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The story of what led to me withholding rent, after over a year of complaining.

I am the kind of tenant that every landlord dreams of. I always pay my rent on time, and on occasion multiple months in advance, with cash. I never make a sound. I take it upon myself to clean the common areas in the building. Currently that includes vacuuming, cleaning the washing machine/dryer - a washing machine that says “SUDS” almost every time anything is washed, so I end up spending an hour trying to squeeze water out of my sopping wet clothes, I then tried to fix said washer, put on gloves and pulled out the nastiest shit I have ever seen in the drum, and it has since started working better. He was told about the problem by me and other tenants. It wasn’t fixed. I do the dusting, and I clean/mop 2 stories of the steepest stairs that exist. Stairs that me and all of my dogs have tumbled up or down at least once. I almost act as the super for the building. I keep my landlord informed of anything going on in the building that I feel he would not be happy with, and if anything happens I am the one who calls him. For example, the Co2 detectors going off. They were going off in the hallway and then my living room. My neighbors kept turning them off. Co2 detectors don’t go off unless there’s Co2. I finally woke up fully and realized what was happeneing and called 911. The fire department is 5 feet from my apartment, so they got their pretty fast. It took them 4 hours to figure out what had happened - we weren’t told what - I sat with my dogs and my downstairs neighbor in a fire truck for that entire time because it was FREEZING outside. That neighbor? He was found dead in his apartment not long after this happened - which was on a semi-regular basis - and my landlord told people that he died in a hospital. (Except he didn’t.) I have a video of his friend finding him in his apartment. You can’t see anything because I didn’t actually know I was recording, but you can hear everything.

Rent is the single most important thing for me to pay. I have an insane amount of anxiety when it comes to making sure I’m able to pay it, and pay it on time, every single month. As soon as I pay my rent for the month, I’m already stressed out about paying it for the next.

Before moving into apartment 4 I lived in apartment 5. I was in apartment 5 for a year; I decided to take apartment 4 when it became available. For the entire year I was in apartment 5, I couldn’t use my living room. The neighbors screamed at each other nonstop; I had a door in my living room that opened into a shared hallway with them. I have recordings of them screaming; you can hear it quite clearly even though I was recording from my living room and they were DOWNSTAIRS in their living room arguing. The police were there at all hours of the day and night. I tried to help Stephen in any way that I could to get them out of the building. It’s been 2 years and they’re still in that apartment. 

I knew I didn’t want to stay in that apartment, but I was too sick and too busy trying to run a business to make another big move, which is why I chose to move into apartment 4. I thought that I would have peace and quiet moving into that apartment. 

But…I cannot use my bedroom. The kitchen in apartment 5 and my bedroom share a wall that has no insulation. The tenants prior to the ones that are currently in there used the kitchen all day and well into the night. I was convinced they were using it as a commercial kitchen. I heard constant banging, constant creaking from them walking back and forth back and forth nonstop. I have well over 50 recordings. It was literally like chinese water torture. Every time I attempted to get in bed and relax with the dogs, the banging would start, and it got so bad that my dogs wouldn’t sleep in the bedroom with me. I considered moving my bed into the living room, but then what am I paying for? 

When the neighbor came to my store and threatened/harrassed me:

I left my music on ONCE at 11 in the morning and went down to my store. Not 10 minutes later I get a text from my landlord asking me to turn my music down, to which I replied, “are you joking?” He said, “no, I’m not.” One of the tenants then came to my store, got in my face and threatened me. He told me if I thought they were making my life hell, I haven’t seen anything yet. I of course told my landlord all of this and he threw his hands up in the air. I got on a 3 way call with Stephen and my then boyfriend to discuss it because I was at the end of my rope. This is when Stephen offered to insulate the wall once they left because they had put in their notice.

