Remember the drama with my apartment and the landlord....well here's the latest chapter...this is what I posted at Tenant.net on the message boards...on the good side, one of the people I am working with at this temp gig has a mother who may have a huge seven room apartment in Brooklyn open up....it's in Bensonhurst so I just need to determine how the neighborhood compares to mine but on the plus side it would be cheaper to live there than in Astoria.

Here is my post...

I live in a month-to-month arrangement in Astoria. I have lived in this apartment for almost three years now and complied with EVERY request my landlady has made from getting the trash out on time to shutting my windows before I leave for work on days where it may rain. We've even made good faith gestures such as offering to get food and supplies from the grocery store when her husband went into the hospital.

Last month, she notified my roommate and I that she was raising the rent from $1200 to $1400. That wasn't an issue as much as it was the fact that she did this TEN DAYS before the first of the next month which meant she and I had to scramble to make rent payments. My roommate even worked out an arrangement so she could pay the previous month's rent amount (something I didn't know at the time) for July and then pay the new amount in August. Now my landlady demanded as of today that she pay the full amount and claims not to know about any verbal agreement.

My roommate opted to look for another place to live as she could not afford the new rent and tendered her notice to vacate as of August 31. This morning, according to my roommate, my landlady is stating that she is not going to allow me to have another roommate when my current roommate moves out and that she was not going to return my security deposit if I move out. She has even said that she is afraid of me (which is a joke and a half) and that she fears I will cause severe damage to the apartment. My roommate told her that I wasn't going to do that but she remains unconvinced. I've lived there for almost three years. I have no plans on damaging the apartment and I think I have raised my voice to my landlady two or three times and it was because she was stopping me at the front door (she lives downstairs, I live upstairs with my roommate) on my to work and I didn't have time to talk to her.

Now, I know she can't threaten the security deposit portion because she has to give an itemized list of things she will have to repair and I have a laundry list of witnesses that will say that some things were like that before I moved in. In fact, the landlady has not conducted an inspection on the last three people that lived there prior to moving out. Therefore, I fear that some of the damage done prior to my moving in (the carpets were heavily stained and one of the wall's plaster was seriously flaking) will be blamed on me. This though, I can live with...

However, can she prevent me from taking in a roommate to help pay on rent. I can't pay the full rent on my own and this is pretty much an eviction. From what I read, she can't prevent me from taking in a new roommate but I want to make sure.