Breaking lease

[jennmi]

Hi,

I am in my second year at an apartment. We leave are window cracked in winter due to a daughters skin condition that it helps because the air in the apt won't be so dry. We just got a letter saying we have to close the window or pay the excess cost of heat we are using because it says in the lease we will not waste utilities. My question is what if we do neither? Will we just break the lease and have to move or can anything else happen? We feel the payment option is crazy because their are four apts on one bill so how do they know that we are totally to blame for the rise in heat costs.

 

[Gail_in_Georgia]

Because this is listed in the lease, failure to follow through with this may very likely result in your landlord evicting you. Or, everyone may get charged for the extra money it costs to heat the place when windows are left open.

Landlords are very focused on the increasing cost of paying for heat. There is likely very little that upsets them seeing tenants keeping windows open in the middle of winter.

Have you tried leaving bowls of water around the apartment to add moisture to the air? I can remember growing up in apartments with radiator heat and hating the dry air that, among other things, seemed to increase the static electricity. My mom used to put large bowls of water on the radiators and that seemed to help.

Gail