Hello everyone,
I have, what I feel, is a rather unique situation.
I live in a one-bedroom, rent-stabilized apartment with my wife and 1 and half year old.
In August of 2020, we had a pest issue. We were seeing as many as 3-4 waterbugs per night. We contacted the landlord and when that went no where, we opened up a violation with HPD.
They came in, cited the landlords for issues with the pests, but also created additional violations for peeling paint.
The violation did not specify where in the apartment they saw peeling paint, and instead just pretty much mentioned every room in the apartment needed to be painted.
We worked with the landlord to only have the bathroom repainted in November of 2020.
Fast forward to January 2021. The building requests to have the violations removed, and a follow-up inspection occurs. The inspector issues violations for the same issues as before, and the violations state that the same thing:
'adm code paint with light colored paint to the satisfaction of this department all peeling paint surfaces in the bathroom , the kitchen , the 1st room from east, the foyer , the 4th room from east located....'
Since the bathroom was fully painted, and since they've now received the same violation, they're now pushing to have the entire apartment fully painted before the date that the violation has, which is March 4th.
Now, we tried our best to work with the building. This past Friday, we agreed to have the bedroom painted. My wife and I took off of work, planned a full day outside (during Covid and on one of the coldest days of the years), worked around the painter who was 1.5 hours late after our agreed upon start time, all to come back to the apartment late in the evening and realize that the fumes of having just that one room painted were too strong to comfortably sleep there, so we booked a hotel. For the next 4 days, the apartment smelled strongly of paint.
So, we explained this to the building, and while they say they understand our situation, they're also saying that they don't have much of a choice and are going to receive fines if they don't take care of this situation.
I then called HPD to explain the situation to them, and I was told essentially the same thing. They can request an extension, but either way, they're going to need to come into the apartment and if its their wish to paint the whole thing, we basically have to let them or potentially go to court and deal with an arbitrator.
Couple of additional notes:
1. While there is some cracks in the window sills of every room and the bathroom as a whole, the rest of the apartment does not contain peeling paint. We do not feel that a full paint job is needed here.
2. We never requested violations to be made on behalf of the paint. Our issue was with pests
3. We've brought the issues we experienced on Friday to management, and while they haven't confirmed they're willing to pay for our hotel stay, they didn't necessarily give us a an outright no when we requested it.
Given the complexities this creates for my family, what would be the best course of action? Ideally, I'd want to avoid placing my family into a hotel during a global pandemic, not to mention the difficulties it'll cause for all of us as we're balancing caring for a child and working full time. I'd prefer to not have this apartment painted at all, but at the very least, extending the due date into the summer, when we'll hopefully have more options for places to stay and things to do.
If you were in my situation, how would you approach this issue?