Start packing.
Seriously. I know you don’t want to move, but the alternative is to prepare for a long and drawn-out struggle with him. I guess it depends on whether you feel like a fight or not.
Why are you so dead set on not moving?
- You need a home.
- It should be heated appropriately, safely and reliably.
- You should pay reasonable rent.
Can these three items be met at your current place? If not, perhaps you should move. If it can, pick the option that best meets 2 and 3.
No, she did not. The landlord decided to ignore something he knew needed to be fixed, hoping that he could screw over his tenants instead of paying for needed repairs.
I didn’t see anywhere in her letter that she was demanding a fix RIGHT NOW, just within a reasonable timeframe.
We got it done in ten days. This guy has had ten months. Why is his failure somehow her fault?
From the OP’s links on tenant laws:
(bolding mine)
versus your “space heaters meet code, my post is my cite”.
I’m thinking it’s time to start apartment shopping. I don’t think the resolution to this is going to be satisfactory for you.
I would also report your landlord for code violations all over the place. After you’ve found a new place.
Maggie, if you’re absolutely dead-set on staying, then send him a letter. List all of the options he gave you. Ask for numbers on the rent increases and his estimates of increased costs for running the space heaters and oven (!!!). You know, so you can figure out what you want to do.
You’re basically getting him to document for you his plans to illegally raise your rent.
Then call code enforcement and they’ll make him replace the central heating.
Then spend the next several years fighting with this idiotic asshole over rent increases, as well as everything else.
Or just move and report him to code enforcement and any local tenants-rights groups.
So, it remains unsettled whether the landlord is a moron, sociopathic or both.
I suppose you could have the landlord move in with you. He appears to be blowing enough hot air to comfortably heat the entire neighborhood.
I’d send the letter complete with references to codes and ccs to lawyer(s) and other interested parties, with a reasonable deadline (i.e. no more than 10 days or so) to have heating unit replacement work scheduled to begin. Failure to comply means reporting him to applicable authorities.
Then, since there will be no living with this jerk unless you intend to pay for his heating fix in the form of significantly higher rent, use the month-to-month rent option you apparently have to look for another apartment, and get out of there at your convenience.
The good news is (as I think about it, calming down), I know for a fact that I’m going to be laid off sometime between April and June.
This issue with the landlord means that, as much as I like the place we’re in, I can now expand my range of places to look for new work significantly.
All I need to do is to hold out here until I find new work, then I can move to wherever that is.
Speaking as a landlord, he is an ass.
If you can’t move, I’d report him tomorrow morning. The city came after me even though they hadn’t paid the rent when one of their kids plugged a TV into 220v.
Look, not having the heat fixed for over six months is objectively ridiculous even if it is SoCal. Yes it doesn’t get as cold as Minnesota, but houses aren’t made to withsatnd the cold either and that is why surprise there is a law that mandates that landlors provide heat. Now let’s see what reputable sources say, like well the City of Berkeley rent stabilization board:
*Q: I have just moved to Berkeley. Upon moving into my apartment, I asked the manager to turn on the heat. He suggested I call P.G.&E. since he did not know how to start the heater. When the P.G.&E. technician inspected the heater, he declared it a hazard and disconnected it. I informed the manager of the problem immediately, and sent him a copy of the technician’s report. It has now been more than two weeks and although the building has a repairman, I am still without heat in my unit. I need to get my heater fixed and I would also like to get a rent discount for the time I have not had heat. What should I do?
Under California Civil Code § 1941.1, a dwelling is considered untenantable if it does not have adequate heating facilities that are maintained in good working order. In other words, you have an absolute right to have a working heat source when you rent a unit. Since you have notified the manager of the building in writing (by forwarding the P.G.&E. report), you should next request an inspection of the unit by the City of Berkeley Housing Department and concurrently, file a petition with the Rent Board. Since the lack of heat is a breach of the warranty of habitability, under Regulation 1269(B)(3), you would be entitled to no less than a 10% rent reduction. You are entitled to a retroactive rent reduction from the time you first notified the landlord of the problem, and continuing each month until the heater is fixed.
In addition, you may be able to use the “repair and deduct” remedy (Civil Code § 1942). Where a violation of the warranty of habitability is not corrected within a “reasonable time” after proper notice is given, a tenant may arrange for the repair independently and deduct the expense from the next rent payment as long as the cost does not exceed one month’s rent. Two weeks appears to be more than a reasonable time to fix a defective heater during winter. To use this remedy, you should be sure to follow the statutory requirements.*
So, yeah you should let the landlord know in writing, cite that you had already brought up the problem last spring. Good luck
This thread is interesting. I have always thought of Los Angeles California as a place where you could do without a heater for the vast majority of the year. In looking at the LA wiki below I actually (as a single man) think I could get by without a heater, but I would need to bundle up on winter nights. Women are usually less cold tolerant so a heater would probably be necessary if you wanted to have a relationship.
I don’t think I can improve on this advice. This guy doesn’t understand what it means to be a landlord - it’s HIS responsibility to provide a decent rental unit with all the things that includes (like plumbing, heating, electricity, etc.), and charge you rent for it. It is not right for him to increase your rent to cover his cost to repair something that he is obligated to provide, and was provided when you made your original rental agreement. You didn’t agree to rent a place that wasn’t heated (or had any of his half-assed heating solutions) - he’s breaking the deal.
