Can someone provide me a link to the NY tenant law. I can only seem to find NYC based stuff.
I have a friend in a privately held apartment building that has a rodent problem. When she notified the manager and landlord today, the manager said that other tenants have complained but the cost was something like $600 for the exterminator to come and the landlord has not done anything about it.
I think the majority of the tenant protection laws are NYC specific local ordinances.
That said, rats are a health concern so I’d start with a call to the county health department.
http://www2.erie.gov/health/
Just have her call and pay for the exterminator and take it out of the rent. Mail the landlord a copy of the bill. They’ll never do anything.
This is usually true.
Get a phone call with the landlord and tell him that you’ll have the house inspected by the state (they do this for free) if he doesn’t take care of it right away. I’m sure they’ll find a lot more than rats that needs to be taken care of.
Thanks.
There is 3 apartments and a main road facing restaurant in the building so I would be sure he won’t want the health department there.
I told her to call her landlord again and leave a message that she needs a call back by 3pm or she will call an exterminator herself and send the bill to him to deduct from her rent. If he gives her crap I told her to say she will report it to the health department. What state department will come and inspect the building? Seems like most of the housing department sites I found have complaints for section 8 housing and government managed properties and not private.
Oh and just another FYI … only one party needs to have knowledge that a phone conversation is being recorded in NYS… if it comes to that.
Really? I thought both had to know. This is interesting…
I’ll see if I can find out who to call to have the place inspected.
Ya NY is a single consent state. If you are recording someone in another state it gets confusing but working in telephony its common to setup recording inside companies
Anyone have a reccomended exterminator.
Call the landlord and tell him you will be recording the conversation. lol I’ll bet you’ll hear what you want to hear then.
The landlord wont even return phone calls. He has till 3 to call back before she is going to call the exterminator to remove the rat so she can sleep tonight. I told her to keep the old managers number who said that there has been complaints of rats before and the landlord disregarded.
In for results.
To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing in the law that says you can pick and choose what you do as maintenance to an apartment, and then deduct any ammount from your monthly payment.
Buy some 2 dollar mouse traps, its what us homeowners that dont have a land lord to blame do.
^ This. You can’t just call an exterminator and deduct it from your rent.
Post #2… start with the Erie County department of health. They handle rat complaints. The property owner getting a call from the health department will probably get things moving quickly.
that suggestion was ignored throughout this entire thread, and judging by the ‘3pm’ deal from yesterday, they likely didn’t go through with it… but they should have!
While it’s not the correct way it’s usually the easiest way to get results and will almost always work itself out in court. You show me a judge that will award that landlord a small claims case in that situation. After several attempts of contact were made on the tenants behalf of course. Short of going “outside the law” for solutions this is going to be the fastest and most amicable solution to the situation.
Maybe if you have time for fucking around in small claims court. While your landlord denies your security deposit because they didn’t authorize you to bring in an exterminator. Easier to me is calling a department who deals with this stuff all the time and letting them deal with it.
That’s why I always have my landlord use my deposit as my last months rent. In my situation it’s much different. I’ve always had a very good relationship with any landlord I’ve ever had so that’s never been a big deal.
As I said, I completely understand what you’re saying but I’ve called the health department on my neighbor with his junkyard rat and mouse infestation going on and he’s gotten several tickets and it’s only gotten worse. The system is flawed and thet’s what you’re supposed to do by the rules, what you can do in the grey area, and going completely off on a tangent “outside the box.”
I’d expect the health department to have a little more leverage on someone who’s renting to tenants than some random neighbor who seems to be content with his fury pets though.
ALL of his neighbors have called. They simply just don’t care.