NEED URGENT HELP: INFESTATION & BREAKING LEASE
NEED URGENT HELP
I know this is extremely long but i seriously need urgent help & advice. Im going to lay out ALL the details & background but I’ll highlight where it actually gets important.
TLDR: Can’t move into apartment a week after move in date because of clear cockroach/ possibly mite infestation even after multiple treatments along with everything breaking and landlady says we can’t break the lease. $2,150/mo not including electricity or internet, Bay area california.
BACKGROUND: Im 19F & my bf is 20m. we’ve been living at my parents house for a long time & they’re great but we obviously want to move out cuz independence & wtvr. We’ve been searching for about a year but this is the first apartment we have ever rented. We found this place months ago, and it took a very long time with a lot of back and forth for approval and all that. We got approved eventually then were told after the fact they couldn’t verify my income correctly so we didn’t qualify. My father ended up co-signing for us and we were then fully approved. When we initially toured the place the room we were shown looked fine, it was clean, pretty spacious etc. One of the neighbors came out and seemed very nice and overall everything was fine. Side note this place is in a more “ghetto” area of a city that’s mostly known to be very expensive and fancy (everyone says this, we found out after signing as well that apparently it’s the trenches but whatever) but the place itself didn’t look bad it had a nice courtyard the surrounding area seemed normal etc but this all isn’t the issue. After touring and some of the application process the woman tells us that the room we were shown isn’t going to be the room we’re given, it’s the same layout just in a different building. Okay that’s fine. We come back again later to tour the actual room we’ll get and we’re told that they’re in the process of moving things out of it/cleaning because it’s used as an “example room”. It was a little confusing because it looked lived in, couch, tv, bed with sheets, appliances in closets, brooms, bins, etc and none of that is shown in example photos online which is what i thought she meant. It has all the same stuff as the last apartment though so we were like alright looks fine. I’ve told this woman previously that i’m allergic to roaches. I’ve asked her if they have a bug problem. She’s said no, they treat every month, all the surrounding rooms, okay cool. She tells us it was just treated, and they’re doing another treatment at the end of the month before the discussed move in date so there will be absolutely no bugs. There looks to be 1 or 2 dead ones on the floor during this walk around but to be fair they looked more like beatles than roaches.
Everything seemed fine and normal despite the furniture, so we sign the lease. Our move in date was about 3 weeks out- April 11th.
Move in day: We come in to pay the first months rent (1,433 due to the date) we’re given the keys and she takes us to the room- first time we’ve seen it fully empty.
IMPORTANT:
There’s a very strong chemical smell and she says that they had just glazed the bathtub and we can’t use it until the next day when it’s dry. She gives us our inspection papers and leaves us to check everything out and when we’re done drop them off in the mailbox. We start inspecting everything again, and this time when we open the drawers in the kitchen, one of them is filled with a bunch of utensils, large cooking spoons and tongs, another is filled with medicine, pills, children’s motrin, bandaids, another one is filled with food, noodles, and every cupboard has loose uncooked rice everywhere. Another one of the drawers caves in and breaks when we open it. Odd. She apologizes and says the “cleaning lady” must not have cleaned up her stuff? That’s weird. After the inspection we note down everything that’s wrong with the place including:
-Basically everything is dirty (not like grease on the stove but like there was actually 0 cleaning of any kind done)
-Living room blinds don’t work
-Bathroom sink is completely plugged because the lever you use to open and close the drain doesn’t work and completely snapped off when we tried to open the drain
-2 lights in the bathroom are missing covers so it’s just a bulb in a huge hole in the ceiling
-A drawer handle in the bathroom snapped off when we tried to open it
-Top of the toilet is loose and toilet makes a very loud running water noise randomly
-Closet rod is loose and coming off
-No garbage disposal (dk if this matters)
-Fridge drawers get stuck and are loose (she mentioned she swapped the fridge for us so it wasn’t the one we saw before)
-Handle on kitchen cupboard loose
-Ceiling & tiles have cracks
We realize the glaze is making us really sick and lightheaded so we’re like okay we need to leave, drop the form off, go home.
