Q: Landlord shut water off morning after paying rent; won't answer his door or phone and have left notes on his door.
We have all receipts from rent payments, plus we gave him a phone and internet services from our set-up. His other tenant has not paid for some time now, I understand if he wants to shut her water off, but he doesn't have 2 separate shut offs for the water. My boyfriend and I are going on 2 weeks with no water. I've called landlords lawyer with whom we signed the lease with and still nothing has happened. The local sheriffs can't do anything because it's a civil matter. We just got our first snowfall here on MDI and we can't even winterize our house properly without water.
A: Your question indicates that you have a written lease. You will want to review the terms of your lease to determine what your rights and remedies are under these circumstances and then follow the provisions of the lease. In all likelihood, your lease requires you to provide written notice to your landlord describing the issue in a specified manner (the notes you have left on his door may or may not qualify as written notice under your lease) and then he will have a certain period of time (specified in the lease) to fix the problem. If he doesn’t fix the problem in that period of time, then you can bring a lawsuit against him.
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