What Do You Do???

Okay, so we've been renting this house for 14 years. It is a single-family home. It is a whopping 950 square feet. It has two bedrooms and one bathroom. It was built in 1945. Having said that, let me add that when we first started renting we only paid $500 a month. We are now getting ready to pay $600 - my ever-so-charming landlord told me of the rent-increase on the day that we got robbed. He even felt the need to interrupt my story of the robberty to tell me.

But I digress...

With my new-found need to get out of this house, I've been looking at other rentals and even some that were for sale and I've come to one very clear conclusion...THIS HOUSE IS NO DEAL!!! For what we have been paying in rent, yes. But the utilities on this house have robbed us BLIND. Our utility bill always seemed high to me but I just took it for granted and would just sigh and think "Oh, well, what can I do?" Well I did something. I called the town and got a free energy audit done today. It was quite a pleasant experience. Two very nice gentlemen came here and examined the house from top to bottom. Literally. They were in the attic, they were in the crawl space. They explained to me that my ceiling fans were spinning the wrong way to actually be helpful in the summer months and that I needed to change to the new CFL light bulbs in my lamps to save on electric. The bottom line is that WE (as in the renters who actually LIVE in the home) are doing everything right. Our thermostat is set where it should be, we're not running extension chords all over the place and most of our appliances are less than 5 years old and are energy efficient. So what's the problem?

The house itself.

There is not ONE STITCH of insulation in the whole place. There is newspaper in the walls. Every drop of heat or air that I use is going out the roof, the floors AND the walls!!! We figured out that over 14 years, on average, we have over-paid for our utilities by at least $100 a month (and that's being conservative). So doing the math...(save it, Cathleen!) we figured out that at twelve months in a year times fourteen years times $100 a month comes out to $16,800 that WE had to pay EXTRA because there was no insulation in this house. When we rented it, we were never told that there was no insulation. So where does that leave us? Where do we stand? What are our rights? Seriously, I'm asking because I have no idea!

I know the landlord will not put in the insulation if we ask him to because he is cheap. We have learned over the years to just fix things ourselves ans not even involve him because he is nasty when it comes to repairs and refuses to accept responsibility for a house that is 60 years old. Anything that goes wrong is our fault. When our heating and air unit died, he yelled at me. YELLED! He told me it was MY fault that it died. So when the repair men came, I asked them what I did wrong. They laughed and showed me how the entire unit was RUSTED! Um..Not my fault. When a plumbing line cracked and had to be replaced, we were without a toilet for the better part of two weeks. When we complained, we were told to "use a bucket outside!" Oh, and did I mention it was in the winter? We stayed at a hotel one night because I could not stand it and when we handed the landlord the bill he said he would not pay for more than one night. By LAW, a landlord has to supply plumbing. He did not. We should have fought him more on that one.

So my friends in the blogging world, what do I do? Who do I contact? Before I go to this man and ask for insulation, I need the law behind me. I need to have all of the facts so that I know that I am in the right for what I am asking for. The dream would be to get some compensation for the excessive amount of money we have been forced to spend due to his negligence but again, I don't think that is going to happen. So I am open to suggestions.

Anyone? Anyone?