Landlord Refuses To Fix Broken Windows, Costs Him Thousands And Job

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mattstaff
Sep 13, 2020 6:00 PM EDT

This landlord learned a humbling lesson in the power of addressing tenants and their concerns. If the landlord had just listened, and proceeded to fix the broken windows, so much money could've been saved. But no. No listening. Instead, the landlord ended up having to pay thousands of dollars, and a loss of a job factored in too. 

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  • 01
    Text - Landlord Refuses to Fix Broken Windows, Costs Him Thousands of Dollars and His Job Keeping things vague in this post on purpose. - My girlfriend and I moved into a house that had several broken/cracked windows held together with tape. The rest of the house was great and in perfect condition. The landlord promised to fix them ASAP. He kept promising to fix them month after month, with no action being taken. After 6 months I began recording his phone calls and had recorded him threatening t
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  • 02
    Text - So, we got a lawyer and provided him with the recordings and pictures of the windows. We also contacted the City code enforcement Dept and reported some minor code violations that we noticed throughout the house.
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  • 03
    Text - At this time, I worked for a medium-sized payroll and corporate compliance company who happened to do the payroll for the company that my landlord was the president of. Because of this, I could see exactly which laws he was breaking due to state and federal human resource and labor law regulations. For example he did not have a company handbook, labor board posters displayed, and didn't have various federal compliance reporting measures in place. Being in the industry, I knew the minimum
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  • 04
    Text - I didn't hear anything regarding his company violations for some time while the legal negotiations continued between my lawyer and his. In the mean time, the code department issued a $10k fine for the code violations including the windows and required him to fix the windows. Now, anyone who knows windows knows you shouldn't replace one window at a time, especially when you have numerous bay windows in the house. This required him to replace windows in the entire house which ended up costi
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  • 05
    Text - The legal negotiations ended after the windows were replaced. In my state, due to a clause listed in the lease, I was able to bill the landlord for my legal fees to fight him on this issue. Add $5k. We are now at $21k USD in costs incurred by the landlord for these windows. A couple months go by and I notice he's no longer on the company payroll (again I worked for the company that did his payroll and compliance for his company) - when I called his company to verify we shouldn't be paying
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  • 06
    Text - When all was said and done the landlord paid $21k out of pocket directly for the windows and it cost him his job and his company at least $730k in federal and state violations. It didn't cost me a dollar in the end. I couldn't have been happier with the outcome. Edit: Wow! My first silver, thank you!! Edit 2: 2 silvers?! Thank you!! Edit 3: My first gold too! thank you!! Edit 4: my first platinum!!! thank you!! Thank you everyone for all of your comments and awards!!
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