Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California

Unless the stairs are somehow inherently dangerous and need repair, i doubt you can make the argumentvthat thecstairs make the unit unihabitable... Breaking the lease is not impossible and does not necessarily result in court but you would need to be willing to pay monies to get a new renter in and anything while it is vacant...

Mr. Green is basically correct. The fact that your wife now has trouble with stairs does not give you a right to break the lease, unless there is something wrong with the stairs and the landlord refuses to fix them. Even then you have to put the landlord on notice of the problem and make several demands for repair that get ignored before you could even consider breaking the lease legally. What you can do, however, is two things. You can ask the landlord for permission to install extra hand holds or other safety devices to make it safer for your wife to go up and down the stairs, or you can ask your landlord to let you out of your lease early. If you ask for that, you can expect the landlord to require you to pay rent until a new tenant is found and moves in. So there will be a period of time that you will be paying for your new apartment and your current vacant apartment while they get it ready for a new tenant. You can also expect to have to pay for reasonable advertising expenses and any other out of pocket costs to the landlord for finding and moving in the new tenant.