I have a problem with my landlord. I have been renting a whole house with the yard and garage for 2 years now in Bellmore, New York. We signed a lease only a year ago. We had problems with the house before and still after signing the lease. We have black mold in the bathroom dripping pipes and mold in the kitchen (coming from the bathroom) and the basement has mold all over the walls, he said its not a hazard. We recently had a flood in the basement and the water was coming in from the wall and up through the floor. He has consistently disregarded my claims to fix the problem. He said " other people's basements were also flooded, when we had the bad rain" that was he answer when i asked him are you going to have someone look at it. aside from that a few months after the lease was signed, the landlord decided to take away the garage and driveway area because he needed it, but did not deduct anything from our rent. Since the basement flooded and stayed flooded until I hired someone get the water out of the basement. I was finally fed-up and called the town. A building inspector come by and looked at everything and said he was going to try to contact him and send an official letter to him to fix the problems. The inspector is from the same small town as the landlord and I`m afraid that they might know each other. I`ve been trying to find pro-bono lawyers to help me out, but no luck so far. About two weeks after we had the inspector over, the landlord tells us when we gave him rent and asked again, if he was going to have anyone over to look at the problems. his answer was " we`ll i don`t think i`m going to be renting it out anymore, its not cost efferent enough for him. So in conclusion he received the letter (supposedly)and house he wants us out of the house. He never gave us anything formal only verbal. I live with my long-time boyfriend our do and my cousin who we are helping out. What can we do?! Please if you can give me any leeway on what I can do. He has mentioned repeatedly that I will get the security back. I really don`t believe him. The last tenant didn`t receive anything back when I spoke with him. The past tenant said he blamed it on the fact that he restored a lot of walls in the house in which had holes in it when he rented it original and the landlord never fixed the walls so the tenant did, and besides the last tenant paid for materials and labor the landlord still did not give him his security back. I was foolish and thought the might of had underlined problems but now I know the truth. Please let me know what I can do.
Called the Housing department and the had a building inspector come to survey the property. The inspector is from the same small town as the landlord and I`m afraid that they might know each other. I`ve been trying to find pro-bono lawyers to help me out, but no luck so far.