Parents please help - Problems with landlord

lotsofquests
Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:11:54 +0000

About 25 years ago, my sister and I shared an apartment for the summer while I was in grad school at a low-ranked state school. We got free advice from a lawyer who had hours at the school advising students and filed with a magistrate (or whatever the low level official was at that time) to have our deposit returned. Our experience that summer was similar to what OP has written, horrible condition and slow response to complaints. The law at that time, and I don’t know if it has changed, definitely was in the favor of the tenant. When our deposit was not returned within the specified amount of time, the lawyer told us that we were entitled to double the amount. Although we did not get double the amount due to some technicality, we did get our full deposit returned. Our landlord was not an evil, greedy person, just a schoolteacher trying to earn some extra cash who was in way over his head and could not manage to get things done. It certainly helped our case that we had documented the terrible condition and all phone calls and attempts to get things fixed.