All Forum Posts by: Andrew Rinne

Off topic, Joe, but I am currently living around 400 miles away from San Jose, down in Los Angeles, so moving in with me is not currently an option. Mike, thank you for your help. Thank you all for your help so far. The landlord is a supremely disrespectful person, as all of my girlfriend's attempts to have these issues fixed have been 100% ignored until she threatened to leave the house, when the landlord finally responded. The landlord is now offering to have the internet reconnected, just for my girlfriend, as nobody else will pay for it, as it rarely works.

The kids smoking weed are just kids and she doesn't want them in legal trouble but the smoking is a big part of why she can't be there. She is doing her Master's degree for voice to be an opera singer, so that kind of stuff isn't good for her. I agree about the phone call but they could just say they didn't receive the phone call too. At least with an email, it shows the time and date that it was sent.

She is trying to get out of the lease without having the bad mark on her credit. If the landlord is in violation of the lease agreement, can she get cleanly out of the contract? The break in was reported to the landlord via email, but I don't believe it was to the police.

Thank you very much for your prompt reply. She wants out of the house at this point. Her neighbors on both sides play loud music very loudly until late into the evening and they both constantly smoke marijuana and cigarettes, which are both items in direct violation of the lease agreement and the landlord does nothing to stop this behavior. She can't even be in the house to study or email her professors because of the lack of internet and the smoke/loud music. I will let her know your suggestions and I am also interested in any other input.

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?