Walk It Through: The Leaky Ceiling
Rent paid to an administrator, service used without consent, and the listed ways out of a lease.
Water drips through a renter's bedroom ceiling every time it rains, and the landlord does not come to fix it.
Two things a person in this spot might do. Picking one shows what the law says about it.
One apartment and one leak. Public housing, seasonal rentals, and what a landlord recovers on other early departures are not worked through here.
A practice walkthrough, not a prediction of how any real one will go. Legal information, not legal advice.
Words this turns on
Terms with a legal meaning that is narrower than the everyday one. Each links to the definition and the authority behind it.
- Court appointed administratorThe administrator with whom tenants in substandard housing deposit their rent until the dwelling meets minimum standards of safety and sanitation, in a proceeding a tenant or a public officer may bring.
- Security depositA deposit of no more than 1 1/2 times one month's rent, which stays the tenant's property: held in trust in an interest bearing account, never mingled with the landlord's own, with the interest belonging to the tenant.
- Domestic violenceOne of the listed offenses, among them assault, harassment, stalking, terroristic threats, criminal mischief, trespass and cyber-harassment, committed against a protected person by an adult or emancipated minor.
- Temporary restraining orderAn emergency order for a victim of domestic violence, available even when the courts are closed from an assigned Family Part or municipal judge. A final hearing follows in the Family Part within 10 days.