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Can we break a lease due to mice in our apartment walls that we hear but don't see?
Anonymous3 views1 answers
My boyfriend and I moved into an apartment in a Queens co-op two months ago. Two weeks in, we realized we weren't the only ones living there - our apartment has a mouse problem. We hear them everyday, particularly in the morning, and they are LOUD. We've spoken to our super and had someone spray; however, the main issue is that we don't see the mice anymore. (We saw some in the beginning.) Now it's basically hearing them everyday. Our super, who lives in-building, doesn't seem concerned or willing to help us further. Although some people could put up with it, I cannot. They are so loud, it's like they are in the room with us, and often we hear them clawing against the tub or chewing through wood in the walls. Can we break our lease based on these circumstances? What can we do to get help?
Dear can we break the lease under these circumstances?
Not really. New York State law does not provide for a right to break a lease except in very special circumstances that do not appear to apply to you.
New York forces virtually every break a lease dispute into a court proceeding, assuming the landlord sues, unless the tenant is able to negotiate a safe exit from the lease. Hire a lawyer to protect yourself in a negotiation.
Unless your tenancy is a "month to month" tenancy, New York does not have a statutory (law) provision that allows a tenant to break a lease based only on the landlord's misconduct of failure to make repairs.
New York does offer other legal remedies derived through the statutory Warranty of Habitability ( New York Real Property Law Section 235-b) and also allows tenants to make complaints to their local health department, building department and code enforcement department, for the purpose of reporting violations of housing and health standards, so that local government may chase after the landlord for code compliance.
In New York City, you arrange for an inspection of your home by the Office of Code Enforcement by making a telephone complaint to the City's Hot Line number 311. With the current emergency situation in the City, you may need to be patient for your complaint to be addressed.
In any case, even were you looking to end your tenancy due to a breach of the warranty of habitability, without medical proof, that the conditions in the apartment and/or on the walls of the apartment and the sounds of vermin scratching the tub, " are adverse to your health, and without actual evidence that vermin run rampant within the walls, and without verifiable written proof that you communicated the repair issues to the landlord, even the warranty of habitability, may not afford you the room to "break your lease." The same would hold true were you intent upon claiming that the landlord's wrongful acts caused a constructive eviction.
New York City Housing Court provides tenants with repair issues with a remedy as there is an opportunity to bring the landlord to court for a failure to make repairs. The lawsuit is known as an "HP Proceeding."
The process of an HP Proceeding will allow you to list the conditions in your home that you want a city inspector to check out, because the violations reported by the inspector may allow the judge to direct the landlord to make repairs.
Your issues, involving vermin (mice), are serious enough to warrant an inspector to record violations.
Read more about starting an HP Proceeding at:
http://courts.state.ny.us/courts/nyc/housing/st...
For more information read about your rights as a tenant at:
http://www.ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/pdfs/p...
Good luck.
