Landlords Should Be Required To Attend Training

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Is it just me, or do many of you out there who rent agree that clueless landlords/landladies aka Slumlords should be required to attend training and obtain a certificate/license before they can accept a rent check? Here's my situation. I moved into my current residence on August 1, 1996. It's a duplex rental unit. Needless to say, I've been here SO long, it truly IS my home. The former owner was good about fixing things, but he decided to sell, and in March of 2007 my current slumlord bought the place. Shortly after the slumlord bought the place she sent her maintenance man over with a lease for me to sign. By the way, she lives in the other side of the duplex, so why she feels the need to send others over to talk to me is just one of those mysteries of life that will remain a mystery. I looked over the lease, consulted with my lawyer, and decided not to sign it because there were some discrepancies on it. A year goes by. I have regular conversations with the slumlord about things that need to be fixed, ie the hot water runs so slow upstairs it takes over an hour for the tub to fill up. By the time the tub does fill up, the water is no longer hot, but merely warm. The roof on the back porch leaks. Now since the leak has gone unfixed,the floor to the porch is rotting out. Last month the toilet started leaking from the second floor down to the first floor. The slumlord did send a new maintenance man over here and he pulled the tiles down from the cieling to confirm that 'Yes, the toilet is leaking.' The slumlord refuses to fix the toilet. She says she doesn't care if the toilet falls through the floor, she's not fixing it. Once again I called my lawyer. They advised me to withhold the rent until the toilet was repaired. Legally what you do is send a letter in writing to your landlord within 7 days of the rent being due, which at the time I only had 5 days to give the landlord notice, so rather than being a bad tenant and going outside the law, I gave the slumlord her rent on time. At 7:30 PM that night she sent some woman (never saw this person before) over to present me with a lease that was so full of CRAP it's not funny. The joke of a lease wasn't the worst part, the worst part was she said, in writing, (signed and dated) that if I didn't have the lease signed by 9AM the following day, or she would evict me. Now, I don't know about where you're from, but around here judges don't take too kindly to coercion. I didn't sign the lease. Some time the following evening slumlord sends her daughter over to see if I signed the lease. I said, 'No, we'll go with the eviction.' The daughter asked for the unsigned lease back, I said, 'No, I'll just hold onto it to show the judge.' What were some of the laughable parts of the lease? Well, she has it worded so that I, the tenant will assume responsibity for maintaining the property according to local codes. In one part of the lease she has that I will pay her $XXX per month for 12 months, HOWEVER, in another section of the lease she has that she can raise the rent with only 30 days notice. Yes, lets take this to court. Meanwhile, the toilet is still leaking. I managed to tape some plastic sheeting up on the ceiling to with a hole cut in the center for the water to drain through that hole into a small bucket we've got hanging beneath the hole. I called the building inspector. Both the slumlord and I got a letter in the mail yesterday informing us that the building inspector will be coming to inspect on Wednesday. How did I know the slumlord got her copy? She sent her daughter over to tell me. The woman is so clueless as to her responsibilities, she isn't even the least bit curious as to HOW the building inspector got involved, or WHY the complaint was filed. Maybe on Monday I'll hear her yelling into her cell phone (yes she yells into her cell phone like its a tin can on a string)with the building inspectors office.