my current landlord won't allow me to have a cat! how mean is that? he says that cats eat birds and he likes birds better. he said i could have a bird... WTF?
I'm not sure how this is that extraordinary. A lot of rental units have policies on pets. Barring a cat isn't very unusual or unreasonable.
My ex-girlfriend used to live with four other friends in a really huge apartment in the Mission...shit was two floors, with 4-6 rooms (depending on how you wanted to configure) and the rent was ridiculously low...like $2000 a month for the whole thing. Of course, it only had one bathroom and 4-5 women living in it but...
In any case, the landlord, who was cool, got a divorce and his ex-wife got the apartment as part of the settlement. She then served the tenants with an eviction notice CLAIMING owner move-in. In S.F., this is one of the few ways you can legally evict a tenant.
No one's happy about it but whatever, they pack up, move out. One month later, one of the tenants' friends is rental hunting and notices their address listed in the classifieds. Then they did a drive-by and saw a "for rent" sign in the window. They then called to ask what the new rent was and it was 150% higher than what they were paying.
The tenants promptly hired a lawyer, sued, and ended up getting a few thousands dollars out of the settlement.
Wow, what a moron. Almost everyone who rents out property in SF usually knows the eviction laws like the back of their hand, and are much more clever about trying to get around them.
I live in Santa Cruz, and rent here is ridiculous to begin with. We have a house in the Westside, near the UC Santa Cruz campus, and we ended up with this landlord with severe memory issues, just didn't get his stuff taken care of. A few weeks ago we were trying to get in touch with him, and his wife picked up the phone, and told us that he was in the hospital and "probably not going to make it".
Now we're in that weird spot where we cant ask her for too much, because her husband is dying, but at the same time we are legally entitled to shit like having the plumbing in our house not fuck up.
When I lived in South Orange, New Jersey I had this nutjob of a landlord that fought with his wife constantly. Unfortantely, my two female and one male roommates occupied the upper-story and the landlord and his wife occupied the lower story so we could hear them all the time. He would go outside and punch his punching bag in the garage and then grimmace back at the house, yell,"this is you" point to his wife and then back at the punching bag and beat the shit out of the puncing bag again. fucking psycho.
Not the point though.
The point is that oneday, one of my very attractive (female) roommates started noticing that her panties were missing. At first she accused me and the other dude of playing some weird practical joke. There are lines I do not cross folks, and stealing panties is number one. Why steal the candy wrapper? Fucking weird, especially when there is candy available. Then, at dinner one night, it occurred to us that the landlord, being the wackjob fuckhead that he was, might be involved. I ended up leaving the house before the whole thing was resolved, but one of the girls I kept in contact told me that they ended up setting up a motion activated camera in the panty-robbed girl's room and caught the guy walking into her room while she was away at work. The nitwit never stole panties on camera though and said that his visit was "landlord" related and showed us the contract that we signed. Indeed, he had some seperate clause that is not a part of most contracts that entitled him to unlimited access to the apartment to maintain the preservation of the property. They all left as soon as the year was up.
Fucking wackjob psycho nitwit wackjobs are walking amongst us all the time so watch out.
Indeed, he had some seperate clause that is not a part of most contracts that entitled him to unlimited access to the apartment to maintain the preservation of the property.
Fine print is a killer. You missed the "maintenance of libido" clause.
Just contacted a family member, who is a lawyer to get some help with our situation,
I moved into my place on September 5th and just before moving my furniture into the place I made sure to let my landlord know about a broker curtain rod and garbage disposal. A week after moving in our toilet stopped up and when I notified my landlord he told me I'd have to pay a $35 fee to fix it. We went ahead and paid the fee only to have it stop up again a couple weeks later. We called him again and he refused to fix it. He went as far as claiming that we were throwing pens and erasers down it (WTF!) He eventually agreed to have his guy look at it and charged another $35 for the guys work.
Sure Enough a month passes and once again the toilet breaks down (no less than 2 hours after he came by for "inspection"). Now its really serious cause the other toilet in the apartment doesn't work either. Once again the Landlord says he won???t do anything unless we pay $35 to him. I start looking into housing laws and see that in California a dwelling is considered inhabitable if the toilets don't work (Civil Code 1941.1). I raise a fuss and he does nothing. We realize that we need to shit so we end up forking him the dough once again. It's been 2 weeks since the 3rd $35 toilet fixing payment and the toilet is one again broken. We have had no properly working toilets in our place for 3 days now. The landlord will not touch it unless we pay him the toilet fixing fee once again. On the flip of that I just found out from my roommate that the landlord cannot cash in my cashier check for rent cause I made out the check to the company improperly.
