If your AC is broken right now
Hey yall,
Sharing in case you’re in my same unlucky shoes for the heat wave and your AC picked the perfect moment to up and croak.
- If your unit cannot be cooled under 80 F, the county law entitles you to being relocated on landlord money. It’s 90 for the rest of Maryland (state law) unless other counties have it stricter.
As always there’s a couple caveats that slow things down :
1a. Inform the landlord in writing!! Even if you called front desk/office, follow up with a quick email. Timestamp everything.
- You notified, ball is in their court. They meet minimum legal requirements for “doing something about it” if they offer you extra cooling units. That gets your unit to 80 until it can be fixed? They’re good to go.
If your unit is still above 80F after that, they have to offer alternative housing until the issue is resolved OR the heatwave is up (I would push for “issue is resolved” considering that Monday we’re still expecting a high of 86 so I doubt anyone’s unit is going to cool down significantly by itself in the meantime).
This is where it gets more confrontational if the temp is above 80F with the extra cooling units, and the landlord/management is refusing to put you up somewhere else (for example if they’re telling you that’s not possible or that renters insurance should cover it):
Call 311, ask to be transferred to “code enforcement”. They will send an inspector out to temporarily condemn your unit and to force the landlord’s hand to provide/pay for alternative housing or to reimburse you for a hotel stay.
In my case my building mgmt took almost 4 hours to confirm that a sister property had an available hospitality suite and to let us know we could move.