unfair landlord

[Upset Tenant]

Early this year a sewer pipe busted and the landlord did nothing until early July despite a court order in May. The affected room had all sorts of micro organisms growing all over the room and in my furniture, and carpets which had to be replaced. The only reason anything got fixed is because I stayed home for a while from one of my jobs and made it happen by being a pain. This caused a major reduction in income. It also caused me to get behind in the rent. Now I am being charged large late fees each month. This is causing me to not be able to get caught up with the rent. I have tried to talk to them about it. I have tried to explain that because of your failure to clean up the mess and how incinvinced I was for such a long time that you should not charge me any late fees under these circumstances, but my pleas seem to be falling on deaf ears. I do not have the resources to move. Does any body have any answers?

[JohnMI]

You really handled this the wrong way. If it was a significant problem that the LL refused to fix, then you should have followed your state's laws for withholding rent (which usually means putting the payments in escrow) and/or applying rent to the repairs (which requires full documentation of that).

Can you give more details about the court order in May? You seem to have skipped over all of the important parts. When did this break? When did you report it to your LL? Who issued the court order and why?

Finally, it is now DECEMBER and you're talking about something that was fixed in JULY? Sorry, but I think it is going to be hard to argue that, now, 6 months later, you are slow on rent because you CHOSE to take time off in June/July to get things fixed.

- John...