After living in a rented apartment for a year, I know firsthand that property owners will much sooner take the cheap solution to  problem over the long term solution.

My buildings basement was so old that it couldn’t keep mice from getting in over and over again, and instead of fixing the basement, I had an exterminator sent 5 times in 6 months.

But when this user’s landlord tried to start charging her for the expensive repair bills he was racking up, she got a lawyer that ended up getting them out of paying rent for an entire year!

Check it out!

Thanks for the year of free rent in Brooklyn

So a friend and I move into this newly renovated apartment in Brooklyn. It’s nice enough, but just about every one of the 14 units has some sort of weird problem.

One unit had the hot and cold water mixed up (flush a few times and get a heated toilet), one unit none of the outlets are grounded. One unit there are gaps around the windows.

The problem in our unit was a leak in the air conditioner lines. The leak was probably at the roof, but we ended up with no AC. We call them and it takes a month to get someone.

He refills the lines and a week later the problem comes back. We spend the summer getting the system topped up every week.

And in classic landlord fashion, they decided the upkeep of the apartment they owned was too expensive, and started billing OP!

At the end of the summer they decided that our repairs (and all of the neighbors) were getting too expensive. So they send us bills.

Our bill was in the tens of thousands of dollars (recharging that system weekly must have been expensive).

They also start trying to charge every unit for any infraction, like $100 for every unit for a single scrap of paper found in a hall. The tenants all get together to have a little meeting.

In a move every renter reading this probably envies, OP and the other tenants decided to stop paying rent!

It turns out that they never got a certificate of occupancy for the building. The city had it on the books as a furniture warehouse.

So collectively we all just stop paying them. Rent, fines, fees, nothin’. We retain a lawyer and just live there.

The company tried to get us out by cutting lighting and other services. We contacted the lawyer, the company would get fined, and we’d get our lights back.

They tried to change the main lock once but we let the locksmith know what was going on so he stopped. They didn’t try it a second time.

The tenants’ revenge didn’t stop there, however!

The first floor of the building was an off-track betting parlor.

They were particularly noisy and obnoxious, so one resident called the health department over a moldy loaf of bread we found in the basement.

One of my best memories was watching a bunch of guys in hazmat suits clear out the betting parlor so they could run tests.

Eventually they try to get the certs, but to do that they need to do inspections with the drywall removed.

They tried to do it while we lived there and the lawyer fought it for not being in a livable state.

When the building tried to get them kicked out, OP’s lawyer went into absolute beast mode to save them!

Finally they realized they needed us out (if they got the C of O while we were still there, we’d owe back rent). They take us to court to get evictions.

Lawyer gets everything pushed back as far as he can, but finally we go to city court. Lawyer points out that they’re trying to evict 14 units, but you can’t evict more than 10 at a time.

Court ejects the case. I don’t think their lawyer gets a single word in.

But all good things come to an end, and eventually OP and the other tenants had to leave… sometime in the next six months.

So now we get a county court date for an ejection instead of an eviction. Again, lawyer pushes it out as much as he can, but eventually we go.

Court agrees to eject us all, but sees the evidence of lighting and lock tampering. Asks our lawyer what would be a reasonable timeframe.

Lawyer asks for 4 months. Judge gives us 6. Everyone stays until the last month.

At the end of it all, we got to live in a newly renovated apartment in a trendy area of Brooklyn for free for a little over a year.

And to think, none of their shady dealings would have been brought to light if they didn’t try billing their own tenants for their buildings’ repairs! Go figure!

Reddit was glad to see tenants come out on top for once, and this user wished her own buildings fellow tenants could get their act together.

This fellow Brooklyn native said that properties like these were all too common in their neighborhood.

Another Brooklyn resident commended OP on not taking the horrible treatment she was faced with.

Finally, this AC expert said that if the landlord would have just gotten the system replaced, he would’ve saved a whole lot of money in the long run!

A landlord? Taking advantage of their tenant? Say it ain’t so!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.