When we leased our apartment (less than a year ago), there was already a temporary wall in place, creating a second bedroom by dividing the living room in half.
Someone (we think a neighbor) complained, and a city inspector came in, said that the apartment was not listed as a two-bedroom, and left a "work without a permit" violation.
The landlord has scheduled for the wall to be taken down tomorrow. We assume that they are taking down the wall instead of paying the fine for applying for a work permit retroactively.
We need an apartment with two bedrooms. Can we force the building manager to rebuild the wall or pay for it to remain, because they rented us the apartment as a two-bedroom? If not, do they have to help with moving costs?
The landlord also said that the building manager has been charging us at a higher rate than others with identical apartments because our apartment has this partition.
I assume that we will be released from our lease agreement, However, can we ask for compensation for all of our "moving fees" (brokers fee, cost of moving trucks, etc.) Also, we were told that it is illegal for the building manager to charge us higher rent (the apartment is not rent-stabilized). Do they have to pay us back for the moths that we paid higher rent?