
Quoting
acrin
My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: Louisiana
My boyfriend and I inquired about a newly built townhouse for rent a few weeks ago, we were hoping to list our move-in date as August 1st because my boyfriend's current lease doesn't end until August 31st, but they insisted that they could not wait and that we had to pay the last two weeks of rent for July to sign a lease. Since signing, we have reported twice that we did not have hot water in the apartment:
1) the first time, they sent maintenance out and claimed they had "fixed it."-it was not fixed and the breaker box door was broken
2) the second time, they sent a plumber out; we stopped by the apartment to check on it and the plumber was there and claimed it would be fixed in 30 minutes- we went by to check today, we had no water at all and the walls and floor were covered in mud and the sheetrock on one wall had been scraped by a ladder.
Do we have a right to the rent we paid for July, considering we would not have been able to live in the house even if we wanted to? Do we have a right to get out of the lease considering they did not even check that it was liveable? It looked like no one had even gone in to inspect the unit (it had paint dust everywhere, the cabinets in the kitchen were uneven and wouldn't close, not all light bulbs were put in, there were paint streaks on the fridge, a huge spider and web in the pantry, it had clearly not been cleaned.)