Signing new lease, have big issue

[mosannam9696]

Hello,

We are trying to sign a new lease currently at the same place. During our previous term there was a tenant who moved out, just left. The landlord knew she was moving and was ok with it and we found a new roommate, however she didn't pay a few months rent before she left. We all signed one lease.

The landlord took the rent she owed out of the security deposit.

The tenant also painted the bricks in the room and pretty much destroyed it.

Now, as I said before, we are trying to renew the lease but our landlord wants us to pay the money that he took out to pay for our previous tenants rent, but no one wants to sign a lease for a room that is destroyed.

The landlord has also previously told us that he would go after her for the rent but pretty much gave up and just took it out of our security.

What kind of rights do we have here?

What can we do? Sue the previous tenant? Make the landlord fix the room? But then wouldn't he just take that out of our deposit again?

It's an extremely unfortunate circumstance due to a crappy roommate and we are paying the price like we're the bad guys but we did nothing wrong.

Any help would be great!

Thanks!

[TenantNet]

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