youngidealist
New Member
Here are the circumstances regarding a condo that I share with 3 roommates:
1. The three of us have signed promises to sign a lease which the owner wishes us to sign together in the same place. We are all college students and we've been coordinating this agreement over the summer so that's been difficult to do, but we have each paid more than just our first months rent.
2. I own 2 cats and the owner is allergic to animals. He agreed to accept them living in the condo with a few conditions such as that if he couldn't come in to do repairs on his condo because of them, then I would arrange to move out. I agreed because in my circumstances this is my best opportunity that I have. My parents don't support me and my roommates are the closest thing I have to stability while I attend school.
3. One roommate was already living in this condo and his older two roommates had graduated and moved out. When the owner had me sign the promise to sign a lease he had this roommate, I'll just call him Sean, give me the keys to the apartment which he had gotten from the former roommates before they left. But Sean didn't have two full sets of keys from them, he didn't even have one, and he told the owner this. He had one set of two keys and a spare key to the side door while the house takes three total to get in and out (two locks are on two doors each, the dead bolt lock for both uses the same key and we were missing all copies of it). I was given another key and was told that it sometimes worked on the front door, but I could never get it to work. We informed the owner of this situation to the best of our ability, but he would not completely listen to us at any one point and wanted us to just tell him that it's possible to get in and out of the condo. Understand that we both could get in and out but I couldn't get in if there was a bolt lock set on the one door I had a key to.
4. My cats were caught one day clawing the front window screen and cuts from them could be seen. I reprimanded them and accepted the responsibility of having it replaced before I moved out.
5. One night, while both roommates were out of town a friend and I were in a hurry to leave and pick another friend up. Since my guest quickly left out the front door (my key was for a side door) I quickly locked up everything and turned off the lights. I was so used to going out the side door that I figured an error might be made in this haste so I left the front window open because it had a complex blockade of boxes that would make it difficult for anyone to get into and we were coming right back anyway. When we got back, I found that I had reflexively locked the bolt lock to the side door and was thus locked out, and I also realized that in my haste I had left my phone inside. I also noticed for the first time that the window screen was screwed into the outside wall around the window.
I asked a neighbor for a screwdriver and all he could loan me was a pocket knife utility with a short flip out screwdriver. There was a hedge in the way as well making it difficult to reach the top of the screen. When I had all but the top right screw out, I moved it around gently to see if I could make my way in without removing that last screw and it broke. The material in the corner that broke was a very old cracked plastic. One of the bottom corners had also been broken before I had started on removing it. I got in, let my friends in, and was able to put the secure top left screw and bottom left screw in and fit the bottom right corner around it's screw and the structure stayed in place for the night.
When I woke the next morning the screen had fallen forward onto the hedge. The top left screw had come out of it's socket in the wall and the bottom left corner had cracked in half. I picked the whole thing up carefully and while I held the whole screen from the top bar parallel to the ground and was thinking what to do, the final corner broke under the weight of the screen.
6. When I spoke to the owner and showed him the screen he accepted no responsibility of the event occurring due to him not giving me all of the keys to the condo, he even blamed that part on Sean the roommate for not getting all of the keys from the former roommates. After looking at the broken corners he said that he would not be paying for it because the breaks in the corners proved that it was "forced".
With all of this in mind, I wonder if the owner would in the long run be willing to blackmail me into not making him do repairs because of his sensitivity towards my cats and the conditions he made me agree under. Also, when he says 'forced' it sounds like he's trying to make a legal argument, but at the same time I would think the law might have some idea of actual force that constitutes as "forced". Like at least 5 lbs of pressure required or some means of showing the difference between "forced" and broken upon contact.
Is there any legal preparation I can have to force him to keep me on the lease if he does eventually blackmail me with the pet conditions he made me sign for?
Is he legally responsible at all for the window screen, either because he did not give me the keys or because the corners were old and breaking of their own accord?
He's a nice person and I'm sure that he would listen to reason at some point, but I might need to prove it to him to get him to accept his responsibility.
