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Metison

Landlord illegally asking to pay random amounts without producing a copy of the bill

Hello All,

I am in Chicago Illinois.

My lease states that I only need to pay water. This is not in amenities section, it is added additionally. My landlord quoted like 75$ for one month and is asking me to pay for it. He does not want to provide the water bill because he states that apparently the previous tenants' personal details are present on the water bill. So just "trust me and pay this much amount". He is also asking me to pay for sewage/garbage disposal which are not mentioned in the lease at all. He says that because it is not mentioned in the lease and that I have to pay for all "Other" amenities (so the amenities in lease is structured something like oven tickmark, washer/dryer tick mark, microwave empty box others empty box). So I have to pay for all of other miscellaneous expenses. I called Metropolitan Tenants Organization and they mentioned that it is illegal to make up rules like how my landlord did... It was mentioned by them that if garbage bins are anywhere outside the property (inside the home or in the garage), landlord needs to mention in lease for the tenant to take care of this, else he has to take care of garbage disposal by himself.

The thing is, I don't want to overspend on lawyers if at all possible. How do I go about this?

Couple of other things:
Of the 6 amenities listed in the lease, 5 of them were broken/not working (oven, washer, dryer, refrigerator, lawn maintenance), which he was supposed to take care of. The last one was snow removal which again he didn't want to do after the last snow storm in my area, and he emailed me saying I am crying about little snow and few fallen leaves, when I emailed him to take care of it. It took him a month to fix 4 of them, and then he has said in email that I should start using my neighbors dryer, and that he doesn't want to spend any money on washer/dryer/oven etc. We still don't have a dryer for our unit.

Also in his latest email, he has threatened to give away my personal details like social security number etc. to "random irrelevant people", if I keep on demanding to give us the water bill.

Any help/links to legal pages/documents/pro-bono etc. cases would be helpful. Me and my roommate are students, and don't have any income at the moment.

Posted Dec 1, 2023, 11:42 PM UTC

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