitchen. He said that we can take the increase with no repairs or move out. So I went to a lawyer who found out that the LL has 60 violations on the building and did not even have a residential C of O. We signed a retainer with the lawyer and he told the LL that he cannot collect any rent until he fixes all of the violations and gets a legal C of O.(It is a commercial building also, but we were all sure it was mixed use and that the LL had a right to rent to residential tenants) There are two apartments in this predicament, us and our neighbor, and we have been saving our rent for about a year now. Not paying rent feels weird, so we have all been feeling guilty not paying anything and continuing to follow the advise of our lawyer. In this time our utilities were turned off so we paid the outstanding balance by the old leaseholder and when the gas company came to turn the heat on, the inspector said that the heating system was not installed according to any code and there was evidence of carbon monoxide leaking into all of our apartments. We went to court to have the LL install an electric boiler and fix the gas and we won in court.
The LL abided by the court and sent an unlicensed handyman to fix our neighbor's gas, and we asked that they just replace the boiler to an electric one, and that we will get electric heaters.
Now a year has gone by and it seems like the LL is being cooperative. We had a fuse go off in the kitchen and we called him and he sent a repairman to turn on the fuse. Then recently, I get an e-mail from my neighbor saying that the LL is doing construction on the apartment upstairs and came by to see their apartment to see if it would be necessary to run sewage pipes from the apartment upstairs through their ceiling to connect to the main sewage line. Then I got another e-mail saying that the LL and his unlicensed plumbers looked at their apartment and said that they will not need to do any construction, but wanted to see our apartment also. Then I get a knock on my door from the LL and his plumbers the same day, and they said that they need to break through our bedroom ceiling, the wall connecting the bedroom to the bathroom, break the wall from the bathroom to outside the apartment and the wall joining our neighbors bathroom to ours...to run the sewage lines from the bathtub , toilet and sink from the apartment upstairs. I asked the LL where the main sewage line was and he pointed to the large pipe running outside the apartments on our floor.. in the hallway. So I said can you not just connect from upstairs directly to the sewage lines through the hallway instead of breaking holes in 2 ceilings and 4 walls inside 2 apartments? To which the LL replied well, I have to let my plumbers determine that.
Does this seem like an illegal eviction tactic? If we have no rental agreement and our following our lawyer's advice of not paying rent until things are brought to residential code, then how can we get the LL to fix anything if the plumbers botch the sewage installation and make our apartment uninhabitable? Our LL for some reason is hesitant to speak to our lawyer. When I see him I ask him to call our lawyer to negotiate so that we can come to some agreement. He also evades contacting our lawyer. So I called to ask our lawyer about this sewage line situation and he asked if we were the only ones having this done, which was yes, so our lawyer advised against it, said it didn't sound right and said from now on ask the LL to contact him for any questions.
Now the problem is that the LL has been "nice" so far. We don't want to aggravate him, or force him to take action at evicting us. We are kind of confused by the advice of our lawyer to not pay rent, and save it until the building is brought up to code. We are not used to not paying rent, so we have this stress of feeling like we can get evicted any day, and we don't want to loose our apartments.
Are we just paranoid? If we follow our lawyer's advice, can we be protected from the LL taking action against us? Are what the plumber's attempting to do standard procedure? It doesn't seem like standard, it seems more like possible complications that will make it difficult for us to continue living here.
What is your advice?