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Posted by 718 on December 31, 2001 at 18:36:13:

In Reply to: The No Heat Game posted by Katya on December 29, 2001 at 18:39:04:

If you want to fix the problem or lay the groundwork for getting out of your lease, start by writing to your landlord to complain about the inconsistency. Then get a wall calendar for your apartment and every day, check off whether you have heat or hot water, so you have some record of what is going on.

If you are really suffering, you might consider also keeping a thermometer indoors, away from the windows, and writing down the temperature at some regular hour in the apartment. Start writing to your landlord every month to explain that the situation is persisting and give him a chart of the temperatures indoors and outdoors. You can cc the super if you want, but basically, it is up to the landlord to tell the super to fix or maintain things, and it is up to the landlord to provide you with a habitable apartment. Every so very rarely, supers are total idiots or just choose to think as little as possible and their could be some logical explaination, like that the thermostat is set up to maintain temperatures in an office on the ground floor and no one has ever complained directly to the landlord about the fact that there is no heat on the weekend. They complain to the super who doesn't bother to deal with it because he isn't creative enough to figure out what might be going on.

People very rarely actually sit down and write letters, but they work very well. Some landlords genuinely suck, but many are just vaguely lazy and if you are more organized you can pin them down and make them fix things like dysfunctional thermostats. Come spring, if you can show that you regularly advised him that the apartment was inadequately heated, it should be very easy to finally get out of your lease if he hasn't done anything about it.

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: If you want to fix the problem or lay the groundwork for getting out of your lease, start by writing to your landlord to complain about the inconsistency. Then get a wall calendar for your apartment and every day, check off whether you have heat or hot water, so you have some record of what is going on. 

: If you are really suffering, you might consider also keeping a thermometer indoors, away from the windows, and writing down the temperature at some regular hour in the apartment. Start writing to your landlord every month to explain that the situation is persisting and give him a chart of the temperatures indoors and outdoors. You can cc the super if you want, but basically, it is up to the landlord to tell the super to fix or maintain things, and it is up to the landlord to provide you with a habitable apartment. Every so very rarely, supers are total idiots or just choose to think as little as possible and their could be some logical explaination, like that the thermostat is set up to maintain temperatures in an office on the ground floor and no one has ever complained directly to the landlord about the fact that there is no heat on the weekend. They complain to the super who doesn't bother to deal with it because he isn't creative enough to figure out what might be going on.

: People very rarely actually sit down and write letters, but they work very well. Some landlords genuinely suck, but many are just vaguely lazy and if you are more organized you can pin them down and make them fix things like dysfunctional thermostats. Come spring, if you can show that you regularly advised him that the apartment was inadequately heated, it should be very easy to finally get out of your lease if he hasn't done anything about it. 


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