Just to highlight what obfusciatrist cited above from the Chicago ordinance:
So it would seem that the landlord is responsible for actually exterminating the roaches, not just making an honest (if incompetent) effort to do so. I can imagine that it must be nearly impossible to fully exterminate the roaches, especially in some of those old Chicago buildings, but still the burden seems to be on the landlord to achieve tangible results, not just to make efforts.
Sounds to me like the landlord knows very well that you are not the source of the roach problem, but he figures the other tenants (perhaps because of their lack of fluency in English and/or their lack of familiarity with the exercise of tenants’ rights in the U.S.) are unlikely to cause trouble. He is thus trying to take care of the problem by getting rid of you, or at least silencing you. Sounds to me that he’s worse than a simple moron.
Anyhow, I’m no legal expert, but I believe you can pursue legal action, and pay your rent to the court while the action is ongoing. Man, I love my current landlord, but I’ve had a number of real bastard-landlords in my time. Or, maybe I’m just a lousy tenant…
I haven’t posted here since forever, but read all the time. I have to come out of lurk mode to tell you this.
Combat Roach Killing Gel
It’s about $10 and if everybody in your building puts it out you will all be totally roach free in less than a month.
We had an infestation so bad that they crawled on us in our bed, would run across your fingers as you typed, and if you sat still and quiet for 10 minutes you could count over 100 bugs on one wall alone. One tube of this stuff and we haven’t had a bug in over two years. My aunt lives in a four apartment building and got rid of ALL the roaches in the building by putting it out twice.
Hmm, pretty sad that a roach post got me to respond after all this time. But gods I hate those things!
Well, it wouldn’t be a class action. All the tenants would be party plaintiffs, but in a class action, the plaintiffs are all parties similarly situated, some of whom may be known by the defendant but not all known by the party bringing the suit. Publication would be necessary and the defendant would take all reasonable steps to ascertain and notify all the parties in the class. This, BTW, has nothing to do with the thread.
Well, I just spoke to the Illinois Tenants Union, and gave the guy a good laugh. He says it’s the landlord’s responsibility to exterminate, period…although the ITU doesn’t assist people until they’re in actual court proceedings, he says there is NOTHING a landlord can do to evict me unless I haven’t paid rent in this situation (which is not the case).
He suggests I write a strongly worded letter to my landlord’s attorney, who obviously doesn’t practice landlord/tenant law, citing the code and suggesting that he exterminate the entire building, since obviously what he’s done until now has been ridiculously ineffective. I’ll keep y’all posted…I needed a good legal research challenge!
The apartment complex I use to work for would pay to have your apartment sprayed once every three months if you put yourself on the list. We couldn’t force people to get their apartments sprayed though so some people had really bad bug problems even though they were clean and their apartments were sprayed. People would refuse to have their apartment sprayed because they said it made them sick or they were worried about their pet or they would just refuse to clean anything up so the pest control man could get the spray where it needed to go.
As a last ditch effort we always gave Combat Roach Killing Gel to people who refused to allow someone in to spray their apartment. It Always worked. That stuff is truely amazing.
After speaking to the Illinois Tenants Union and my alderman’s office, I mailed a long and detailed letter, certified, to my landlord’s lawyer yesterday, with a copy to my alderman’s office rep.
I haven’t spoken to him yet, but my landlord left me a voice mail this morning, and the alderman’s rep just called me to compliment me on my legal writing and thoroughness, and to mention that if my landlord has not paid interest on my security deposit as required by the ordinance, he is liable for penalties in addition to interest. Something to look into…
In the meantime, I am reluctant to speak to my landlord without witnesses present. Any ideas? I would prefer to communicate with him in writing, but he’s barely literate as it is…I hate to be a pain in the ass, but he’s the one who decided to escalate.
If anyone would like to see the content of my letter, I’m happy to post it. Maybe it will help spmeone else.
**manhattan, ** actually, I second that, as I am a paralegal, and yes, some of my best friends are lawyers. Without their help, support, and conscientious training, I wouldn’t have been able to do as good a job as I did with my research and my letter.
As a former Immigration Court employee, I’ve certainly seen more than my share of sleazeball lawyers. I’ve also seen lots of lawyers who take very grueling cases on a pro bono basis, and even bigger piles of lawyers who just want to earn a good living representing people in court. The one my landlord hired, however, so far seems to be merely incompetent; he didn’t cite anything substantive in his letter (like what section of ordinance I was violating), perhaps because I haven’t done anything wrong! That may be due, however, to my landlord’s (probably extremely) skewed presentation of the situation.
Another bad thing about living somewhere that’s roach infested is that unless you make one hell of an effort, when you move, the problem will probably come with you. It doesn’t take much to begin a new roach colony.
I’ve heard and read some good lawyer jokes in my life, but not in this thread. Did’ya guys go out of your way to pick the worst? I’ll tell you an old one, probably older than you guys (and gals).
A priest died and went to heaven. St. Peter was showing him around the place, with all the nice houses and estates. “This belongs to Art Perlstein,” St. Peter tells him, as he points out a very expansive and beautiful mansion on a lofty cloud. Then St. Peter points out the priest’s abode.
“This is a nice place,” the priest says, “but Mr. Perlstein has such a much nicer place. I was a priest. What was he?”
“A lawyer.”
“A lawyer!?” the priest exclaims incredulously. “How does a lawyer rate such a much nicer estate?”
“We have many priests here, but he is the only lawyer.”
It may not have been that he was incompetent, but that he was bluffing, thinking that most tennants dont know the law. I have had many friends get screwed over because they were ignorant of the law, and allowed themselves to be bullied because of it. Let us know how this turns out.
Wish I could sue my landlord, lots of things need to be fixed around here…but I own the place so I guess I gotta fix them.
I always visit my library or bookstore & see what they have about Tenant law. I have found some great books that way. I like those written by Nolo Press (http://nolo.com/). But they seem to mostly have law for California. They might have a Tenant handbook for your state.
Did’ya guys go out of your way to pick the worst? I’ll tell you an old one, probably older than you guys (and gals).