Bad Apartment!!

By kathleen Ragheb

After considerable efforts to bring a solution to a problem of deteriorating living conditions (Requests started back in September of ’07), including exposed wires, missing dry wall, non closing windows, falling in ceiling over bathtub, no working lock, excessive trash in hallways, bed bugs, and dead rodents in heat registers, I moved our daughter out of her apartment.  I never received a response from the owner’s, but the live-in building manager kept telling the tenant’s that he would fix things. We (Me and the other parent’s of the other children) had all of her, and the other tenants in the apartment’s furniture and rugs hauled away and disposed of for fear of transferring the bed bugs to their new residences.  We contacted the Cambridge Housing Inspection Services and filed a complaint and the owner’s of the building were given a citation.  Apparently this was not the first time this building had been cited for poor living conditions.  The landlord was given a time frame to make the repairs in, then it was extended per CHIS, and the entire time our children had no where to live.  My daughter and one of the other renters also suffered severe anxiety attacks and had to seek professional help, all of which has been documented.  Again, we find ourselves with school starting, our children without a residence to live in and we were all scrambling to secure a place to live in a city where rentals are at a premium.  We would up finding a place for our daughter and one of the other girl’s but at a higher monthly rental cost by $250 for each student.

We wrote to the landlord’s requesting our security deposits back and their written response was that they had no intentions of returning our security deposits and had used it for the last months rent, since we didn’t tell them we were moving out, and that I and one of the other renter’s still owed back rent.  The back rent that was owed was being held in protest to get the landlord to give me a call so I could make a formal complaint hoping that hearing from a parent might hold more credence than hearing from a student as they made it perfectly clear that they paid no mind to the student tenants.  I also was wondering about the laws saying that no more than two ‘families’ can live in one apartment?  There were four 20 year olds, all from different families living under one roof.

I have not heard anything new from the landlord’s other than a letter, which came by regular mail, stating that they had no intention of returning our deposits, and expected the money in arrears to be paid. Plus we moved the children out in January, the letter was received in April, and it is now July……….. What should I do?

Deeply Concerned,

Kathy

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