Stephen blamed me for having a revolving door of tenants in that apartment and said I was scaring tenants away. I was never home, so I don’t know how I could possibly be “scaring” anyone away. I always welcomed a new neighbor by putting a gift outside their door - it was just a small bag that I put a candle and a Welcome to the Building card in with my name, contact info, and wrote, “if you need anything, please don’t hesitate to reach out!” I did it with every single new tenant. Stephen also accused me of lashing out. I asked him to give me one example of my “lashing out”…just one. He couldn’t. Because I never did. One day, Stephen decided to go to my apartment to see what the noise was like, without me there - so I have no idea what he heard. He kept saying they’re allowed to make some noise while they make dinner at 6 or 7, and he continually ignored me saying it was not just an hour at night, it was all day every day and it was not just “making dinner.” He continually ignored me telling him that I was sick and needed peace and quiet.

He is a bully and believes that he is above the law/can make up his own laws. According to him, whatever is in the lease is binding, whether legal or not. 

Stephen also took it upon himself to come to my store during business hours and scream at me — which I recorded.

The shower door has been broken since I moved in, and it fell on a friend and sprained/dislocated her shoulder. I have a copy of the X-rays and doctors visit. The parts needed to fix that shower door were already there, they had been there since I moved in.

This is the 2nd apartment I've lived in at 218 Main St.; both have been a nightmare. 

I have chronic health issues and I need to be able to rest when necessary. I first started reaching out to my landlord about noise issues when I moved into my first apartment in the building. The kitchen in the apartment next to my current apartment shares a wall with my bedroom. My headboard backs up to said wall. There is no other way for me to arrange it because it will not fit. Nor should I have to. The insulation is so lacking that I can hear if my neighbor opens a drawer, puts a dish in the sink, sneezes, etc. It's more like having a roommate than a neighbor. The tenants, that have since moved, used the kitchen from 8 in the morning until midnight. I very kindly asked that they try to be more quiet to no avail. They told me to move my bedroom into another room (my apartment consists of an open kitchen/living room,  bedroom and bathroom.) There were nights that I emailed my landlord at midnight crying, telling him I was sick, in pain, and could not sleep. I complained to him so many times about the noise, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I could not sleep in my apartment for well over a year. Instead I stayed at my Tiny House, which is in the middle of nowhere, with no running water, plumbing or electricity. I stayed there through the winter while I continued to pay $1250 a month (plus utilities) for what essentially became a really nice storage unit. I went home only to shower and get clean clothes. 

My landlord told me he was going to have the wall insulated when the tenants moved out to solve the problem; he had a contractor come in and look at the wall (on my side of the wall) - that was all he did. He then informed me that he would be doing the work on my side of the apartments. He either didn’t remember telling me he would do it when the apartment next door was vacant, or he didn’t care and was just being spiteful, trying to make it as unpleasant and inconvenient as possible. My bedroom would have been torn apart, plastic tarps covering everything in it, and I would have had to stay somewhere else - again - for 2 weeks while the work was being done. I told him I didn’t think it was fair for me to have to be further inconvenienced and have to stay somewhere else for another 2 weeks while this was done, considering I hadn’t been staying there for over a year. He didn’t care.

Every time I reached out to him I was told he was “researching.” After more than a year of dealing with this, and even though I did not want to, I stopped paying rent on the advice of my then attorney, friends and family. As soon as I did, he turned into a monster. He bullied, intimidated, harassed and stalked me at my store. Instead of spending the money on fixing the wall as he said he would, he paid his attorney to begin the eviction process. It got as far as a Sheriff posting on my door. I had been putting my rent in a separate account the entire time; in order to avoid eviction I knew I would have to pay him. I sent him a screenshot of the money and the reply I got was that he didn’t know if he wanted me in the building anymore because I had become such a problem, and if I wanted to stay I had to pay the back rent + his attorney’s fees which came out to a little more than $10,000. I did not have that much money. I spoke to someone who told me about ERAP - that if I applied the eviction process would stop. I applied and the process stopped. He since received close to $17000 from ERAP, still has not done anything about the wall, and he had his attorney send me a notice that he would not be renewing my lease because he didn’t want me in the building.

I have NEVER come close to being evicted from anywhere. The stress it has caused…it has made me so sick. My hair and my TEETH are falling out. I cannot even begin to describe what this has done to me, and this is the abridged version. I am a respected business owner in the same town in which I reside. I haven't been able to go to my store during biz hours since this happened. It has traumatized me.