My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: California
My landlord's handyman recently sent me an invoice of various "cleaning and repair" charges.
Here is there breakdown of the charges. No receipts for materials. Apparently just one handyman completed all this work. Which of course he probably didn't, if the condition the LL gave the unit to us initially is any indication. It is pretty outrageous. They claim that I left the kitchen "too dirty to survive cleaning", and that it apparently costed $2430 in materials alone to clean the kitchen. Firstly, the kitchen was and the vinyl floors were quite dirty from the getgo, and we have move-in inspection photos that document this. There is a charge for "floor repair" in the kitchen, even though the floor is not damaged, just rather dirty. The kitchen floor is a very old pitted vinyl floor that needed to be replaced decades ago. It had dirt embedded into it. It was pretty much impossible to clean by hand with a mop and brush, it needed to be professionally cleaned, or better yet replaced completely.
There was some grease on the kitchen walls and cabinets, yes, because there was never a proper range hood in the house - just one of just ductless recirculating ones on microwaves whose filters only last a few days.
The rest of the charges either completely fraudulent or just made up. The stovestop, oven, and microwave was cleaned pretty thoroughly, and the dishwasher was never used. Apparently it costs $80 for labor and $250 to clean an oven, microwave, and dishwasher? And what about cleaning the showers? $60+240 to clean them? They were scrubbed before we gave them the keys. How dirty could they possibly be to justify the cost?
I never thought my landlord would do this to me. I'm pretty much disputing everything. The cleaning costs should be $300 at the most liberal estimate, and I could have hired a company to do everything for much less. What can I do? Take this to a small claims court?


