Breaking a Lease: Do I Have Grounds for Breaking My Lease

My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: California

Hi all, I hope someone can give me some advice here. I'm on a lease in a single family home in California. The lease does not end until May of 2014. I moved in until May of 2012 and renewed (much to my chagrin) this past May. When I initially leased the home, I was very, very ignorant in regard to my rights and as a result I put up with some pretty awful conditions.

At the time of initial lease, the house was badly infested with cockroaches. My landlord said that she'd performed pest control measures which equated to spreading spreading boric acid throughout the house a day or two before I moved in. That did not get rid of the roaches and I ended up paying for a year of pest control through a local pest control company. I spoke with the landlord about it and tried to get her to pay for the treatment but she refused and said it wasn't her responsibility. I gave in and eventually, cockroaches stopped laying eggs in my coffee pot. I learned, later, that I should have never moved into the home. Additionally, the home and surrounding yard has had a house fly infestation since I moved in as well. Pest control can't do anything about it and the landlord won't. There is no airconditioner for the home and the screens do not fit the windows properly so I either swelter in the summer heat with doors and windows closed or, open windows and doors during the summer months and have clouds of flies in the house. The landlords only response to my complaints about it was to tell me to pour hot bleach water around the outside of the house to control the pupae.

Pests aside, when I moved in half of the drawers in the kitchen had no tracks (and still haven't got them) and the landlord refuses to fix them and neither of the combination light fixture/ceiling fans in the bedrooms were functional. The landlord DID replace the light fixure/fan in one bedroom and gave me a light fixture to install myself in the other.

I expect that there's nothing I can do at this point about the cockroach infestation or the broken items in the home since it's been over a year but since I renewed my lease, some additional problems have arisen that have got me to the point that I'm moving. I'm breaking my lease and will deal with the consequences but I'd like to know whether or not I have any legal grounds for termination because the landlord has informed me that they WILL take me to court.

Since I moved in there has been a noise problem. The house I lease sits between two apartment complexes and the people who live in one of the complexes are extremely noisy. I've tried to speak with my landlord about it it over the whole of my tenancy (because she has a personal and professional relationship with the manager of the apartments) and it hasn't fixed anything. The tenants of this complex seem to like to hang out outside my bedroom window on a daily basis and, generally speaking keep me from getting more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep per day. Additionally, they have dogs that are allowed to bark non-stop for hours at a stretch. I've tried to file complaints with the local PD in regard to the noise but all that happened was I got a letter from the authorities saying that there was nothing they could do unless I got three other neighbors to also complain via a form letter.

Since I renewed my lease (I did not want to but was unable to find the funds to move at the time) the noisy neighbors have repeatedly had loud, violent domestic disputes, sometimes about drugs, sometimes they just beat each other up and break things and about a month ago as I left to go to work, I noticed one of them hanging out by my open kitchen window smoking what appeared to be some sort of pipe (it was NOT tobacco). When the individual saw me, they immediately hid or left and that was the final straw for me.

I work as a government contractor on a military base. I was VERY clear with my landlord when I moved in that I CANNOT be around drugs or drug activity. It jeapordizes my career. The following day I e-mailed my landlord and explained the situation and asked them to intervene. Their response was to erect a cloth mesh barrier between my house and the apartments and to "talk" to the offending parties. The end result is that now these people hang out right next to my house outside the windows to my bedroom and kitchen more often because it's become a place to hide where no one can see them and every time they see me, I'm given threatening looks and have been called foul names.

I do not feel safe. I leave for work every day wondering if I'll return to find the house vandalized, broken into or worse because now these people see me as a threat.

I notified my landlord that I will be moving out on the 15th of this month because of all of these things but particularly because I feel threatened by these neighbors and paid her through the 23rd of the month. I AM trying to find a replacement tenant but unfortunately, due to the neighborhood, the unique situation of the home on the lot (it faces an alleyway) the size of the home (600 sq. ft.) and the price she wants ($1350 per month), it's not looking like I'll find a tenant to replace me before I move.

So! Given all of that, do I have a leg to stand on for having broken my lease or, am I going to just have to "suck it up" and deal with whatever happens in court?