Walk It Through: The Air Conditioner In July
A broken system, a fourteen day notice, essential services and the complaint that brings a rent increase.
The central air supplied with the unit stops working in the summer heat, and the landlord does not answer.
Two things a person in this spot might do. Picking one shows what the law says about it.
One unit and one summer. Fire or casualty damage, conditions the tenant caused, repairs agreed to in a single family lease, and how a court values the reduced rent 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.
- Essential servicesThe services the rental agreement or the maintenance section requires the landlord to provide. Where the landlord negligently or wilfully fails to, the tenant may give notice and procure them and deduct the cost, or recover damages.
- Fit and habitableThe condition a landlord makes all repairs and does whatever is reasonably necessary to put and keep the premises in.
- OusterA landlord unlawfully removing or excluding a tenant from the premises, which lets the tenant recover possession or end the agreement and recover three months' rent or twice the actual damages, whichever is greater.
- Security/rental depositProperty or money a landlord holds as security, returned at the end of the tenancy less accrued rent and damages from the tenant's failure to keep up the unit, with any deduction itemized in writing.
- Writ of ejectmentThe magistrate's order to remove the tenant. The constable or deputy sheriff presents it and gives the occupants twenty-four hours to leave voluntarily.
- Retaliatory conductA landlord raising rent above fair market value, decreasing essential services or bringing an action for possession after a tenant complained to a code enforcement agency or to the landlord.
- Rule to vacate or show causeThe written rule a magistrate issues on a landlord's application, requiring the tenant to leave or to show cause before the magistrate why not, within ten days after it is served.