My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: NEW YORK
My lease does not end until August 2009 and I am renting an apartment in Washington Heights. In the interest of full disclosure, I have been living in this apartment for over 2 years. The first year and a half, I barely stayed there as I used to work out of town a lot. Also, I could not afford to move to a better place. However, for the last year, conditions in the building have really started to get to me. I would really like to terminate my lease for the following reasons:
- Primarily, safety. For the last 2 months, there were probably 2 times when the cops were in our building. Last month, at least one of my neighbors noticed that there was a man hanging outside my door (I wasn't even aware of this as I was indoors the whole time) and they called the cops on him. A police officer knocked on my door and basically, this guy was looking for a woman who used to live there. Obviously, she wasn't there anymore so that got settled. It was creepy, though, that this guy was just hanging outside my door! Last week, I heard screaming outside because a woman was getting arrested. I just feel very unsafe there.
- For the last year, the glass in the entrance door has probably been broken and repaired at least 5 times.
- For about a month, maybe close to two, towards the end of last year, the lock to front entrance did not work. Probably the work of some vandals.
- The buzzer to be able to let guests/people in has not been working for at least the last year. I have complained many times to the super and the super barely spoke any English so I couldn't even understand what he was saying. I tried calling the management a couple of times to no avail and eventually just gave up since I hardly have any guests and I'll just come down whenever I get food delivered.
- This past winter, we've barely had any heat. Heat should be on from 10pm - 6am but it's not on everyday and most days when it's on, I only get it for maybe a total of 4 hours a night.
- For about a week within the last couple of weeks, I did not have hot water. I kept putting off complaining thinking that they will have it on within the next few hours or at least, after I get back from work. Finally, when I called the management, they told me "oh, your line was down". It was fixed remotely but if I hadn't complained, I wouldn't have had hot water for god knows how long!
- The common area is barely habitable. I would see litter and garbage around the stairs sometimes. I see people mopping and cleaning in the morning but I live in a building with questionable tenants and I can imagine that they are the cause of it.
- The cleaning people try to repaint the elevator every so often but the vandals wouldn't leave it alone and after a few days, you'd see writings on the wall
Do I have fair grounds to request early lease termination? If yes, how would I go about it? Do I call the management first? Do I write a letter?

