Recently I was living in one of the mentioned owner's apartments as a lease tenant. Let me start off by saying he took over the building from a prior land lady who did not care much for upkeep and repair of the building.in the wintertime the gates that surrounded the building, the actual doorway to enter the building property would freeze because it was made of a cheap aluminum shell locking everyone out.
The problem came when it was time to move out. As agreed me and my roommate left before our lease was over on the terms we found a replacement. Given that we were paying a very reasonable monthly rent rate of about a thousand dollars a month the new landlord did not object to us finding new tenants on the condition of selling the lease package at a higher monthly rent rate (more money for him).
After spending almost 2 months finding people to move into our apartment, the papers were all drawn and the final inspection by the new tenants relieving us any responsibility of the apartment and the condition was signed as I personally delivered it to the land lord.
The problem began after the new tenants had moved in. The complained about certain conditions in the apartment that had pre-existed even before our tenure at the apartment. Previously we had tried to get the old land lady to fix many of the problems in the building but with no response or proactive measure. As a result Mr. Fattah used this opportunity after his acquisition of his new property to tag on the bill to us as we were the last tenants to have lived in that unit.
By laws state that conditions of living quarters in which damages have pre-existed prior to the tenants occupancy is not the responsibility of the tenant but the land lord. Seeing as these problems were not the result of our time of occupancy Mr. Fattah not only went back on his word of deliverying our Security Deposit in the time frame that he had originally promised, he further delayed the date from 7 days to, 2 weeks, then finally over a month before he had sent out the check with a $53.40 deduction that was unjustified.
As the legal documents state once the new tenant is in agreement over the condition of the apartment the responsibility of the previous tenant bears no burden after the apartment has been thoroughly inspected and signed off. We followed all legal procedures to make sure the new tenants inspected every part of the apartment only to hear from Mr. Fattah that there were complaints regarding the apartment after the new tenants moved in.
As the new building owner he even did his own inspection of each apartment in the three flat complex seeing what was wrong and what was in need of repair in all the units. He knew of the condition regarding our apartment before hand and used this opportunity not to only save his own money by deferring responsibility as the building owner for it's upkeep and maintenence, he took a portion of our security deposit without just cause while profiting over $1,200 annually from our old unit through our hard work of finding a tenant to move into our old unit.
The unit is located at 2434 W. Flournoy as I warn you of this area. My car as well as my roommates and neighbors had previously been broken into by one of the local crackheads who lurk in the late evenings. This owner did not follow up on his word and continually put us off before we had to state our case and proof of burden prior to the release of our security deposit. Given he claims to have fixed the problems the previous landlord had just ignored, as we are no longer tenants the problem lies in his inability to follow through with his promises all while questioning our integrity and accusing us of minor damanges that had pre-existed before my roommate and I ever moved in.
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