Hope I’m not too late. I just re watched an old movie, . . .And Justice For All and Al Pacino had a nice courtroom speech he made.You might just have time to memorize it:
Just change “raped and beat that woman” to “did not complete necessary repairs in a timely manner”.
ETA: I am not your lawyer…
They won’t let us out of our lease. The judge wouldn’t even see us. We spoke to the clerk and they said that the landlord has been given 25 days to fix everything. On Thursday morning I am supposed to go and meet with a counselor who may possibly be able to help us get out of our lease. Perhaps.
I’ve never been so frustrated and angry in my life. Our goddamned ceiling collapsed on me and we have recurring mold that is causing me to break out in hives and they still won’t let us leave. We have an airtight case with 8 sets of pictures showing damage to the apartment, we have letters from inspectors who came from the city to check the damages, we have a letter from a lawyer that was sent when the ceiling collapsed and the landlord refused to answer our calls and they won’t even look at any of it. I don’t know what to do at this point.
That is seriously fucked up.
I am so sorry.
Shoot, I was hoping for a happier post today. I hope that the counselor is able to help you on Thursday.
I am so sorry, this is entirely unfair. Inthe meantime, get as many authorities i8nvolved as possible - you want the landlord to decide it is easier to let you out than to keep dealing with you.
Ask now to re-schedule the court hearing for the 26th day.
Media can be your friend, especially if he owns a lot of rental properties.
The health department takes mold reports very seriously. Ask them to put an in-door air quality monitor in the apartment, and to leave iot there throughout the construction process.
Permitting offices may be glad to hear of the work being done - insist on inspections before the ceiling/walls get closed up after each repair, and let him pay to re-seal them if he ignores you and the inspectors have to open it up again.
Keep taking pictures throughout the process so that you can show the inconvenience you’ve been put through.
Sleep with the windows open whenever the weather permits - there’s going to be a lot of mold and dust in the air.
I am just so sorry.
Mental note: Don’t sign 2 year leases!
Sorry about the bad news.
No, they don’t. We’ve reported this to the health department and they said they only care about mold concerns on a large scale. If our entire block develops significant mold issues they will come in and deal with it but for a single apartment building they don’t care. 
At this point I’m rolling some ideas around in my head. My first is to start combing through my personal contacts and trying to climb as high in the government system as possible. If I can find someone who can get me a 15 minute meeting with Mayor Bloomberg that would be best but if I can’t get that high up I still might find someone who can help me.
We’ve contacted the media (Help Me Howard and others) but so far there are no takers for our story. We didn’t really think there would be but we will keep trying. I am going to contact the Village Voice next and see if they are interested. They ran a story about a woman who thinks she was fired for being too pretty so they seem like they might be a bit hard up for stories.
We’ve reported the illegal apartment in our building and the city forced an eviction so we are hoping that our landlord is losing money from that. I’m going to keep trying to find ways to rack up fees for the landlord in hopes that it just gets cheaper to let us leave than to make us stay.
I am wondering just how badly an eviction might hurt our credit. If it is something that you can come back from in 2 years of solid renter’s history it might be worth just finding a new place to live and stopping our rent payments or something to get evicted so we aren’t contractually obligated to stay there any longer.
Failing that we might end up subletting the apartment for a pittance. There are a lot of people who would put up with this bullshit for a $500 monthly rent and then we could eat the difference and live at his aunt’s house in CT for a year. When we add in the cost of train tickets to and from the city for work and a storage unit for our stuff it would end up adding about $1000 to our monthly expenses so we really don’t want to do that but it might be worth it for a year or so.
FWIW I know this is a bad idea. Very, very bad idea. I’m just grasping at straws here out of desperation.
Has your alderman’s office been put in the loop? Mine was a huge help when a previous landlord started doing illegal stuff like trying to force me to have the entire building professionally exterminated.
Are there any tenants’ rights orgs that you haven’t contacted?
Have your hives required medical treatment? If so, then it couldn’t hurt to provide evidence of that to the landlord and ask him to pay your medical expenses.
I am so sorry - is there a way to appeal? Or another residencies board…ombudsman…something?
Hmmm, interesting…
Our landlord just called my fiance to ask if we can be home tonight to show the apartment to a potential tenant. It looks like he is going to try to let us out of the lease. We shall see what happens.
Fingers crossed that you can soon be out and away from this poor excuse for a human being.
They have aldermen in New York?
Good luck!!
(And be prepared to move quickly!)
Good point - he may be willing to make a deal if someone else is willing to move in and it might happen very quickly.
Ijust wanted to wish you good luck. I know its frustrating, but pre-hearing settlement negotiations is pretty much a required aspect of the pocess. It doesn’t mean anything in particular about your case or the judge’s opinion of it.
If you haven’t already seen it, you might find this helpful
The people who came to look at the apartment really loved the space. We told them about the damage and they seem cool with that. They want it August 1st and we will be spending the next 3 weeks packing and apartment hunting like crazy. Hopefully we will be sent paperwork tomorrow and we can be legally out of this space in less than a month. We aren’t going to get our hopes up until we have paperwork legally letting us out of the space in our hands but we are going to spend tonight cleaning and packing up some stuff. I’ve got my fingers crossed that they like the space enough to take it!
Oh wow!! Fingers crossed for ya. 
I missed this thread over the weekend, but I just wanted you to know I’m rooting for you. I know you’ve got a lot going on right now, so I’m wishing you the best of luck!
Fingers and toes!