Come back like 2 days later to do a deep clean because it needs it. Still smells like glaze, check and glaze is not fully dry yet. Find a tiny live roach. I spray it and the rest of the place with poison. We clean as much as we can. Leave. Come back couple days later with my parents. Do a deep clean. Wipe everything down with bleach. Sweep, mop. End up finding like 3 more live roaches. Spray them. Caulk & steel wool all cracks. Spray the entire place, every corner, the door, outside the door, everything, with poison. Leave. My boyfriend goes a couple days after to check it out. Says he checked top to bottom and there’s no bugs, and the drawer that fell apart has been replaced (i was not notified anyone had come in, didn’t know when or who replaced it) nothing else on the list has been fixed. He sweeps and mops every room again for about the 3rd time now. We go back together a few days later. First thing i see is a live roach. We find 14 total in like the 30 minutes we’re there. 2 of them in the fridge. 3 of them after i had killed every one i found, checked that place TOP TO BOTTOM, every single corner, curve, lip, im talking every f****ng inch. 3 more appeared out of f****g nowhere. When i looked in the fridge, where we had left a britta filter, one of them is inside the handle. I’m obviously f*****g pissed, i take the britta filter out and when i do that the glass shelf of the fridge breaks and drops out of the frame. Not to mention that shelf had tons and tons of tiny black specks, which i’m assuming is roach shit. I’m literally shocked and i’m like let’s f****g leave. Not to mention that still nothing else we had written on our form had been fixed. Our move in day was April 11th. This was on April 16th. Every time we go into the apartment, it stinks more and more like mold and the floor has dust and dirt everywhere. At first we didn’t notice the smell because the glaze stunk, but i had sprayed air freshener multiple times and every time it absolutely stinks. I’m convinced someone is coming in because the amount of dirt and dust and random specks that are on the floor even after continuously sweeping and mopping and random hairs in drawers that we had already wiped down multiple times. Other things to note that we noticed is: every time i go in there i feel extremely lightheaded, the last time i went in before i had sprayed anything i almost passed out on the floor im talking lost feeling in my legs hit the ground. And paint over Everything. Paint going from the closet under the door onto the floor. Multiple LARGE wads & strings of hair, a coin, a kernel, a roach, tape, and the fridge plug painted over. We leave. As we’re walking through the hallway of the building to leave that, i swear to god was not this dirty before, we find well over 6 dead roaches and i kid you not an army of little white mites crawling around in a group. I call the lady the next day and say that i would like to break the lease because it has been about a week and we have not been able to move in because there’s a clear roach infestation in the entire building and literally everything is breaking. She tells me we can’t break the lease because it’s a year lease and she’s sending maintenance in immediatley to treat for bugs. She’s mentioned multiple times during this phone call and previously that “we have our own way of treating” and has shown me before what they use, it’s like diomactious earth and says on the tub it’s an ant killer. She said the bugs will be completely gone in a week and it MAY take 2 weeks but they will definitely be COMPLETELY gone. Yeah, that’s great and all despite the fact she said this originally and the place was treated once around the middle of the month before we moved in, a second time 1 week & 4 days before we moved in, a 3rd time when i sprayed myself the first time, a 4th when i sprayed the whole place a second time, and it’s only gotten 10x worse despite 4 different treatments with about 3 different poisons. This place costs 2,150 a month not including electricity or internet.
End: Ive been so stressed ive had like a complete mental unraveling lmfao I haven’t got out of bed in 2 days. I would threaten legal action if she absolutely refuses to let us out of the lease or give our deposit back hoping that might make her realize it’s not worth the fight especially because they’re already involved in another lawsuit but in reality i don’t have money for a lawyer. I’m scared most of all of ruining my dad’s credit since he’s the co-signer, but i will never feel comfortable living there if it’s f*****g infested. Idk what to do. The lease states they’re responsible for pest control & bugs (aside from bedbugs) and i’ve seen online that this violates the safe housing law. Please give me advice on what to do. It’s just honestly embarrassing for me and completely crushed my spirit.