How about you ask him for a rebate on all the rent you paid this summer for an apartment that didn’t have a working heating unit? That makes as much sense as expecting you to pay for his heating unit.
This is not correct. Maggie did NOT increase his costs. As a property owner and landlord, he needs to take into account, like every other landlord, the fact that there are costs associated with renting out housing. If Maggie, through her own carelessness, ruined the floor and it had to be replaced, then yes, SHE would have raised his costs. But taking care of heating that conforms with state law is just a normal part of what it means to maintain property.
Property experiences wear and tear, and property owners have certain obligations to handle that. You don’t raise your rent every time there’s a maintenance issue - unless perhaps you’d like to DECREASE your tenant’s rent because the refrigerator you expected to last for 5 years is still going strong in year 6?
So he didn’t do his budgeting properly.
Fact of the matter is, he has to spend $xx today that he hadn’t budgeted for. He is giving Maggie the choice - I’ll cut you a break on the rent or I’ll provide you with heat. You can’t have both.
Possibly that’s correct - or maybe he’s just a cheap bastard. Either way, Maggie didn’t “increase his costs” because of anything she did.
As long as that point is conceded, I am not saying that the rent should never be increased. Whether it is legally or morally appropriate for the landlord to increase the rent in this particular situation to cover his costs, I can’t say (although it would pretty clearly be morally wrong to raise the rent as a punitive measure when Maggie is only asking for what the law requires him to do anyway).
So, he is offering an alternative to a space heater - with something safer-? How about having electric baseboard heaters? I have them in my basement and my rental units have them. My son’s house is heated with them, and we live in the Midwest with very cold winters. (I can’t comment on window units as I’m not familiar with them.)
Baseboard heaters: HVAC Basics, Guides & How Tos
In CA landlord/tenant laws heavily favor the tenant, so you’re in luck there. If the landlord refuses to pay to fix your heater, you have the option to withhold rent and repair it yourself, then deduct the cost of repairs, provided repairs do not exceed the amount of one month rent. It may land you in court if the landlord wants to go there, but he will have no recourse to evict you or to ask for back rent. The amount of record keeping you need to do for this is crazy, but in my case, the threat of withholding rent was enough to get the repairs my fiancé needed.
Because it is a habitability issue, if the repair is not done, should you decide to move, CA law says you may do so without giving notice, without paying any additional rent. Again, you may end up in small claims over the security deposit because the landlord may decide to keep it if you don’t give notice, but there is no legal recourse for the landlord in this. If he/she has been doing this a while, he will know this.
Get a tenant’s right handbook from your county. Good luck.
Why did you go to a month-to-month lease if you intend to stay another 5 years? It seems to me that if your lease was for another year you would have locked in your rent at least for that year and you’d be in the position of forcing the landlord to fix the heater without him raising your rent.
Yeah - going month-to-month is a double-edged sword: You can leave on short notice, but the landlord could raise the rent on short notice even without the whole heating-system mess.
If you had a lease, he could NOT raise it during the term of the lease.
And if you make a stink, he could simply offer to have you move out instead of paying the higher rent. All nice and legal, presuming he follows whatever notice periods are required by law.
Long story short, landlord’s a dick and wants you to let him violate the law, he has some power on his side because he can boot you out, and it sounds like one way or another you’re getting the shaft :(.
Really, I’d consider moving at this point. The landlord has already screwed you on one semi-major repair, and is attempting to jack up the rent to cover routine maintenance. Yeah, rents increase to cover increasing ownership costs but to explicitly expect you to pay for that is really unethical.
Oh - is he going to try to amortize the ENTIRE SYSTEM into your rent? or just the fraction of the expected life? For example, an 18,000 system should last 15 years, that’s 1200 a year, so your rent goes up 125 a month)?
The only real power you have in this situation is that if (well, WHEN - you need to get out of there) you move, you can report the landlord to the authorities for not providing a legally-mandated service. Hopefully they wouldn’t get to it until after he’d rented it, at a lower price than he’d have had to charge if he did the damn work.
FYI, the “window unit” might be one of those in-wall systems like some hotels have. My apartment in New York in the early 90s had those - one in the living room, one in the bedroom. It did both heating and A/C.
When it crapped out during the hot summer, I had the privilege of sleeping with my apartment window open (high-rise, so fine from a safety standpoint but the reason Manhattan is called “the city that never sleeps” is because it’s TOO DAMN NOISY). In my case, a replacement was something like a thousand dollars and the landlord had me do so and deduct it from my next months’ rent.
I came in here to say “depends on what you can get elsewhere if you need to move”.
Until 3 months ago, I rented from a not so great landlord from 2.5 years and saved about $200\month compared to other apartments in the area. I knew that this meant that certain repairs would go undone. So I basically saved six thousand clams in exchange for less than ideal repairs. If you can’t afford to move and he’s charging less than market rate, you take your lumps. Obviously thyis advice would be different if you lived in the north.
Also, in the interim, I highly suggest this space heater\outlet timer that you can set to turn on an hour before you get home from work. It’s easy; just set the dial to the time it is now and then push the pins in for an hour before you get home. I use this in the 3rd floor bedroom and it’s like magic. When you get home, just turn the side switch to “on” so it stays on as long as you like it.
Also, if you can find any of these radiator style heaters, they are excellent and super efficient. I got 3 on Craigslist for $25 apiece.
Note: the above math is slightly wrong, I posted without checking. The annual cost (over 15 years) is 1500. Oddly, the monthly figure is correct :).