I had a landlord like that in Chicago a while back... Some woman in her 30's who had no idea what she was doing. We had all types of problems, leak fromthe toilet up stairs (disgusting mess), all kinds of shoddy carpentry (fixtures would just fall out of the wall from being improperly anchored, etc.), etc.,etc.
She would do all kinds of grimey stuff too: one month she was going on vacation so she wanted the rent early, when I told her hell no was I paying my rentearly so she could go on vacation she sent her brother over to try to threaten me into giving me the money. Another month she couldn't afford to meet hermortgage payment so she came by the crib and told me that my roomate never gave her our rent money (she insisted on one check so we'd have to pay him andthen have him pay her) and then refused to leave until I cut her a check from my account (she had already cashed the first check and then got heated when westopped payment on the first one later) and told me she wanted me to pay the late fee for her mortgage payment on top of that because it was our fault she wasbroke. She would just unlock the door to our apartment and let her self in, start nosing around, just walk into our bedrooms and wake us up in the AM. Shewould tell us we weren't allowed to have our friends or girlfriends sleep over, etc., etc.
This all came to a head when my roomate got cancer and had to move out. When we couldn't find another roomate to fill his spot we let her know (over amonth in advance) the situation and told her we would have to move out of the spot. She immediately told us she would be keeping our security deposit which Icould deal with, even though the apartment was SPOTLESS, but she then tried to charge us an extra months rent because we didn't get out until the 4th ofthe month. I tried to reason with her about that and she claimed that I was liable for the rent on the entire rest of the lease (legally I was liable to giveher reasonable time to find a new tenant which she made no attempts at doing) and she was doing me a favor by just keeping the deposit and charging me an extramonth. (Deposit was almost $500 more than a months rent BTW) Again I told her I wasn't paying it and she showed up with her husband (whom I hadn't seenin the entire year I had lived there) who tried to get in my face like her brother had and intimidate me on moving day telling me I "couldn't"leave until I cut him a check for whatever amount they felt was fair. Luckily we told them we were leaving late in the day and by the time they got there wewere moving the last box to the truck and after suggesting that I would have to call the police if I wasn't allowed to leave and asking them to take it upwith the lawyer I had been consulting and after telling me that they were in the process of suing me, they begrudgingly let me leave.
On leaving I simply sat down and did some real research and then wrote them a long letter detailing the many ways in which they had repeatedly violated myrights as a renter, pointing out that due to some of the maintenance issues which they repeatedly refused to fix (it took a MONTH to fix a toilet that wasleaking sewage into our bathroom!) and many other issues that in reality I should have been withholding rent until these problems were addressed. Finally Irefered them to a family friend, who was also a lawyer and agreed to help me out, telling them if they had any other questions they could contact him at thefollowing number and that I didn't want anything else to do with them. They ended up getting the deposit, but I didn't pay them that last months rentand sure as hell didn't pay out the remainder of my lease. In my experience you just have to be polite but firm with landlords, while I have had a couplegood ones (one in BK no less), in my experience I find that if they think you are an easy vic they will go out of their way to steal from you. If they happento start trying to take advantage of me, I just let them know right away that I understand what they can and can't demand from me, and I also am aware ofwhat they are legally required to do for me. After that experience, I have found that when a landlord realizes you are not a tenant they can take advantage ofthe relationship really improves.
