[ingrida]

HI, I am renting a tree house in the Hollywood Hills in L.A and there are rats at night in the garden that made they way into the wall of the house. Basically the house is build against the hill so there is a concrete wall against the hill side, then the pipes and the wooden wall of the inside of the house. The rats are between the concrete wall and wood, walking on the pipes and eating the wooden walls to get to the inside of the house. The problem is that the wooden walls have some vertical openings in some places where if I shed the light from my flashlight, I can see the rat behind the wall walking on the pipe! So they fleas can probably enter inside the house through those openings and also pee, so I think it makes this home unsanitary. I am on a month to month basis, and if sometimes I can't pay my rent, my landlord waits patiently sometimes up to 4 months but she knows that I'll always pay. So I think that because I know that, I can pass on the rat issue. There is also a sewer gas problem from the bathroom. That too she doesn't do anything despite me telling her many times that it is unsanitary. Just before moving in there 4 years ago, I asked her what should I know about the house instead of discovering whatever later? She said nothing of course, that everything is fine. Her house is next to mine on the same land and she lives with the same rat problems except that her wall are not wood but concrete so rat fleas cannot pass through it and infect us like I suspect it did. So for her it's sort of a normal situation. I now that she doesn't suffer from sewer smell inside the house like us. I know that if my husband and I push her too often into doing something about it, she'll just give me a 30 days notice to live and she will move on to the next renter who doesn't know anything about it. My husband has he's business in the house and moving away would be a problem at least for the next year and a half. What can I do? Thanks for any help!

[JudyKayTee]

You can report this to the Health Department (before or after you are evicted). You can also vacate and when you are sued for the rent, claim unsanitary conditions and see if the Court will reduce what you owe. On the other hand if you have lived there this long, knowing it's unsanitary, accepting that it is unsanitary, you may not have any defense at all.

You can also call the Health Department at any time, aware that this may very well lead to your eviction. However, the Health Department (if things are as you say they are) will keep the landlord from re-renting until the problems are repaired.

I would suggest that you talk to the landlord but you apparently already have and it's done no good.

I realize that your husband's business is in this house but I don't understand, if it's as bad as you say it is, why you stay.

[ingrida]

Hello JudyKayTee,

I appreciate your response! You ask why we stay; it's because the sewer smell is once in a while (5 times in a month) and as for the rats annoyance, we got used to it because during the warmer months they are outside, so we forget about them for a while. Moving away would be quite costly simply because the tree house is up the hill at about 70 stairs from the entrance of the garden so the moving company would charge us a lot of money for the hassle. Right now, with the economic crisis, we just can't afford moving, to costly when you know everything that's involved in doing so. If I start threatening my landlord about calling the health department, she would probably tell us to move out if we are not happy here.
You say that the health department would prevent her from re-renting until repairs are done? Well, she then would have to destroy a chunk of the house that her grand father built before he past away way back, and a part of the garden because the sewer pool is 1/3 underneath the house and the rest partly around one side of the house where trees and plants grow. It would be for her major repairs. So you see, there is nothing she would want to do just because it is too major and she needs/wants the rent money and us, right now are not willing or rather we can't move away so we all stay the way we are. The day though, that we are ready to move we'll call the health department to avoid other people to suffer the annoyance like we did. Take care.

[twinkiedooter]

You need to go out and buy either some bricks or cinderblocks and place them stragegically where the rats are entering the vertical areas and into your home. You could also buy some rat traps and use them! Although it will slow down the rat population at least you'll be eliminating a lot of them. The rat traps can then be thrown out with rat and all and just replaced with a new trap. I once lived in an apartment building where the people next to me were absolute pigs and the mice would have a field day at their house and then gnaw their way into my kitchen. I kept the mouse trap folks in business going through about 24 mouse traps before I got them all. These were field mice and not big rats. You might want to buy in bulk until you can effectively stop them from entering your home.

Telling the landlord is not going to work. If they are nice enough to patiently wait for your rent even if late, then you should be grateful that you rent from understanding people.

[Fr_Chuck]

Well some good poison never hurt either, if you live in the country near the farm fields, rats and mice are seroius issues for any home that is near the crop fields every fall at harvesting.

[twinkiedooter]

You don't want to use the poison as those rats will just eat it and crawl between the walls in your house and die! Rats want to be "safe" when they are sick so naturally they crawl into a nice warm home to die. I personally don't recommend the rat poison. Traps work once and for all..