Landlord breach of contract in Northern California. How do we proceed?

[Andrew Rinne]

Hello all,

My girlfriend is doing her Master's degree at San Jose State University in the Bay Area of Northern California.

She moved into a house where all the rooms are rented out to different students and the landlord is in breach of the rental agreement. My girlfriend wants to switch to a month to month and has presented the landlord with a formal request to do so, while outlining the reasons behind it. It is in the rental agreement that internet would be provided at the rate of $10 per month, per household member. The internet rarely worked and the landlord shut the service down, as the other members of the house have signed up for their own, multiple internet accounts, due to the service not working at the house. My girlfriend was not notified that the service was being shut off.

Furthermore, there was a break in by a homeless person, who used one of the bathrooms and stole property from the home. The person entered through a gate that the landlord is supposed to have locked and secure.

She is also unable to do laundry on the premises because the dryer does not work. She has reached out to the landlord and groundskeeper numerous times to have the dryer and internet fixed but they ignore her requests and she only got a response from the landlord after sending a formal letter stating my girlfriend wants to move to a month to month, instead of the year lease she signed, as the landlord has been unable to uphold her part of the agreement.

She was also told that she would be splitting a bathroom with 2 other girls and after she signed the agreement, the landlord told her that she would now be sharing a bathroom with 2 men and 2 other girls, while one girl would be allowed to pay extra to rent her own, private bathroom. This wasn't part of the agreement.

These items are all highly easily verified through email correspondence, as well as testimony from the other tenants.

What grounds does my girlfriend have to switch to a month to month and how does she go about doing so? Is this a small claims court issue?

[Michaela G.]

I'm not really aware of the legal steps, but if this was me, this is what I would do:

If the landlord can give 3-day notice, then she should be able to give notice to the landlord, expecting him to fix the descrepancies. And send it via registered, returned receipt requested or hand deliver, against signature or something.

If it wasn't fixed, I might then open an escrow account with the bank and deposit October rent into that account, instead of paying to the landlord. And it covers her butt, because they can't say that she just doesn't want to pay the rent. She can give them a copy of the receipt from the bank.

It should wake them up and bring them to the negotiation table. But it really depends on whether she wants to play hardball.