Landlord trouble, need help.

By on September 1st, 2009

I live in Massachusetts. We have very specific laws regarding tenant’s rights.
I’ve lived in the house for 7 years and the landlord has always been reluctant to do repairs.
We’re having problems now with getting work fixed. We called the board of health in to do an inspection, but they didn’t do it very well.
The state sanitary code is specific, and they neglected to mention problems. First we have mice in the kitchen cabinets and we can’t use them. I showed them the entry points into the house, they said it is our responsibility to take care of the mice, I told her the code says it is his responsibility to take care of them because he has neglected to keep them out of the house. I showed her the gaps in the basement door where they come in, as well as basement windows, and the holes in the cabinets. The 2″ drain pipes has a 6″x12″ square opening cut out of the cabinet as well as two inch gapes leading into the attic. Yet she negated to mention it on the report.
The bathroom has a bad light fixture, a result of a leak in the roof that was repaired, but the light wasn’t replaced, it wasn’t on the report. The floor in the bathroom is rotten, the vanity in the bathroom is rotten, both were mentioned in the report, but they didn’t mention the cause, a leaking toilet, nor the mold present on the walls, and the code says that the walls have to be mold resistant for four feet from the floor, yet it is covered in mold.
Then we had a six foot slider leading onto a deck, the slider fell into the house, the landlord replaced it without a permit, he framed in a regular door, used old uneven boards as sheathing, put a tarp over the door opening and left it. After two weeks I installed the door, put duct tape over the gaps in the sheathing, put some insulation in and put up a piece of Sheetrock. There is a trap door in the deck right outside where the slider was and it is falling in, the reason for it falling in, and the reason for the slider falling into the house is a rotten sill, I showed it to the inspector, they mentioned that the side of the house needed to be sided, and the trap door needed repair, but not the sill.
I made a point of mentioning the kitchen floor, the code says it has to be sealed, and if it is wood, which it is, it must be sealed and free from cracks, ours has no finish, is turning gray from water absorption, and the cracks between the boards are obvious and filled with debris from sweeping, yet she brushed it off, mentioning her floor is like that.
She mentioned the gaps in the kitchen windows that we have taped up to keep the bugs out, but didn’t put it in the report, there are no screen doors on any of the outside doors, except one which fell off four months ago and is sitting on the deck, yet made no mention of them.
The repairs he’s done have been substandard, I told them he replaced the water heater without a permit, and a few days later it leaked propane into the house. She saw the door opening and I told her how he left it, she saw the stained ceilings, bad light fixtures, etc. She did make him put in smoke and carbon detectors, since it turns out the ones we had were hollow.
What really bugs me is I have a four year old. The hot water tank really bugs me, he’s a licensed plumber, he knows the laws, and he put us at risk to save a $50 permit fee.

Now had we died, he would be charged with negligent homicide, what I want to know is recourse.

How do I go about getting the house fixed up to code, since he’s a licensed plumber, born and raised in this town, and owns half a dozen properties in the town, and he knows everyone in town hall.

Second, can I push to have criminal charges brought against him for putting us at risk to save $50.

Third, once we reported him to the board of health he served us with a notice to quit, basically saying he wants us out of the house, which is illegal, it is retaliation, and we have never missed a rent payment. So what do I do about that. The attorney general’s office said it was illegal to do, and just to ignore it, that if he tries to evict, it will be dismissed, but that would still be missed work, not to mention the stress we’re dealing with now.

I don’t see the point to having the laws on the books if no one will do anything about blatant violations.