I’m trying to find copies of laws and regulations regarding homeowner responsibilities and obligations as they pertain to snow removal. I live in the state of Vermont.
Foolishly, I forgot to ask about snow removal for the current apartment I am renting. There are multiple apartments in the building, and one shared parking lot / parking area for everyone.
My landlord has not been taking care of the plowing, and while I can shovel out my walk area and my car myself, I cannot shovel out the entire parking lot and driveway. I also don’t think I should have to pay out of my own pocket to have someone come plow, since it’s a communal area for the building.
I called them this afternoon at like 2PM and even asked if I needed to call someone to remove the snow, but they said no, they’d take care of it. 10PM and it was still there.
Is there somewhere online I can find the information regarding homeowner responsibilities for snow removal?
If I can’t find this information online, is there someone I can call? The town clerk’s office? I’m really not sure where to look.
I want to ask the landlord about this again since the snow was never removed, but I’d rather be prepared and have documentation going into it, in case I get a hard time.
Isn’t expecting it to be done the same day, especially when you only rang at 2PM, a little too much? And given it’s now the weekend, wouldn’t it be more reasonable to expect it to be done today or even on Monday?
If you live in an apartment, then homeowner regs are not what you’re interested in. You need to find the regs that apply to apartment owners.
If those exist they’ll tell you what the landlord has to do. Then all you have to do is figure out how to get some enforcement person interested in your case.
If they don’t exist, then you can either start shoveling or move. Or organize a revolt by your fellow tenants aimed at persuading the landlord that if he wants to receive any rent from anyone he better start paying for plows to arrive immediately after it snows.
Seriously, the first place to start is your neighbors. That will let you know what’s happened in the past & what they expect. If it’s nothing, then you’ll know from teh get-go that you’ve got a fight or a move on your hands.
Around here, if it snows more than a few inches, it’s completely reasonable to expect that roads and parking areas of apartment building be cleared within a few hours of the snow starting. If I lived in an apartment building and got up to go to work in the morning and was snowed in, I’d be pretty mad.
If it snows on Saturday, there’s no way on earth you could wait until Monday to clear - unless you were happy not leaving the house until then.
It’s just a way of life around here. It starts to snow, the city snow plows come out and the apartment building owners call their snow removal guys. You can’t wait a few days or even a few hours, if it’s a bad snow.
In other words, if I were the OP, I’d raise a stink now, before I missed something important because I couldn’t get my car out.
I called the day AFTER it snowed. It snowed all Thursday, and I called on Friday afternoon.
He actually showed up this morning after I got home from work and cleared it all out, and I talked to him about it, and we cleared up what the details about snow removal are, so I’m pleased with that.
I’ll keep the info about who to call in case I need it in the future though, so thank you for the help!