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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Posts
    1

    Default Can You Break a Lease Due to Presence of Rodents

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

    This is very urgent! Please HELP!
    (my lease goes until the end of August/2012)
    I am a student living in an old, run-down apartment and currently facing a problem with RODENTS.
    I hear their sound and actually see them running around the room. I even found droppings of them and when I reported this to the APT manager, he came over to check if there are any holes but failed to find one. He then placed sticky traps in my studio and we actually caught one for the first time. And that was not the end of the story. On the next day, I saw mice coming out from under my bed and I FREAKED OUT. I told this to the manager and frankly told him that I want to break the lease. He responded: "I can break it if the management is not doing anything to help you out, but since we are doing our best, you do not have any right to break the lease(1yr)." I hear mice screaming LOUDLY (I mean, they SQUEAK so loud that I even recorded it) and moving around in the cabinets starting every night through morning(11AM). I am mentally getting tortured by them and can not sleep for more than 2 hours everyday. Rodents are nocturnal and whenever I ask him to come over and check if there are mice in my apartment, the manager cannot find them.

    My only option is to find a sublet to the apartment and I actually found one.
    Is there anyway for me to break the lease? or If the sublet suffers from the same problem when he moves in, does he have a right to break the sublease?
    If he breaks one due to a rodent problem, can that be the reason for me to break the lease too?
    I really wish my name to be entirely taken off from this lease.

    I just want to end my connection to this hellhole as soon as possible.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Toledo, OH
    Posts
    16,307

    Default Re: Rodent Problem+breaking a Lease/Sublease

    You MAY be able to break your lease based on your landlord's breach of the implied warranty of habitability. Specifically, a dwelling may be legally uninhabitable if it is not "substantially free" of rodents. Your landlord is REQUIRED to solve the rodent problem, not simply take a half-hearted look around and shrug "Sorry, can't find 'em."

    Insist IN WRITING that your landlord hire professional extermination services to solve the problem, citing California's implied warranty of habitability. If he refuses, follow the instructions here to end your lease under California's Civil Code 1942. Read the ENTIRE page.

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