Prisoner

Yesterday afternoon my housemate called me to say that we might have an exterminator on Saturday or Wednesday. Well, Saturday is over, and Wednesday is another half week away. This is totally unacceptable to me! I'm sleeping under my desk at work. I'm at work day and night because I've got nowhere else to go! It's so stupid :( I feel like a prisoner!

I have to go home soon to wash and dry some clothes - clearly I can't just leave them hanging out, and not everything I own can be dried like that or it will shrink :( So I'm not sure what I will do. Maybe I will get them dry-cleaned and keep the receipts.

Today I went looking for xtra-large ziploc bags to hold my clothes. I couldn't find any at all. I will have to get some garbage bags and tie them tightly and seal up the top somehow.

I've been looking into my legal options. I looked into the legislation and I am legally a sub-tenant although my housemate (who is legally head-tenant) never registered me as one, so maybe he will get fined for that (unlikely). I can take the owner of the apartment to magistrate's court and sue for breach of contract. Although I don't have a written contract with the head-tenant, I have an oral "agreement" backed up with written evidence of rent receipts. That's specifically allowed in the legislation and in precedent.

So with my status mostly in the clear, I can sue, and what for? The legislation says the owner has to provide the premises in a reasonable state of cleanliness and repair. I don't think being full of blood-sucking bugs meets either of those conditions.

I was able to search some law engines and found a similar case in Australia, and a similar case in America, where the tenants realise they have bedbugs and took the owners to court and won. In those cases they claimed:
- 45% of their back-rent, as the place was unfit for sleeping, but could be used fairly safely at other times
- Moving costs (time off work, and car hire)

I think I will also sue them for
- 80% of rent from the time they were notified, because they've taken so long, and once I've realised what's happening there I don't want to do anything there. Even sitting on the couch there can result in bites, or eggs being transferred to my clothing. All I'm doing is showering and brushing my teeth there, and getting my clothes when I can.
- Any dry-cleaning costs I have, for stuff I can't wash myself in hot water or it might shrink.

I've printed out all the relevant legislation, the previous cases, some official information on bedbugs and the mental and physical stress they cause, and assembled it all into a binder while I prepare my case.

I now need to go home and get some "samples" of the bugs - no idea how I'm going to do that, maybe get them on sticky tape, and put them into some clear plastic sheet, and freeze them to death. I also need to get my rent receipts - the most recent one which my head-tenant never gave me (which is against the law, he had 3 days to give me one). But I will just ask and I'm sure he'll give it to me.

Oh yeah, when I told him yesterday I'm going to sue the owner, he's like "what for?" WHAT FOR? Dude I'm covered in f***ing bites, sleeping under my desk at work, the house is uninhabitable for me, and I've been in stress over the past few months thinking I'm going crazy and my body is a piece of s*** for falling apart only to discover it's because of the owner's negligence! What the f*** do you mean what for?