help!!! bad landlord/house

[Jenkay]

Originally Posted by getting screwed

I'm in the same boat. My landlord holds the deposit over my head light some trophy. This is a true slumlord. Chipping peeling paint exposed electric wires. Cracking walls holes in walkways and driveway. The place hasn't had any TLC in 20 years.
Too my story I had the upstairs bathtub leaking (no flowing) into the ceiling in to our bathtub and yes the next word's MOLD everywhere. The family is sick. We have run to a hotel. The cheap Buthead sent he's maintance guy and he walked in the bathroom climbed a ladder and began ripping the ceiling out no plastic no nothing with us standing there. MOLD everywhere!!! So he drags the MOLD through the place doesn't replace the MOLDED wood no bleach puts up new drywall paints and were done. I paid for a home inspection, went to a doctor, took mega pic's and talked to an attorney.
PAY THE RENT THEN TAKE EM' TO COURT. You can't lose if you do it the legal way. Call the city housing inspector! GET PROOF IN WRITING!!!!!!

You should start a new thread. This one is years old. And "butthead" has two 't's

[sdjimbob]

If you're in the process of buying a house, I can guarantee you that the day before funding/escrow close, your lender will pull your credit reports a final time. Anybody can place negative information on anyone's credit report. All it takes is the submission to the credit reporting agencies. A cheap old lady would have to probably pay someone to do this for her if she couldn't figure out on her own. It would be a huge mistake to put your credit in jeopardy during this time.

If the place was so terrible and illegal, the judge is probably going to ask for your documentation about the problems. They'll want to see your official complaints to the appropriate city agencies (like code compliance, housing), and your complaints in writing to the landlord, and it sounds like all you have is an SDG&E visit saying nothing was wrong.

So I think you better pay the rent, clean and document the condition of the house when you leave, and if you don't have the deposit or letter documenting deductions within 3 weeks of your last day, then you're entitled to all of it.

[MRT347]

907 W. Valerio st. Santa Barbara , CA - landlord Richard Golden

The house here is subdivided into four units which are rented separately, with an additional real studio apartment above the rear garage. The way this house is managed right now, even though each of the main rooms or units shares a central kitchen and/or bathroom, the landlord doesn't notify current tenants about new residents arriving or have any sort of rules regarding cleaning.While he has selected decent people, there is a significant potential security risk. And as you can expect, common area use of space, maintenance and cleaning isn't necessarily equally shared. The mailbox is shared among all units, and there is no off-street parking.

Among past tenants I can find, none received a security deposit back without a fight.

Doors to the interior of the house are light weight hollow-core doors (which don't block sound of people talking in the hallway) with relatively weak locks. Two doors share the same key. One of the outside doors has a broken lock and some residents never were the main key, so two residents enter from the rear.
In the past when the landlord balked at holding house utilities in his name, there were frequently problems with equally sharing bills when some tenants ran out of money or would forget to pay. After the landlord put the bills in their name, he forgot to pay at least twice and electricity and water were turned off.
The gas furnace for the house hasn't worked for over a year. The house has no attic and each unit has an open loft storage area with different forms of ladder, and the ceiling has no insulation, so parts of the house are prone to fairly strong temperature shifts, from hot to cold. Some overhead lights in the house don't work and generally could use some maintenance. The carpet is old, although this is obvious. The cable line runs on the ground on the exterior of the house, and the cable company installer said this is substandard and creates static. The landline phone line regularly gets phone calls from people who seem like bill collectors looking for the landlord's family, and they may have actually added tenant names as details regarding their associates in their collection accounts based on reverse phone # lookup?

In the kitchen, for several months the cold water spigot started giving 20 seconds of very warm water before finally running cold, and some of the tiles near the sink feel warmer than ambient temperature. One either had to add ice to water, or waste water by running the faucet. This was difficult to diagnose, whether there was a mixing valve failure etc, but the description could match that of a slab leak in the foundation, which could eventually require invasive repair in the living space of tenants. There were a host of other strange plumbing problems that the landlord took no action to remedy. Two units had water leaking through walls into the bathroom, which would seem to get worse then better then worse. Because it was outside the area of control, there was little anyone could do to fix it i.e. not a simple leak under the sink where we could tighten a valve. This has caused ongoing mold in one of the units.
The water heater gave many signs of losing efficiency, then visibly was leaking onto the floor, indicating it had reached the end of its span. It started soaking into the drywall and then into carpets of two adjacent units. The landlord received more than one written notification and call about this, and took approximately three weeks to take action, while tenants had to step over the wet carpet areas. The wall here dried again in the California sun but there are some signs of sawdust and grit coming from small holes.

The landlord isn't absentee, and is at the house very often, because he stores tools and potted plants for his landscaping business in the yard and garage. The landlord tends to be quite friendly in person and points out a lot of plans he has for the house. He pays staff to leafblow the small yard once a week (which is barely necessary), but he never assigns his employees to do very easy, needed repairs.



907 West Valerio street

[andyvogel]

Renting from James R. Willis at 616 Charleston Drive, Claremont, Ca. It has been a nightmare. Rarely a response & then you end up having to fix or clean yourself and he provides no repayment. Last straw was that we gave notice, the hot water heater broke and he said: "fix it yourself."
Stay away at all costs.

[whiteboyslo]

My advice is to rent from a property mgmt company. Yes, it can be more expensive, but they typically side with the tenant. They cannot make the owner do anything above and beyond what the law requires, but good management companies will only rent from owners who take care of their place because they don't want to have an angry tenant on the phone every day.

Mike

[Tiff0001]

My landlord will not have a professional come out to fix the wiring in our home.
He comes and fixes it his self, he has been over every other week rigging up the wires.
Our house has a shortage up stairs in the hall way, the kitchen light fell down and he hooked up the dishwasher wrong its leaking water. Everyday we have to hurry up and mop up the floor in the Kitchen cause if to much water gets on the floor from the leak, it will reach the wall in the basement and our circuit box is on the wall by the Kitchen