Hello!
I'm a grad student here in Ithaca. I signed a lease and moved into the house before seeing it, but had a lovely Skype call with 2 of the occupants. There is a third who they didn't give me any information about; more on that later.
I found out a couple of weeks after moving in that the house is zoned for a maximum occupancy of three. I told the landlords this over Skype video call (my mistake) and they said that they knew, it was fine because I'm legally on the lease and it's not my fault if the city finds out. Fast forward through months of hellish living with that pesky 3rd housemate no one told me about, who monopolizes living area, smokes weed in living room, has guests over all the time with 0 notification and 0 sense that she should notify, has threatened to cut the refrigerator cord/plug so that "the landlords would have to buy HER a new fridge", etc etc. She is openly passive aggressive, she has thrown away my food, yells at me and tries to get me to pay for stuff, has had a family reunion with no notice to any of us, and her "boyfriend" has used my towels before and she tried to make it like I was being the bad person for being upset.
In any case, I mention this only to demonstrate that her behavior (which I notified the landlords of November 7th) has urged me on to try and learn more about the legality of the situation I'm in.
Today I went to my university's off-campus housing counselor (not a lawyer) and asked for my options; she agreed that it's 100% illegal to have designated my room a bedroom (no closet, very very small), but that the city may do nothing or may just send a letter out, and that there's no way that I can notify the city or state of this infraction without it being a matter of public record with my name on it.
Basically, she recommended that I send my landlord an email terminating the housing contract on the grounds that it was fraudulently created, to provide a forwarding address for the security deposit (that I likely won't get), and to get out of there ASAP. She specifically said to include info about the 3rd housemate. I'm so anxious about this I haven't been able to do my work due tomorrow, especially because my landlords are exceedingly rich and I couldn't possible pay for a lawyer. I left a message with the neighborhood law counseling center and hopefully they'll call me back by tomorrow, because the only housing options available for me to move into start March 1st and I don't want to have to end up owing my landlords March rent.
Any and all advice is welcomed. I have photos of the room before my occupancy, I have a screenshot of the city website specifying the max occupancy. Also, when they bought the house the city issued them a kind of license that certifies that the max occupancy was 3, and the license is set to be renewed in 2018. I have an email from one of the landlords saying that "the legal amount of people allowed to live in the house is you four on the lease", if that helps.
tl;dr: Landlords created a lease for a 4-bedroom house that is legally only for 3; I live in the non-bedroom room w/o a closet; trying to move out because of horrible 3rd roommate I wasn't told about; trying to find legal counsel to talk to; poor grad student just wants a calm place to live! edited: formatting
Submitted February 24, 2016 at 06:01AM by smultronstalle http://ift.tt/1oA0Io0 legaladvice
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