What can I do with my landlord?

Filed under:Coil Roofing Nails

Heres the issue: I signed a year lease for a singlewide "remodeled" trailer for 5 a month. That was back in October. My landlord to this day has yet to give me a copy of the lease, or have my wife sign it (although she is home 24/7, and he knows this). It’s always "Whoops, I forgot it on my table!". Without the lease, we haven’t been able to get any kind of mail until recently, which he called the post office (he knows someone there) and was able to get us a box without having any kind of proof of residency. This has hindered us greatly and my ability to get my online buisness back up (eBay of course).

Second, the roof was leaking in a couple spots, and is bowing down now in 2 spots. Each area has a crack about 3-4 ft long with suspicious looking black fuzzy crud ‘growing’ out of it (of which I believe is some mold). His remedy for the leaky roof was to have 1×4 inch wood nailed to the roof longways, and with tin nailed to the wood perpendicular to the wood…seems to do an alright job keeping the water out, but I’m not sure it is "up to building code" like this.

Third, he finally got new coils put into the central heating and air unit, promising that if it was using too much electricity, that he would have the guy come back out and take a few heat coils out (there are either 3 or 5 total coils, can’t remember)… but that was back in November that he started promising that. I ask him ever week if he can have them removed because we are using over a day in electric (we have pre-paid to monitor it closer) if we turn the heat on for a couple hours. This just plain sucks.

Now as far as the remodeling job goes, it is very poor craftsmanship; IE there are base lining board as roof lining board, the bathroom tile overlaps and is peeling up (God only knows whats growing under it), and the floor is not too stable there either. And of course he "accidentally" put paneling over the access to the hot water heater; so if the pilot light goes out, we have to remove a whole wall panel (about 8 foot long) to get to it.Now I know I can’t do much about the poor craftsmanship (maybe other then re-negotiate rent due to it).

In his defense however, he has worked with us on payment (still haven’t paid the 0 deposit yet, which is why I think he is "witholding" the lease), and we have been slowly catching everything up. We are awesome tenants for him, never too noisy, never causing any kind of problems or ANYTHING. Just living life trying to pay bills and stay out of trouble.

I’ve read over the Florida laws about tenant-landlord rights, and have found a couple things he hasn’t done, IE he should have provided trash pickup (not neccessarily pay for it, just provide access to it), of which he hasn’t, along with a couple other faults.

My question is this:

Legally speaking, in the State of Florida, what exactly kind of position am I in? Is there anything I can do to either force changes to be made or have him accountable for anything? Or is it a lost cause (understanding that, legally I already signed a 1 year lease at 5/mo)?

Any guidance to who I would need to talk to (about building code, health code etc) would be awesome!

Thanks in advance!
-=Vaeldious=-
Extra Details: It isn’t a normal kind of setup; from what I understand, he is paying lot rent to someone else and owns the trailer himself. There isn’t exactly anyone "over" his head in any kind of management.

I do give him cash money, but I try to get reciepts every time the money goes from my hand to his. I doubt he reports any of it to the IRS.

As far as worth / quality for the area, I could rent a 1400 square foot 2 bedroom 2 bath house for 378 a month, provided our incomes combined did not exceed 18k / year. So, I believe that there is somewhat of a price gouge on the place, because of the "remodeled" status he puts with it. The only reason I signed was because of need, and I know I am legally locked in regardless.

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What can I do with my landlord?

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