what are my rights?

[slumminslope]

At the end of May of this year, my partner and I came home late one night to find a leak coming through our medicine cabinet.

We called the landlord the next day; the repair guy came over and did nothing b/c the leak had stopped by the time he arrived. We called the the landlord everytime it leaked again (3 more times) and no one came over. By the fourth call, six weeks later, the landlord and another repair man came over and removed our medicine cabinet for approx. two weeks, supposedly to let the sheetrock dry out. However, the leak continued intermitently, and we would get splashed w/water when using the toilet. (does that qualify as an unsanitary condition?) Again (5th time), called the landlord to come over and look at leak. Eventually, the repair guy identified where leak was, but did nothing about it. The landlord and different repair guy came back (a few days after a sixth call) and put a new medicine cabinet in, w/o fixing the leak.

This past weekend we noticed two things 1. We could hear the water dripping behind the medicine cabinet and 2. There was a bubble in the ceiling above the shower dripping water. After another few calls about this emergent situation, the landlord came back on Monday w/original repair guy who said, "the leak is where I said it was." and popped our bubble of water, which caused a huge hole in our ceiling.

The questions are: what are our legal rights? Do we have to continue paying rent? Does this situation merit a reduction in rent? Can we legally break our lease? Get our security deposit back? Any suggestions of who to talk to and how to address this major issue?

[kt8744]

Read the thread 'big problems with landlord' that's in the general discussion forum.

You can send a certified return receipt requested letter to the landlord outlining the entire problem including all actions taken to date and if the condition persists say that it has not been repaired.

This is not legal advice. What you do often depends on the kind of place you live in. If you are rent stabilized or a non-stabilized tenant with a lease you might want to make a bigger stink than if you are living in a two-family house as a month-to-month tenant.

All landlords have a duty to repair no matter what kind of apartment they are renting. From your description it sounds like your landlord is at least making attempts to remedy the problem. You could say in your letter that if the problem is not fixed properly within ___ days (choose a reasonable amount of time) you will hire someone to do the repairs and deduct the cost from your rent.