I haven't been back to my place in several days now cause of the conditions and have half a mind to with hold payment from last month due to the conditions in the apartment. On top of all this plumbing bullshit the curtain rod and garbage disposal I told him about the day I moved in have yet to be fixed and he told me that if I want it fixed I'd have to come out of pocket.
The lawyer I spoke with didn't specialize in this type of law and gave me a very generic idea of what to do (document all contact with him, photograph all broken items). If someone here can offer help you'd be doing something positive for 3 people who are in a rather desperate situation.
quick update: I just spoke with my landlord and he both accused me of breaking the toilet and refused to give me the name or contact info the the "plumber" thats been snaking our toilet. I cited the codes he's violating and he ended up just hanging up the phone
Seriously I'm asking any legal strut folks for help
I've got two good/bad landlord stories that might inspire some ideas:
My brother moved into this great big loft in Brooklyn a few years ago. A killer space, and he basically had a patio the size of the roof of the entire building next door (he could get out there through his windows).
A couple of weeks after he moved in there was an incredible amount of noise coming from the floor above his. It always started at around midnight and ended early in the morning. They were doing something shady up there, drilling and basically doing construction or something. So he complained to his landlord, and the guy just ignored his complaints. Then, one day my brother's girlfriend was out on the roof and all of a sudden the people working upstairs started smashing out the windows, and all kinds of glass smashed down around her (luckily she wasn't hurt).
My brother raises hell, and they completely blow him off. So now my brother is pissed. He does some research and discovers that the building is zoned commercial/industrial and they're renting out something like 20-30 residential units.
So my brother straight up stopped paying rent. He knew there was nothing they could do about it - they couldn't exactly evict him, because the whole operation is illegal. Every now and then they'd knock on his door and give him a steadily increasing bill, and he would tell them to fuck off.
He stayed there for a year and a half.
Finally the owner came to his door and asked him when he was leaving. My brother says "well what's in it for me?" "Umm, what do you mean? "$20,000 CASH."
They came back the next day with $10k in cash and he moved out that night. No shit. My brother is crazy.
The other story is actually record related! I was living in a house in Seattle and the entire basement flooded really badly. Unfortunately a girl was living in a room down there. All her shit got ruined. The landlord knew that it was a bedroom, and he never told any of us about any flooding issues. Because we were pissed, and because he was such a dick, we ventured into this storage room that the dude had in the basement. He stored a bunch of stuff in there, and we were irate to see that everything was elevated off the ground on bricks, like the place had flooded in the past and he knew about it.
I saw this trunk in the corner and opened it up.. and to my delight it was filled with records! Found some great shit in there- the entire Winley disco brakes series, a few JBs albums, even a totally destroyed Impeach the President 45. Anyways, I took what I wanted and we moved out shortly afterwards. The bastard.
quick update: I just spoke with my landlord and both accused me of breaking the toilet and refused to give me the name or contact info the the "plumber" thats been snaking our toilet. I cited the codes he violating and he ended up just hanging up the phone
Seriously I'm asking any legal strut folks for help
Call the health department to do an inspection. I'm serious. In my city the laws are pretty specific. Not sure where you are but here, you must write a letter to your landlord requesting the work, and if it's not done in 30 days, we have the righjt to call someone else to do it and deduct the payment from the rent.
Slumlords exist because people don't know their rights or are afraid to exercise them.
quick update: I just spoke with my landlord and both accused me of breaking the toilet and refused to give me the name or contact info the the "plumber" thats been snaking our toilet. I cited the codes he violating and he ended up just hanging up the phone
Seriously I'm asking any legal strut folks for help
Landlords are required BY LAW to fix toilets. Anything and everything that is a fixture (i.e., attached to the building. A toilet is a fixture, a refrigerator is not a fixture for example) must be fixed by the landlord. If he refuses to fix it have your own plumber fix it and deduct it from the rent. THERE IS NOTHING HE CAN DO. THAT IS THE LAW!!!! If he causes a fuss tell him you'll see him in court. In fact, those $35 fees he charged you? Deduct those from next months rent and tell him to fuck himself when he complains.
Guzzo, frankly, I'm disappointed you didn't already tell dude to fuck off. I'd be beating dudes door down with an ax if he pulled that shit on me.
