Do I have a right to a rent reduction? [IA]
I rent in Iowa. A month ago one of my roommates accidentally left a faucet on in one of our 2 bathrooms, it ran all night and flooded the laundry room and parts of our dining/living room. Maintenance came, took the pad out of the carpet, took the doors, door frames, baseboards, and everything off the wall. Since then it’s pretty much been nothing. They had drying stuff in here for a few days after, they came to collect it, and since then it’s been total radio silence. For a month. I’m becoming livid. Where they ripped the bathroom doorframe off the wall there are sharp, rusty metal pins sticking out, I’m terrified that one of my cats is going to lose an eye and we can’t keep them out because they also ripped the door to that area off. Half of the house has been totally unusable because we had to move all of our furniture from the affected portion of that floor to the unaffected portion. The complete silence from the property management company is unbelievably frustrating as a tenant who had nothing to do with the damages, I just woke up one morning and this was my reality and now it has been for a month. I’m not even mad at my roommate, it was a mistake and the sink could have run all night without issue if the drain worked, which it hasn’t since we moved in. Four of us are sharing one bathroom and it’s miserable. I don’t want to pay my full rent for half my house and I’m getting unbelievably sick of these jerks dragging their feet. Do I have grounds to request a rent reduction and how do I go about getting them in here to fix things?
EDIT with more information:
Renter’s insurance was contacted the day of the incident. Our lease is joint but we all have our own renter’s insurance policies, so it was on my roommate to reach out to his insurance. He has done so, I’m told that insurance is waiting on the property management company. Our landlord asked for his agent’s contact information and said they’d be back to him by the end of the day, it’s been over a week and we haven’t heard anything back still. So we’re not waiting on insurance, we’re not waiting on drying (that was done within days of the accident), we are waiting on the landlord. It’s my roommate who has been talking about a rent reduction, I’ve told him that I doubt we would be able to get that since the law tends to screw renters and, technically, the damage was his fault, even though I share the frustration on having to pay our full rent for half our house. We really can’t break the lease, we live in a college town where finding rentals is near impossible so getting a new place would be a months long ordeal, and we’re already signed up until fall of 2027 anyways. The reason I’m quick to accuse the landlord of taking their sweet time is because that’s been the trend since before we even lived here. I handled all the communication for our application and lease negotiations and they would go weeks without responding. So we’re essentially in a stalemate with the property management company and renter’s insurance, there’s not really anything that I personally can do since it’s not my insurance except professionally request they get it together, which I’m in the process of drafting. I’m 21, a first time renter, and I work in fast food so the best legal counsel I can afford is Reddit. I apologize for a lack of replying and any mistakes I may have made, I made this post this morning in the rage of not being able to shower because our only bathroom was, as usual, occupied and I left for work shortly after which is where I am currently.