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in Queens w/no lease, landlord problems

Posted by No Lease on January 21, 1999 at 16:18:03:

Hello. Since my family and I have moved to Queens from The Bronx, we have encountered only landlords who refuse to give us a lease. Because we don't have a lot of money, we moved into what apartment we could. We have been living in a house in queens, with no lease for the past three years. This is a 2 family house, but has a family living in the cellar (not basement, cellar, it has those cellar doors you open up and out, also over half of the apartment is underground with no full windows). We live on the second floor and the landlord lives on the first. We have 3 bedrooms. Recently my mother got Con Edison to check the electricity because our bill had been so high since we moved here, and we thought it was the area, or the refrigerator and appliances...but Con Ed told us that the landlord had the cellar apartment on our line, so we had been paying for that cellar apartment, plus the public hallway, plus our own electricity. So Con Ed let the landlord know they owed us a certain amount of money (over 1,000 dollars) and they had to change the electricity so that the persons downstairs pay their own. Today in the mail we got a letter from the landlord's attorney stating that we have too many extra people living in this apartment....when we moved in, there were 3 adults and one child. My sister was pregnant and had a baby, and we have had my friend from CA living with us for about a year and a half. We are planning to get our own place as roommates. When the baby was born, the landlord did not say anything about it, or raise the rent. When my friend came to live here, she said nothing. She has spoken to my friend , been quite friendly, etc. Never once discouraged us from having an extra person, and never notified us in any way shape or form regarding it.
This landlord has been extremely negligent in making repairs, and we are saving our money to move out because we feel there is no way to sue for those repairs, since we have no lease. Now that the landlord has this Con Edison thing against them, we are notified by their lawyer. It smells like retaliation to me. There has never been a written or verbal agreement on how many people they would allow to live here. We have though, written many times requesting repairs (we have windows that don't stay open, no window guards, leakiing pipes and sinks, constant temperature changes in water and in heat, sometimes we have no heat or hot water, and a myriad of other problems. Also, recently some persons have shot out my bedroom window with a BB gun on 4 occasions. the police were called, I have holes in my windows, and the landlord refused to fix the windows.) My question, and I thank you for reading thus far- Do we have any recourse whatsoever without a lease in court? We are not rich people, we try to put up with as much as we can and save our money to move, but I feel unsafe and terrorized by this action, plus the BB gun stuff, and the house, plus I feel very insulted and "taken" by the Con Ed fraud the landlord commited. I know the housing court judges and small claims judges favor land/homeoweners. Is there no rights of the tenant, especially in a no-lease non-multiple dwelling house? Also, how can there be three families living (one in a cellar) in ahouse and it is not considered multiple dwellings? Thank you so much for any info, because most of the tenant stuff I see does not address people with no lease and i know there are thousands of us out there. I would like a lease, but she has refused to give one. Also, the landlord knew how many peopel were living here for a year a dn ahalf, and she said nothing. Isn't that "implied permission"? Thank you!
BabyBird who needs to fly the coop

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