I don't know why. This story sort of got me steamed up right now. Give me dudes phone number and I'll chew him out tomorrow for ya.
quick update: I just spoke with my landlord and both accused me of breaking the toilet and refused to give me the name or contact info the the "plumber" thats been snaking our toilet. I cited the codes he violating and he ended up just hanging up the phone
Seriously I'm asking any legal strut folks for help
Call the health department to do an inspection. I'm serious. In my city the laws are pretty specific. Not sure where you are but here, you must write a letter to your landlord requesting the work, and if it's not done in 30 days, we have the righjt to call someone else to do it and deduct the payment from the rent.
Slumlords exist because people don't know their rights or are afraid to exercise them.
I'm in Los Angeles proper (westwood), are we in the same city?
we have a letter we were going to send out tomorrow certified to the management (AKA him) and to ourselves. I also notified him that I have not been able to live i nthe apartment for 2 days now and I will be withholding rent for the days that the dwelling was uninhabitable.
quick update: I just spoke with my landlord and both accused me of breaking the toilet and refused to give me the name or contact info the the "plumber" thats been snaking our toilet. I cited the codes he violating and he ended up just hanging up the phone
Seriously I'm asking any legal strut folks for help
Call the health department to do an inspection. I'm serious. In my city the laws are pretty specific. Not sure where you are but here, you must write a letter to your landlord requesting the work, and if it's not done in 30 days, we have the righjt to call someone else to do it and deduct the payment from the rent.
Slumlords exist because people don't know their rights or are afraid to exercise them.
I'm 99% sure in cases such as this that tenants are allowed to take immediate action and have the problem fixed themselves and deduct it from the rent. Always good to send a certified letter even if it's after the fact.
quick update: I just spoke with my landlord and both accused me of breaking the toilet and refused to give me the name or contact info the the "plumber" thats been snaking our toilet. I cited the codes he violating and he ended up just hanging up the phone
Seriously I'm asking any legal strut folks for help
Call the health department to do an inspection. I'm serious. In my city the laws are pretty specific. Not sure where you are but here, you must write a letter to your landlord requesting the work, and if it's not done in 30 days, we have the righjt to call someone else to do it and deduct the payment from the rent.
Slumlords exist because people don't know their rights or are afraid to exercise them.
I'm 99% sure in cases such as this that tenant are allowed to take immediate action and have the problem fixed themselves and deduct it from the rent. Always good to send a certified letter even if it's after the fact.
I notified him that we were getting a plumber and deducting the cost from the rent. He told me we couldn't do that. In the lease we signed it stated we are responsible for the plumbing. I called a Los Angeles Housing information number and they told me that it was illegal for him to pass the plumbing on to the tenant. That doesn't mean that he ain't trying to stick to that though
Sadly enough he's made claims that the management comapany wouldn't oblige, it turns out he is the management/ owner.
heres his contributions over the last several years. dude has a thing for the NRA
quick update: I just spoke with my landlord and both accused me of breaking the toilet and refused to give me the name or contact info the the "plumber" thats been snaking our toilet. I cited the codes he violating and he ended up just hanging up the phone
Seriously I'm asking any legal strut folks for help
Call the health department to do an inspection. I'm serious. In my city the laws are pretty specific. Not sure where you are but here, you must write a letter to your landlord requesting the work, and if it's not done in 30 days, we have the righjt to call someone else to do it and deduct the payment from the rent.
Slumlords exist because people don't know their rights or are afraid to exercise them.
I'm in Los Angeles proper (westwood), are we in the same city?
we have a letter we were going to send out tomorrow certified to the management (AKA him) and to ourselves. I also notified him that I have not been able to live i nthe apartment for 2 days now and I will be withholding rent for the days that the dwelling was uninhabitable.
I'm a block away from Los Angeles in West Hollywood. We have a housing department at city hall that sends out notices of tennant rights every year. It's nice. I don't know about the county but it looks like you got it figured out. Good luck.
I notified him that we were getting a plumber and deducting the cost from the rent. He told me we couldn't do that. In the lease we signed it stated we are responsible for the plumbing. I called a Los Angeles Housing information number and they told me that it was illegal for him to pass the plumbing on to the tenant. That doesn't mean that he ain't trying to stick to that though
Sadly enough he's made claims that the management comapany wouldn't oblige, it turns out he is the management/ owner.
Sounds like he knew about the problem previous to you moving in. Why else would he put a clause in the lease specifically referencing the crapper? See if you can't dig up some info on him, I bet this isn't the first time this has happened to him. Does he own other property?
