unwilling to repair

[Penny Alexander]

I am renting a farm house and its old. It has 2 - 15 light exterior doors on it. The wind come in all around the doors, which have weather stripping around them and thru each of the 15 pains of glass. The doors need to be replace very bad but the owner will not replace them. I have plastic up over the whole door(s) and use the basement door which means I have to walk around the other side of the house to the driveway thru the snow, carrying groceries etc. I have also complained about the very large use of propane gas to heat this house. I have the temp set at 48 degrees and filled it 12/6 @ $600 and its almost empty already. I have closed off rooms and put a blanket up between the dining room and living room to help keep 1 room warm. I have plastic up over the windows etc. I get no help from the mgmt co. about the gas so I called the gas company myself, found 2 leaks, 1 inside and a major one outside. I need to pay my rent for this month but thinking about only paying 1/2 of it. I thought when you complained about a issue they had only 14 days to get it fixed. It is costing me a lot of money for gas and electric and I'm freezing. Can't even "live" in the whole house cause its so cold. Like today, I'm in my bedroom with a little space heater keeping me warm. It would be different if we were warm but were cold paying out the ying yang for fuel. What can I do? Can I force the landlord to make these repairs? I manage my own vacation properties and I know how things should be kept and this is unexcuseable for the landlord.

[Account Closed]

have you already tried to contact the landlord? i don't think getting code enforcement and an attorney involved at step 1 is a good idea..litigation should be used as a last resort after the landlord ignores your requests ( and keeps receiving rents) --it shouldn't be used as a blanket threat each time there's something wrong with the property...first get in touch with the landlord...if the owner is using a property management company, then i'd explain the situation to them..sadly, they may not care though...is this your first winter in the house? iff there's no weatherstripping, that'd be a code violation, but you say there is weather stripping..just bc the old farmhouse isn't insulated well doesn't automatically mean there's a code violation....whatever you decide to do, definitely continue paying rent