I just got a letter from the student housing office notifying me I have until tomorrow to pay two months delinquent rent. There are two problems with this: the first problem is that the letter is dated 3/5 and says "5 day notice" on it, meaning I have until tomorrow to pay the rent - I didn't get the letter until today. Not exactly a 5 day notice, is it?
The second problem (the real one) is that I have a receipt from the housing office dated 12-11-03 which shows that I've paid rent from last Oct through the end of this month, as well as all late/delinquent/NSF fees & utilities through the same time period. The housing office worker signed off on the receipt (thereby agreeing that the amounts on the receipt are correct) and the housing office has a copy of this in their books.
Now, my question is: do I have any legal options here? Can I sue these greedy, heartless bastards for anything? Does the fact that I have a receipt and it is signed by the housing office worker (who signs all receipts) mean that I don't owe them anything, or is a receipt worthless? I need to head over there by tomorrow (would rather do it today and get it out of the way) and I'd like to have some ammunition to back me up. I've put up with their shyte ever since I got here, as have all the rest of the tenants in student housing. These apartments are a joke, too. They were finished in June '03 and in March '04 you can't walk into an apartment that doesn't have massive amounts of damage to it (furniture, ceilings, lights, fans, appliances - everything broken or not working properly). One might say "it's a bunch of students, what do you expect?" but to that I say rubbish! One really would have to see these apartments for themselves to appreciate truly how half-assed they were constructed. They really are falling apart and they're not even a year old yet.
These apartments are a joke. The students that live here are being charged above fair-market value for shoddily-constructed housing in a "bad" area, 5 murders within a 3 mile radius just since my class got here in June, one body was found in a field only a couple hundred yards away. Also, we have had several vehicles stolen from our parking lot as well as far more broken into and had stereo equipment stolen. Thousands of dollars of personal property has been stolen or damaged and the housing office has done nothing to stop it other than hire a security guard to patrol the lots (only on weekend nights though). They had local PD doing the same thing (weekend nights) for awhile and that worked while the cops were there, but the theft and destruction continued while they were off-premises. They keep sending us letters talking about all the improvements they've made (security/cops on weekends being the *ONLY* improvement) and the ones they're "thinking" about making (better lighting, security cameras, gated entrances, fences, etc.) none of which are likely to happen, however.
Just a couple weeks ago they (the housing office) sent all students here a bill for "delinquent utilities", even to those students who had paid everything in full and on-time every single month they were here. Utilities (water & electricity) are included in the rent ($35 per person per month) so I don't see how they can even try pulling this kind of b.s. Not only that, but $35 per person per month in Tulsa, OK isn't exactly the going rate... The same thing goes for the rent. $350 per person per month is *not* the going rate in Tulsa, especially not in such a crime-ridden area. They should be paying us to live here. They got this land for next-to-nothing because it's directly in the path of 90+% of all airport traffic, which happens to be less than a mile away so we get to hear F16s fly a hundred feet over our heads with their afterburners on. Not a very pleasant way to be woken up if you ask me...
Anyway, sorry for the long post. I really could go on and on here, harrassing phone calls from the apartment manager to parents "Hi, this is Mark xx housing, your son no longer lives here, CLICK" (actual phone call to my mother, which was just plain wrong). If there are any lawyers or law students that have any advice, please feel free to chip in.
Due to the condition of the apartments overall, the ridiculously-high prices for rent & utilities (once again, well above fair market value), and the failure to provide a safe place to live, I believe the students here should band together and get a class-action lawsuit against the company which runs the student housing complex. Would the students here have any solid ground to stand on if we were to attempt such a thing? We tried getting a lawyer involved in the past (but that was through one of the teachers at the school) and absolutely nothing came about as a result.
Thanks in advance
The second problem (the real one) is that I have a receipt from the housing office dated 12-11-03 which shows that I've paid rent from last Oct through the end of this month, as well as all late/delinquent/NSF fees & utilities through the same time period. The housing office worker signed off on the receipt (thereby agreeing that the amounts on the receipt are correct) and the housing office has a copy of this in their books.
Now, my question is: do I have any legal options here? Can I sue these greedy, heartless bastards for anything? Does the fact that I have a receipt and it is signed by the housing office worker (who signs all receipts) mean that I don't owe them anything, or is a receipt worthless? I need to head over there by tomorrow (would rather do it today and get it out of the way) and I'd like to have some ammunition to back me up. I've put up with their shyte ever since I got here, as have all the rest of the tenants in student housing. These apartments are a joke, too. They were finished in June '03 and in March '04 you can't walk into an apartment that doesn't have massive amounts of damage to it (furniture, ceilings, lights, fans, appliances - everything broken or not working properly). One might say "it's a bunch of students, what do you expect?" but to that I say rubbish! One really would have to see these apartments for themselves to appreciate truly how half-assed they were constructed. They really are falling apart and they're not even a year old yet.
These apartments are a joke. The students that live here are being charged above fair-market value for shoddily-constructed housing in a "bad" area, 5 murders within a 3 mile radius just since my class got here in June, one body was found in a field only a couple hundred yards away. Also, we have had several vehicles stolen from our parking lot as well as far more broken into and had stereo equipment stolen. Thousands of dollars of personal property has been stolen or damaged and the housing office has done nothing to stop it other than hire a security guard to patrol the lots (only on weekend nights though). They had local PD doing the same thing (weekend nights) for awhile and that worked while the cops were there, but the theft and destruction continued while they were off-premises. They keep sending us letters talking about all the improvements they've made (security/cops on weekends being the *ONLY* improvement) and the ones they're "thinking" about making (better lighting, security cameras, gated entrances, fences, etc.) none of which are likely to happen, however.
Just a couple weeks ago they (the housing office) sent all students here a bill for "delinquent utilities", even to those students who had paid everything in full and on-time every single month they were here. Utilities (water & electricity) are included in the rent ($35 per person per month) so I don't see how they can even try pulling this kind of b.s. Not only that, but $35 per person per month in Tulsa, OK isn't exactly the going rate... The same thing goes for the rent. $350 per person per month is *not* the going rate in Tulsa, especially not in such a crime-ridden area. They should be paying us to live here. They got this land for next-to-nothing because it's directly in the path of 90+% of all airport traffic, which happens to be less than a mile away so we get to hear F16s fly a hundred feet over our heads with their afterburners on. Not a very pleasant way to be woken up if you ask me...
Anyway, sorry for the long post. I really could go on and on here, harrassing phone calls from the apartment manager to parents "Hi, this is Mark xx housing, your son no longer lives here, CLICK" (actual phone call to my mother, which was just plain wrong). If there are any lawyers or law students that have any advice, please feel free to chip in.
Due to the condition of the apartments overall, the ridiculously-high prices for rent & utilities (once again, well above fair market value), and the failure to provide a safe place to live, I believe the students here should band together and get a class-action lawsuit against the company which runs the student housing complex. Would the students here have any solid ground to stand on if we were to attempt such a thing? We tried getting a lawyer involved in the past (but that was through one of the teachers at the school) and absolutely nothing came about as a result.
Thanks in advance