This comes after we brought in our own roto-rooter plumber to look at the issue, he stated our plumbing is fine, however our toilet is so full of build up that its practically useless. I had the guy put it in writing and let me lndlord know I got a document that says this, he gets steamed at me, tells me that his (one man, self owned) management company will have to look into it, and tells me I'll be having to pay an additional $75 month in rent now for my actions.
Comments
Wow, what a moron. Almost everyone who rents out property in SF usually knows the eviction laws like the back of their hand, and are much more clever about trying to get around them.
I live in Santa Cruz, and rent here is ridiculous to begin with. We have a house in the Westside, near the UC Santa Cruz campus, and we ended up with this landlord with severe memory issues, just didn't get his stuff taken care of. A few weeks ago we were trying to get in touch with him, and his wife picked up the phone, and told us that he was in the hospital and "probably not going to make it".
Now we're in that weird spot where we cant ask her for too much, because her husband is dying, but at the same time we are legally entitled to shit like having the plumbing in our house not fuck up.
When I lived in South Orange, New Jersey I had this nutjob of a landlord that fought with his wife constantly. Unfortantely, my two female and one male roommates occupied the upper-story and the landlord and his wife occupied the lower story so we could hear them all the time. He would go outside and punch his punching bag in the garage and then grimmace back at the house, yell,"this is you" point to his wife and then back at the punching bag and beat the shit out of the puncing bag again. fucking psycho.
Not the point though.
The point is that oneday, one of my very attractive (female) roommates started noticing that her panties were missing. At first she accused me and the other dude of playing some weird practical joke. There are lines I do not cross folks, and stealing panties is number one. Why steal the candy wrapper? Fucking weird, especially when there is candy available. Then, at dinner one night, it occurred to us that the landlord, being the wackjob fuckhead that he was, might be involved. I ended up leaving the house before the whole thing was resolved, but one of the girls I kept in contact told me that they ended up setting up a motion activated camera in the panty-robbed girl's room and caught the guy walking into her room while she was away at work. The nitwit never stole panties on camera though and said that his visit was "landlord" related and showed us the contract that we signed. Indeed, he had some seperate clause that is not a part of most contracts that entitled him to unlimited access to the apartment to maintain the preservation of the property. They all left as soon as the year was up.
Fucking wackjob psycho nitwit wackjobs are walking amongst us all the time so watch out.
~gNATalia
Fine print is a killer. You missed the "maintenance of libido" clause.
I moved into my place on September 5th and just before moving my furniture into the place I made sure to let my landlord know about a broker curtain rod and garbage disposal. A week after moving in our toilet stopped up and when I notified my landlord he told me I'd have to pay a $35 fee to fix it. We went ahead and paid the fee only to have it stop up again a couple weeks later. We called him again and he refused to fix it. He went as far as claiming that we were throwing pens and erasers down it (WTF!) He eventually agreed to have his guy look at it and charged another $35 for the guys work.
Sure Enough a month passes and once again the toilet breaks down (no less than 2 hours after he came by for "inspection"). Now its really serious cause the other toilet in the apartment doesn't work either. Once again the Landlord says he won???t do anything unless we pay $35 to him. I start looking into housing laws and see that in California a dwelling is considered inhabitable if the toilets don't work (Civil Code 1941.1). I raise a fuss and he does nothing. We realize that we need to shit so we end up forking him the dough once again. It's been 2 weeks since the 3rd $35 toilet fixing payment and the toilet is one again broken. We have had no properly working toilets in our place for 3 days now. The landlord will not touch it unless we pay him the toilet fixing fee once again. On the flip of that I just found out from my roommate that the landlord cannot cash in my cashier check for rent cause I made out the check to the company improperly.
I haven't been back to my place in several days now cause of the conditions and have half a mind to with hold payment from last month due to the conditions in the apartment. On top of all this plumbing bullshit the curtain rod and garbage disposal I told him about the day I moved in have yet to be fixed and he told me that if I want it fixed I'd have to come out of pocket.
The lawyer I spoke with didn't specialize in this type of law and gave me a very generic idea of what to do (document all contact with him, photograph all broken items). If someone here can offer help you'd be doing something positive for 3 people who are in a rather desperate situation.
If you can help please do
Seriously I'm asking any legal strut folks for help
I've got two good/bad landlord stories that might inspire some ideas:
My brother moved into this great big loft in Brooklyn a few years ago. A killer space, and he basically had a patio the size of the roof of the entire building next door (he could get out there through his windows).
