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I have been living in my apartment since October 2009, and my lease goes until July 31st, 2011. Since this past July, my furnished apartment has been falling apart right under my eyes. First there was a leak in our entranceway, that in no way had anything to do with us, but something wrong with the piping in the building. This has destroyed our nice entranceway to now look like a construction site. And as of today, more than 8 months later, the entranceway has not been refinished. There also was a leak in our shower that caused the wall that is shared by the shower and bedroom to grow huge spots of mold. Parts of the wall are anywhere from green, black, to yellow and many paint chunks have long been gone. This happened approximately 10 months ago. Our landlord is fully aware of the issue and has supposedly fixed the pipes, but has not fixed the construction part of it. It is still livable, but by no means what I agreed upon when first signing my lease for the furnished apartment. Also, the landlord had promised new windows before this past winter, since the windows have never been able to completely shut, and after two hard winters, have turned pretty much black with mold along the bottom. As of yesterday, he is still feeding us ridiculous excuses why it is not his fault, but the window company's fault as to why we still do not have the new ones. Well, now that winter is coming to a close and we only have a few months left, at this point, all I really want to do is take serious action against him. I don't care if it's in the form of some kind of compensation for the months we have paid rent in an apartment where the conditions have majorly fallen since signing the lease, or if some outside group can step in and force him to fix the problems. Also, I am not entirely sure if he rents this apartment in a legit manner. We pay him in cash every month, and he gives us a receipt, but aside from that, I don't know if this is a legit rental or not, so if it is not, then I would be more than happy to turn him over to whoever it is that deals with those issues. Please, I would appreciate any and all serious advice. He is completely aware with how upset we are in this apartment and knows what we want, but without some kind of legal obligation or some way to scare him into taking action, I'm afraid he will never do anything or compensate us in any way. I'm tempted to just stop paying rent or only give him half, but I don't know what he can do against us, in that case. Thanks for any comments

Did you have any agreements about this kind of situations?

Yes, we re-signed our lease in July around the same time everything started falling apart under the condition that these things would be taken care of as quickly as possible. And with the same agreement that we would have new windows put in our apartment before the winter. Well, accordingly to our landlord, the fact that nothing has been done is not his fault, so therefore he is not in the wrong. But yet, we are the ones still living in this apartment paying the same rent as if the place was in perfect condition, which it is far from at this point. I just don't know where to take this next. Aside from simply leaving, I don't know how to take action against him, even if we did have an agreement since July that he has not upheld. He seems completely irrational and simply talking to him is not enough anymore.