Monday, August 15, 2011

Negligent landlord causes water damage?

I am renting a room at a house. Our washing machine broke and my landlord had his staff install a new washing machine. The laundry room is directly above my room. When they installed the washer I was out of town for the weekend. I came home to find that my bed was soaked and down comforter was stained yellow from water stains. I was able to get my landlords daughter to come over and she called her dad (my landlord) to let him know about the damages. The water leak happened because when they were installing the washer they broke a pipe and water flooded my room and the bathroom next to my room. I could hear him talking on the phone to her and he said to give me some money to do my sheets and blankets. They both apologized for any inconvenience that it caused to me. She also replaced the ceiling tiles that were ruined and the maintenance brought in a shop vac and vacuumed my room. A couple of days later, the water that had been in my room began attracting bugs. I emailed my landlord and let him know and he said they would be there the next day to fix the problem. When I got home from work that day, I find that their idea of fixing the problem was sticking a can of raid for me to spray myself to get rid of the bugs. Fast forward a month later and I am at work. My boyfriend was watching a movie in my room and he heard the noise of water. So he got up and moved just in time to have gallons and gallons of water coming through my ceiling. This time it did quite a bit a damage. My laptop, bed, shoes, and multiple other things were ruined. The damages total to almost $1000. We got pictures and there is at least an inch of water in my room. My boyfriend called and left a message with my landlord, and was able to talk to one of my other roommates who was able to get in contact with my landlords daughter. The maintenance staff came over shortly after that to ess the damage. The problem that happened this time was that the pipe came undone. (They fixed it though and said it will not happen again-they fixed it by screwing the pipe that the water goes through into wall with four screws)The staff opened up an empty room for me to temporarily stay in. I got off of work a couple of hours early to go home. I called my landlords daughter who said she would be there in 2 hours to see what was going on. Six hours later she decides to show up and tells me the reason we cant get a hold of her dad is because he has been on vacation for almost a month in Florida. She has no clue when he will be returning and she cannot make any formal decisions. She also tells me that she did speak with her father and that he was just wondering if I had renters insurance. She also tries accusing my boyfriend and I with tampering with the pipe on the washing machine. I emailed my landlord the day this flood occurred and left multiple messages (the daughter told me he will get the messages, because his business phone gets forwarded to his cell phone). My landlord never called me back and finally emailed me back the next day at noon. He told me he had gone above and beyond his duties of helping me and he didn't even need to put me in another room. He told me to claim this on my insurance as it states in the lease that he has no responsibility to this. I replied back to him asking where it stated that he had no responsibility and he had somebody highlight the clause in the lease and put it under my door. It stated this:Possession. The lessee agrees to hold the lessor blameless if the lessor is unable to deliver or maintain possession for lessee due to cirstances beyond the lessors control. Cirstances may include, but are not limited to, natural disasters, acts of god, fire, criminal and civil offenses committed by others, sheriff sale, and hold over by lessees who have not been granted such rights by the lessors direct agreement in writing. I feel that this was caused by his negligence. I have asked that he pay for the damages. So my question is, do you think that landlord should be held liable and be responsible for paying for my damaged personal belongings. Besides just this incident there is multiple others-the main one including the air conditioning. This was included in my rent (I pay my rent quarterly since I am a college student and all utilities are included) and I have been asking that they turn it on since the end of May. They have told me that it is broke, then in July their staff comes and paints the house. When they are in the house they turn the air conditioning on (magically it is not broke anymore) and when they finished painting they turned it off again. I began calling my landlords daughter (since she is the only one that will return my phone calls) and she tells me that it is broke again. She keeps telling me somebody will be out to fix it. I have now been asking for two months and the dial on the thermometer keeps on reaching the maximum which reads 90. Any advice would be great

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