I'm renting the main floor of a private house in Brooklyn on a month-to-month basis. The basement apartment, which we do not rent, has been vacant for over a year and has developed serious mold and ceiling damage due to porous cementwork.
We let the landlord know about this back in February and, of course, no action. (He's losing the house to foreclosure anyway and refuses to invest further in the upkeep of the building.)
We called HPD and a city inspector verified the problem but told us that since we are not the tenants of the basement apartment, we have no grounds to insist that the landlord address the problem.
I always thought that mold spreads and is a health problem for the whole building, regardless of whether it is currently in my apartment. I'm probably going to have to deal with this in court soon, since I haven't paid the landlord rent for a while over this issue.
Can anyone advise me whether the City is correct? I can't believe the landlord has no responsibility in this.