![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Comrades, you must have been smoking a lot
So this is what we discovered about our apartment on Friday. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel pointed out it was the Ides of March. Did I look like Caesar? I don't think so.) We had had some problems with the landlord and the condition of the apartment even when we were moving in, but nothing of this magnitude. It is awful. We are waiting on the city inspector next week and then we will make decisions, but does anyone have relevant suggestions in the meantime? I want to fight for this home if it is worth fighting for, but I am not prepared to owe my soul to National Grid in order to make up for our landlord being either a chiseler, a cheapskate, or a fool. (And if he is none of these things, then I don't know why we don't have a single window in a newly renovated apartment that latches securely and also keeps out the cold. The temperature is dropping to 21°F tonight.)
In the meantime, because I will not consider this apartment a transitory thing—because as long as I am here, whether that's six weeks or six months, it is home—I picked up my futon mattress from Dream On this afternoon with the aid ofaudioboy's van and then lugged it up the stairs and into my room with the aid of Rob's lower back. Wrestling the mattress cover onto it cost me the skin of three knuckles and a lot of splinters from the plywood I am using as part of my bedframe (never again), but it is now a real bed, not an air mattress, and I will sleep on it and under five blankets tonight. I had lunch with Rob at SoundBites in Ball Square before we walked our separate ways home, which is a thing I like very much about living on this street; we rejoined in the evening for Ninotchka at the Brattle Theatre. I'd last seen the movie in high school: it was even better this time. Garbo is not just beautiful, she's a beautiful comedienne, voice, timing, deadpan, eyebrows. This time, I could notice that while the romance requires her to warm from her humorless Soviet functionality, it does not require her to wilt into Melvyn Douglas' arms like a fainting flower of Western womanhood—the second-act blackmail, in fact, depends on just that strength of commitment to her work rather than her romantic vulnerability. The script's politics also interest me: Wilder and Lubitsch evidently view the Soviet way of life as both alien and faintly ridiculous, but their sympathies are equally clearly not with the émigré Grand Duchess Swana, whose bright-smiling elegance never turns a hair as she tells the peasant-born Ninotchka, "You're quite right about the Cossacks. We made a great mistake when we let them use their whips. They had such reliable guns." (I like, though, that this is not the sort of movie in which women are never friends; Ninotchka's interactions with her cellist roommate back in the Soviet Union tell the viewer that. Most of their conversation even passes the Bechdel test, being concerned, before it turns to Anna's fiancé, with rehearsals, weird housemates, and underwear.) I love Felix Bressart; I love Sig Ruman. I don't know Alexander Granach so well, but HOLY CRAP HE WAS KNOCK IN NOSFERATU THE MAN IS A CHAMELEON I AM KEEPING AN EYE OUT FOR HIM. But most of all I love Greta Garbo, laughing in the café, letting go forlornly of a censored letter, taking Douglas' face between her hands to kiss him. "Chemically, we're already quite sympathetic."
This is where my brain runs out for the night. Doppel-Abbie is resting on my pillows. I am going to take a shower. We'll figure more things out tomorrow.
