A couple months back, I found it necessary to relocate myself, and therefore rented a room in far northern Manhattan (=“Inwood”). There was a guy staying behind and his friend who was moving out on him to try his luck elsewhere, and I was interviewed and auditioned to take up the rent-slack as apartment-mate. So far so good.
I needed a phone, and wanted my own. I called the folks who were known at that time as Bell Atlantic and they came to the building and created for me a phone…port? Anyway, I could plug my RJ-whatchamacallit into it and the other end into a splitter and from there my phone and my modem, you know the drill.
Well, apartment building has buzzer thingies downstairs by the locked front door, so your visitors can let you know they are here other than by throwing shoes at your window or hollering “Yo, asshole, let me in”. And ours, as was typical in the building, did not work so hot. Last week, slip of paper appears under the door, “The super needs access to your apartment to set up the new improved door buzzer circuits”. The housemate was there when they came, I was not.
I come home to find phone line is dead. Appears they needed a telephone connection and grabbed mine.
Bell Atlantic, whom I paid to come in and create for me a connection, is, uh…Verizon nowadays, and the folks that work there are on strike and aren’t coming up here to fix or figure out ANYTHING.
I could perhaps yell at the idiot landlord or super for depriving me of phone service for which I had paid installation fees, and I could perhaps berate them for being stupid enough to start such a project while the phone company is shut down by striking workers, but…
I have no lease. The housemate with whom I share the apartment has no lease. The ex-housemate who moved out, theoretically has the lease but downstairs the listing of who is in what apartment has yet a different name posted as the resident of our apartment, so who knows? I didn’t demand to see a lease document when I moved in…
If I contact the super and/or landlord and raise hell, thereby drawing attention to my existence in this here pad, what is my legal status? My rent is always paid…to the other housemate who presumably forwards it along with his portion, to the landlord (but again who knows?). If there exists some clause in the lease of whoever the holy fuck actually signed a lease to live in this apartment that says they may not sub-let, am I legal vermin? If I can demonstrate regular payment of a regular sum of money on checks to another person obviously dwelling here, each check marked “rent for month XXX”, have I “rented in good faith”?
I would guess, based on what I already know and have heard, that as a New York City resident I have a pretty powerful set of tenant’s rights just by virtue of having been here for more than a month, uninterrupted. Just the same, if anyone knows in greater and more solid detail just what my status is (and whether or not I may safely contact the landlord or super and raise hell with some expectation of safety from legal retaliation), please let me know.