Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in New Jersey

Re: Possible Rent Abatement?

Call your town's board of health. It will make your landlord clean up.

Gary Moore

Re: Possible Rent Abatement?

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Rent abatements are usually reserved for a situation where the rental unit is uninhabitable. In your case, the rental unit is not uninhatibable. However, your lease may (should) contain a paragraph stating that you should be able to use and enjoy the property peacefully and without disturbance. The dog "poop" likely interferes with your peaceful enjoyment of the property. It's not an actionable offense, though. You may want to check with your municipality to see if there are ordinances about cleaning up pet messes on property. Whether or not such an ordinance exists, I suggest that you write a letter to your landlord, send it certified mail and regular mail and express your concerns

to him or her and ask that he or she cleans up after the dog on a regular basis. It is not a healthy situation and if there is an ordinance about this in your town you could refer to it in your letter. It is always difficult to deal with these situations. Good luck.