Maintenance Wrecked My Apartment

[Brandi Becker]

I am sorry this is so long LOL 

My apartment has required maintenance since I have moved in for problems that my roommates and I have no control over. We are a house of four college-aged females and a dog living in an off campus apartment not affiliated with the university. Our basement (where two bedrooms, a living room, laundry room and bathroom are located) has flooded several times due to plumbing issues. The maintenance team always comes in to fix it, but with little to no warning and at the most outrageous times. One time they came at 11 pm unannounced on a Friday and didn't leave until after 1am (I appreciate them coming but would appreciate some notice, especially on a weekend). They continuously smoke cigarettes in the house when they are here and none of us smoke. The flooding in the basement causes human feces to rise up from the shower drain, and after they finish "fixing" the problem we deeply sanitize the basement ourselves. Mind you, this happens at least once per month and never truly gets fixed, and we have no control over it. 

Now this is not my main concern right now. There is a unit above ours who also has pipe issues, and our kitchen ceiling began to leak. They fixed it. A few weeks later the basement ceiling in the living room began to leak too. This was about a month ago. They told us we needed to leave for a few days so that they could fix it. Luckily we all had the option to go somewhere else, many others would not have that luxury. Now our school shut down due to coronavirus, so we have been gone for a few weeks anyways, but this maintenance had occurred before this began. They have completely wrecked the apartment during this time, leaving it nearly unlivable. They left couches and furniture upturned on their sides, blocking doorways, randomly moved from their locations. They ripped down all of our decorations (there were A LOT) and threw them recklessly in a pile on the ground. They tore all the bathroom supplies from all 3 bathrooms including shower rods and curtains in piles on the ground and put wooden boards on the ground of our tiled walk in showers. They put all of our throw rugs in the back yard and we discovered them ruined after weeks of rain and animals got to them (we have a shared backyard in the city). One of our couches has large sticky stains that were not there before. The entire house smells like cigarettes. You cannot even tell it is the same apartment that it once was and we do not have the strength and manpower to move so much heavy furniture. There are more minor issues I won't get into.

We treat our apartment very well. We are very clean and respectful to the property and we are all upset about the situation. We didn't get a chance or warning of the extent of repairs to properly care for our property beforehand, and we had no idea what the repairs entailed. Don't get me wrong I am very appreciative that the maintenance team comes in and fixes our issues with short notice. However, I am wondering if this is now our responsibility to deal with the aftermath of cleanup and ruined property. I understand we signed a lease so we are still expected to pay rent, but especially during this global pandemic where two of us have lost our jobs and are struggling financially, I feel as though we should not have to pay, or at least have reduced rent because of this situation since we cannot even utilize our apartment. (Side note: all the apartments owned by them are currently holding a rent strike due to the pandemic, and other tenants have similar issues to ours). Our landlord has demanded rent payments and has ignored most of our attempts to discuss the maintenance issues. What do we do now? I know this is a lot to take in but I would appreciate some honest feedback from someone who knows a bit more about this than we do. :)