Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in New York

I have a "landlord" I rented a home with back in May 2012. For our security deposit we freshened the place up, no real repairs, just tore out carpets, fresh coat of paint, etc. We understood there were some updates that had to happen to the home. It became clear after awhile that he was dragging his feet on them. As winter rolled around we ended up going a couple weeks without our primary heat, a boiler. We had a wood fireplace, and we bought a space heater, but the space heater was too much for the house to handle (it was on some aged wattage limit system). Most of the house was far too cold. Come Winter, our baby was born 3 months early, and we fell behind on rent, but towards spring/summer made ammends, and were current with him until we left in October 2013. Our Least ran from March to March (it took us a month to prep the home for moving in). After that we stayed month to month because we were suspect of his true intentions. Two big issues are existing at the moment.

The roof on the home was dated, we knew this going in, as did he. However, the spring after we moved in, it began leaking everywhere, eventually even after we got our premature baby home from the hospital. 7-8 leaks around the home, chasing them with buckets. One ran right down the wire and light fixture in the entry of the home, and that one would run so constant that we actually took a video of it to petition him to make this roof happen (we have pictures of the other leaks as well). He finally started addressing things in the fall, coming up in August to do some repairs (leaving exposed wires on an outlet, and the light was stuck on... the same light that had the crazy leak. We were left to cross wires to finally try and turn it off, with no electrical knowledge) but never committed on a date. Our looming fear of it not getting done drove me to tell him in September that we would move if this wasn't addressed. By the end of October no firm date was set, so we acted on our words and left. I had to protect my wife and little girl, only a few months old.

The flip side of this situation is as follows: I had a really hard time getting the utilities to switch over, in fact, I could never really get them switched over. However, he never evicted us, and I kept him in the loop on this. In an effort to leverage the roof getting done I stopped pursuing these, with full intention of figuring out a back payment plan with him (I made up several grand in rent as our baby was in the NICU, I was obviously willing to do this).

Here's my question. What are we liable for? He wants the back utility money, and I feel that we lived in a situation that was unsafe for most of our tenancy. I don't want anything more than to have everyone mutually move on here. The amount of mold from the poor roof, as well as the exposed wire situation, that must be enough to get him off our back. Thoughts?

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