Help, please!

[kdlivin]

I'm looking for a little bit of help, please, so bear with me!


Okay, I moved into an apartment in the middle of May, the second floor of a private home, owned and lived in by only one woman. I'm a female college student.

I was without power (and therefore air conditioning) for three days.

Someone who does NOT live downstairs, my landlady's son, harassed me (banged on my door until I answered--I was asleep), to say,

"When you open the front door it smells like shit." (My landlady's door is downstairs, not mine.) And he happened to be a large male (about 45 years old).


Then, two weeks ago, I discovered a ton of bugs on my air conditioner. I notified my landlady immediately.

I knocked on the door because I could hear her watching TV, and she turned on a vacuum cleaner. I waited until the vacuum cleaner turned off, knocked for about 15 minutes. Called to her. Rang the doorbell, no response.

Long story short, it took her two weeks to get an exterminator, and he did not come the time that she told me he would. I was there on the day she said he would come, he did not, she did not call to tell me the alternate time, and just left a message that he had come.

But I haven't been able to be IN the apartment, or remove any of my belongings for two weeks, and since the exterminator is coming to get rid of the bugs, I cannot be in there or get my belongings for another week.

She says that the bugs are "book lice/mites" and that it has to be my fault that they're there.



I want to know if there is any way she can prove this, if this is deemed as the tenant's responsibility, and also, if there is a legal way to break my lease and get out of there.


Thank you very much for any help you can give, or advice!