A couple of weeks after he moved in there was an incredible amount of noise coming from the floor above his. It always started at around midnight and ended early in the morning. They were doing something shady up there, drilling and basically doing construction or something. So he complained to his landlord, and the guy just ignored his complaints. Then, one day my brother's girlfriend was out on the roof and all of a sudden the people working upstairs started smashing out the windows, and all kinds of glass smashed down around her (luckily she wasn't hurt).
My brother raises hell, and they completely blow him off. So now my brother is pissed. He does some research and discovers that the building is zoned commercial/industrial and they're renting out something like 20-30 residential units.
So my brother straight up stopped paying rent. He knew there was nothing they could do about it - they couldn't exactly evict him, because the whole operation is illegal. Every now and then they'd knock on his door and give him a steadily increasing bill, and he would tell them to fuck off.
He stayed there for a year and a half.
Finally the owner came to his door and asked him when he was leaving. My brother says "well what's in it for me?" "Umm, what do you mean? "$20,000 CASH."
They came back the next day with $10k in cash and he moved out that night. No shit. My brother is crazy.
The other story is actually record related! I was living in a house in Seattle and the entire basement flooded really badly. Unfortunately a girl was living in a room down there. All her shit got ruined. The landlord knew that it was a bedroom, and he never told any of us about any flooding issues. Because we were pissed, and because he was such a dick, we ventured into this storage room that the dude had in the basement. He stored a bunch of stuff in there, and we were irate to see that everything was elevated off the ground on bricks, like the place had flooded in the past and he knew about it.
I saw this trunk in the corner and opened it up.. and to my delight it was filled with records! Found some great shit in there- the entire Winley disco brakes series, a few JBs albums, even a totally destroyed Impeach the President 45. Anyways, I took what I wanted and we moved out shortly afterwards. The bastard.
Call the health department to do an inspection. I'm serious. In my city the laws are pretty specific. Not sure where you are but here, you must write a letter to your landlord requesting the work, and if it's not done in 30 days, we have the righjt to call someone else to do it and deduct the payment from the rent.
Slumlords exist because people don't know their rights or are afraid to exercise them.
Landlords are required BY LAW to fix toilets. Anything and everything that is a fixture (i.e., attached to the building. A toilet is a fixture, a refrigerator is not a fixture for example) must be fixed by the landlord. If he refuses to fix it have your own plumber fix it and deduct it from the rent. THERE IS NOTHING HE CAN DO. THAT IS THE LAW!!!! If he causes a fuss tell him you'll see him in court. In fact, those $35 fees he charged you? Deduct those from next months rent and tell him to fuck himself when he complains.
Guzzo, frankly, I'm disappointed you didn't already tell dude to fuck off. I'd be beating dudes door down with an ax if he pulled that shit on me.
I don't know why. This story sort of got me steamed up right now. Give me dudes phone number and I'll chew him out tomorrow for ya.
I'm in Los Angeles proper (westwood), are we in the same city?
we have a letter we were going to send out tomorrow certified to the management (AKA him) and to ourselves. I also notified him that I have not been able to live i nthe apartment for 2 days now and I will be withholding rent for the days that the dwelling was uninhabitable.
I'm 99% sure in cases such as this that tenants are allowed to take immediate action and have the problem fixed themselves and deduct it from the rent. Always good to send a certified letter even if it's after the fact.
I notified him that we were getting a plumber and deducting the cost from the rent. He told me we couldn't do that. In the lease we signed it stated we are responsible for the plumbing. I called a Los Angeles Housing information number and they told me that it was illegal for him to pass the plumbing on to the tenant. That doesn't mean that he ain't trying to stick to that though
Sadly enough he's made claims that the management comapany wouldn't oblige, it turns out he is the management/ owner.
heres his contributions over the last several years. dude has a thing for the NRA
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=&zip=90025&last=SADR&first=MEHDI
I'm a block away from Los Angeles in West Hollywood. We have a housing department at city hall that sends out notices of tennant rights every year. It's nice. I don't know about the county but it looks like you got it figured out. Good luck.
Sounds like he knew about the problem previous to you moving in. Why else would he put a clause in the lease specifically referencing the crapper? See if you can't dig up some info on him, I bet this isn't the first time this has happened to him. Does he own other property?
Landlord just told me he's raising my rent.
This comes after we brought in our own roto-rooter plumber to look at the issue, he stated our plumbing is fine, however our toilet is so full of build up that its practically useless. I had the guy put it in writing and let me lndlord know I got a document that says this, he gets steamed at me, tells me that his (one man, self owned) management company will have to look into it, and tells me I'll be having to pay an additional $75 month in rent now for my actions.
This shit is getting out of control