Apparent Slumlord of the Century

[lisa714]

My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: PA
Or at least the past 2 decades. Seriously. He has been sued over 250 times, & jailed even, in the last 20 years of his being a landlord. I did not know this before we moved in. He seemed like a nice old man.
There are so many things I want to ask about but I'll try to divide them up so I'm not making everyone read long rants.
Issue #1: U&O license
Apparently when we moved in, in July of 2010, our landlord, having bought the house in a sheriff's sale, never updated anything in the house or bothered to get a Use & Occupancy certificate or have the home inspected. It wasn't until we had sewage in our basement & his "repairman" proceeded to dump it out on our lawn (thus making the neighbors call the township), that we discovered this. The township came out, handed him a bunch of fines, & we had to stay in hotels until he finally resolved the sewage issue & a bunch of other issues in order for us to be allowed to live in the house. Now he had a long list of things that needed to be done, but only a few things that he had to do before we could move back into the property. He did enough so that we can live on the property but he never fully did everything on the list... i.e. our windows need to be propped open. I don't have a copy of this list. I tried to contact the township several times to find out what the true outcome was & if he ever got fully certified to rent out the property but I have not been able to get a hold of the person in charge of our case.
What can I do? Am I allowed access to this list & to demand the township do the full inspection? What types of certificates are landlords suppose to have to rent out properties?

I don't know if I've confused anyone. Truthfully, one of my thoughts was to buy the house from the landlord & fix it up ourselves but I want to know what the outcome was before I offer this option to the landlord. We are in the middle of a rent conflict. He keeps horrible records & feels we owe him money when we don't. -I'm not worried about this. I can prove we've paid along with fixed things up. There is talk of us going to court. & I want to be as prepared as possible with as much info as I can be to show that he is not doing the right thing. (Or maybe he is & I don't know it)
Thank you in advance for any advice you can offer up!

[Mr. Knowitall]

If the property has been repaired to the point that the government agency responsible for licensing rental housing has deemed it to be suitable rental housing, then the additional repairs were not deemed sufficient by that agency to prevent it from being rented out.

Read through this, including the remedies listed at the bottom.