Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in New York

Re: tenant legal issues

The landlord is required by law to take action to address the problems your question enumerates: The landlord is required by law to provide adequate heat and to make repairs to provide you with usable, operational windows; and the landlord is also required by law to eliminate bedug infestations as well as any other types of insect and/or rodent infestations of the apartment) as long as you, the tenant, have not somehow caused that infestation. Moreover, the landlord is required by law to take whatever measures are necessary, up to and including eviction of excessively noisy tenants, to compel noisy neighbors to stop or reduce the noise to an acceptable level.

Send your landlord something in writing (with return receipt requested) detailing all of thse problems so that you have a "paper trail" that you have put the landlord on notice of the problems should you need to take legal action.

I am going to provide an ADDITIONAL DETAILED second part to this answer.

Start assembling evidence, e.g., photographs of the windows, paint problems, audio tapes of the noise, perhaps a journal chronicling and describing noise occurrence.

If you live in an apartment house, and other tenants are experiencing similar problems perhaps you can get together and hire an attorney to defray the cost of legal fees should it come to that.

Re: tenant legal issues

SECOND PART of answer:

I will herein provide some detail on the specific laws which impose your landlord's duty to address your problems, so that you can demonstrate to your landlord that you know your rights under the law and are not to be trifled with

Start assembling evidence, e.g., photographs of the windows, paint problems, audio tapes of the noise, perhaps a journal chronicling and describing noise occurrence.

1. NOISY NEIGHBORS PROBLEM: Under the WARRANTY OF HABITABILITY implied by New York law imposed on all landlords, the landlord must take whatever action is necessary to control excessively noisy tenants, up to and including eviction of noisy tenants. (However, the noise complained of must be routine and frequent and must be demonstrated to be at level which interferes with your routine activities such as conversation, telephone calls, listening to radio, etc.)

2: BEDBUG INFESTATION: Section 174 of New York's Multiple Residence Law (applicable to cites and towns with populations of less than 325,000 (and, similarly, Section 78 of New York's Multiple Dwelling Law applicable to cities with population of 325,000 or greater), require the landlord too exterminate infestations in tenants' apartments of rodents and/or vermin, e.g., bedbugs, mosquitoes, houseflies, beetles, bees, cockroaches, moths, rats, and mice, etc., as long as such infestation is NOT DUE to bad housekeeping of you, the tenant.

3. HEAT: Section 173 of New York's Multiple Residence Law (applicable to towns of less than 325,000 population) and Section 79 of the Multiple Dwellings Law applicable to cities with 325,000 or greater population) require landlords to ensure that tenants' apartments are at least 688 degrees Fahrenheit whenever the outside temperature drops below 55 degrees Fahrenheit, from the first of October to May 31 each year, between 6:00 A.M. to 10 P.M..

4. MOLD: The landlord's duties to deal with mold are less clearcut; however, there have been some New York lawsuits with tenants suing landlords for having breached the landlords' WARRANTY OF HABITABILITY to tenants in that the landlords did not eliminate mold.

I addressed some of yoour problems in more detail iin the following answers to LawGuru questions, all in the LANDLORdS AND TENANTS category:

3/9/07: NOISY NEIGHBOR

12/22/05: PROBLEMS WITH NEIGHBORS THAT MANAGEMENT WILL NOT TAKE COORE OF (I answered in two parts in more than one answer too that same question).

11/19/05: RE: NO HEAT