derspatchel pointed out it was the Ides of March. Did I look like Caesar? I don't think so.) We had had some problems with the landlord and the condition of the apartment even when we were moving in, but nothing of this magnitude. It is awful. We are waiting on the city inspector next week and then we will make decisions, but does anyone have relevant suggestions in the meantime? I want to fight for this home if it is worth fighting for, but I am not prepared to owe my soul to National Grid in order to make up for our landlord being either a chiseler, a cheapskate, or a fool. (And if he is none of these things, then I don't know why we don't have a single window in a newly renovated apartment that latches securely and also keeps out the cold. The temperature is dropping to 21°F tonight.)In the meantime, because I will not consider this apartment a transitory thing—because as long as I am here, whether that's six weeks or six months, it is home—I picked up my futon mattress from Dream On this afternoon with the aid of
audioboy's van and then lugged it up the stairs and into my room with the aid of Rob's lower back. Wrestling the mattress cover onto it cost me the skin of three knuckles and a lot of splinters from the plywood I am using as part of my bedframe (never again), but it is now a real bed, not an air mattress, and I will sleep on it and under five blankets tonight. I had lunch with Rob at SoundBites in Ball Square before we walked our separate ways home, which is a thing I like very much about living on this street; we rejoined in the evening for Ninotchka at the Brattle Theatre. I'd last seen the movie in high school: it was even better this time. Garbo is not just beautiful, she's a beautiful comedienne, voice, timing, deadpan, eyebrows. This time, I could notice that while the romance requires her to warm from her humorless Soviet functionality, it does not require her to wilt into Melvyn Douglas' arms like a fainting flower of Western womanhood—the second-act blackmail, in fact, depends on just that strength of commitment to her work rather than her romantic vulnerability. The script's politics also interest me: Wilder and Lubitsch evidently view the Soviet way of life as both alien and faintly ridiculous, but their sympathies are equally clearly not with the émigré Grand Duchess Swana, whose bright-smiling elegance never turns a hair as she tells the peasant-born Ninotchka, "You're quite right about the Cossacks. We made a great mistake when we let them use their whips. They had such reliable guns." (I like, though, that this is not the sort of movie in which women are never friends; Ninotchka's interactions with her cellist roommate back in the Soviet Union tell the viewer that. Most of their conversation even passes the Bechdel test, being concerned, before it turns to Anna's fiancé, with rehearsals, weird housemates, and underwear.) I love Felix Bressart; I love Sig Ruman. I don't know Alexander Granach so well, but HOLY CRAP HE WAS KNOCK IN NOSFERATU THE MAN IS A CHAMELEON I AM KEEPING AN EYE OUT FOR HIM. But most of all I love Greta Garbo, laughing in the café, letting go forlornly of a censored letter, taking Douglas' face between her hands to kiss him. "Chemically, we're already quite sympathetic."This is where my brain runs out for the night. Doppel-Abbie is resting on my pillows. I am going to take a shower. We'll figure more things out tomorrow.
no subject
No matter what, we need the City of Somerville to rule it's not habitable. We can go through the state sanitary code ourselves and determine that all but three windows in this apartment (the three that were not replaced during the renovations) fail several times over to comply with the minimum standards of fitness for human habitation, as we did last night, and we can take the temperature in every room in the house and see for ourselves that it's well below the prescribed temperature requirements in the same chapter, but I don't think we can do anything legally without the building inspector agreeing with us in writing that I should not be able to stand on a chair in
no subject
Duty to Provide Habitable Premises
You must provide habitable apartments and common areas for the entire tenancy in accordance with the minimum standards of the State Sanitary Code which seeks to protect the health, safety, and well-being of your tenants and the general public.
Heat: Landlords must provide a heating system for each apartment or one system that services all apartments in good working order. The landlord must pay for the fuel to provide heat and hot water and electricity unless the written rental agreement states that the tenant must pay for these. The heating season runs from September 16 through June 14th, during which every room must be heated to between 68˚F and not more than 78˚F between 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., and at least 64˚F at all other hours.
[Sounds like you've agreed to pay the heat, but that doesn't change the code definition of "habitable" as able to maintain that level of heat. Skipping ahead.]
Tenants' rights
Rent Withholding
If you fail to maintain the premises during the entire tenancy, in habitable condition, your tenants may rightfully withhold part of the rent from the date you have notice of breach of the Warranty of Habitability, if:
They complained to you of defects or problems or the Board of Health cited the apartment or building for Code violations;
The tenant was not in arrears in rent before you knew of the conditions complained of;
You do not show that the complained of conditions were caused by the tenant or occupant;
[and goes on to say that also if it's uninhabitable, you can pay to make the repairs yourself and deduct it from your own rent, and the landlord can't say boo about it. You could withhold paying a full four months rent and they couldn't retaliate (evict you, refuse to renew a lease, etc.)]
no subject
We are very definitely not paying April's rent until we get this situation sorted out.