1. The three of us have signed promises to sign a lease which the owner wishes us to sign together in the same place. We are all college students and we've been coordinating this agreement over the summer so that's been difficult to do, but we have each paid more than just our first months rent.
2. I own 2 cats and the owner is allergic to animals. He agreed to accept them living in the condo with a few conditions such as that if he couldn't come in to do repairs on his condo because of them, then I would arrange to move out. I agreed because in my circumstances this is my best opportunity that I have. My parents don't support me and my roommates are the closest thing I have to stability while I attend school.
3. One roommate was already living in this condo and his older two roommates had graduated and moved out. When the owner had me sign the promise to sign a lease he had this roommate, I'll just call him Sean, give me the keys to the apartment which he had gotten from the former roommates before they left. But Sean didn't have two full sets of keys from them, he didn't even have one, and he told the owner this. He had one set of two keys and a spare key to the side door while the house takes three total to get in and out (two locks are on two doors each, the dead bolt lock for both uses the same key and we were missing all copies of it). I was given another key and was told that it sometimes worked on the front door, but I could never get it to work. We informed the owner of this situation to the best of our ability, but he would not completely listen to us at any one point and wanted us to just tell him that it's possible to get in and out of the condo. Understand that we both could get in and out but I couldn't get in if there was a bolt lock set on the one door I had a key to.
4. My cats were caught one day clawing the front window screen and cuts from them could be seen. I reprimanded them and accepted the responsibility of having it replaced before I moved out.
5. One night, while both roommates were out of town a friend and I were in a hurry to leave and pick another friend up. Since my guest quickly left out the front door (my key was for a side door) I quickly locked up everything and turned off the lights. I was so used to going out the side door that I figured an error might be made in this haste so I left the front window open because it had a complex blockade of boxes that would make it difficult for anyone to get into and we were coming right back anyway. When we got back, I found that I had reflexively locked the bolt lock to the side door and was thus locked out, and I also realized that in my haste I had left my phone inside. I also noticed for the first time that the window screen was screwed into the outside wall around the window.
I asked a neighbor for a screwdriver and all he could loan me was a pocket knife utility with a short flip out screwdriver. There was a hedge in the way as well making it difficult to reach the top of the screen. When I had all but the top right screw out, I moved it around gently to see if I could make my way in without removing that last screw and it broke. The material in the corner that broke was a very old cracked plastic. One of the bottom corners had also been broken before I had started on removing it. I got in, let my friends in, and was able to put the secure top left screw and bottom left screw in and fit the bottom right corner around it's screw and the structure stayed in place for the night.
When I woke the next morning the screen had fallen forward onto the hedge. The top left screw had come out of it's socket in the wall and the bottom left corner had cracked in half. I picked the whole thing up carefully and while I held the whole screen from the top bar parallel to the ground and was thinking what to do, the final corner broke under the weight of the screen.
6. When I spoke to the owner and showed him the screen he accepted no responsibility of the event occurring due to him not giving me all of the keys to the condo, he even blamed that part on Sean the roommate for not getting all of the keys from the former roommates. After looking at the broken corners he said that he would not be paying for it because the breaks in the corners proved that it was "forced".
With all of this in mind, I wonder if the owner would in the long run be willing to blackmail me into not making him do repairs because of his sensitivity towards my cats and the conditions he made me agree under. Also, when he says 'forced' it sounds like he's trying to make a legal argument, but at the same time I would think the law might have some idea of actual force that constitutes as "forced". Like at least 5 lbs of pressure required or some means of showing the difference between "forced" and broken upon contact.
Is there any legal preparation I can have to force him to keep me on the lease if he does eventually blackmail me with the pet conditions he made me sign for?
Is he legally responsible at all for the window screen, either because he did not give me the keys or because the corners were old and breaking of their own accord?
He's a nice person and I'm sure that he would listen to reason at some point, but I might need to prove it to him to get him to accept his responsibility.
